Dover man says injury from Taser, not spider

A Dover man denied Tuesday from the witness stand that he was uncooperative and resisted arrest when police questioned him on a city street four years ago, when he was 16, and then repeatedly used a Taser on him.

Matthew Robinson, now 20, spent most of the day testifying in front of a federal jury in Little Rock in a trial stemming from a lawsuit he and his parents filed in 2012 over the incident that occurred about 9 p.m. on Sept. 13, 2011, as he and his mother walked near their home with their small dog.

Mother and son say Steven Payton, who was a part-time officer in the small Pope County town, interrogated and restrained them without cause, and that a backup officer, Sgt. Kristopher Stevens of the sheriff's office, then used a Taser on Robinson for no reason.

The use of the Taser occurred as the officers said they struggled to get the tall boy -- who had size-16 feet -- out of Payton's patrol car, and then as they held him on the ground to get his right arm out from under him to make sure he didn't have a weapon.

The lawsuit contends that the Taser caused a wound in Robinson's lower back that became infected and required that Robinson have three surgeries.

The lawsuit seeks compensation for Robinson's medical bills and for emotional distress to him; his mother Eva Robinson, a dietitian; and to his father, Ron Robinson, who operates a Dover body shop and was on the board of the city's volunteer fire department.

The lawsuit also seeks punitive damages for what it says was the officers' use of excessive force against members of the "good, church-going family."

In the trial that began Monday before Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller, the Robinsons' attorney Patrick James of Little Rock showed jurors several photographs of injuries that James said Matthew Robinson suffered that night as a result of the officers' actions. Robinson was a junior in high school at the time and a member of the school's football team.

The photos showed several bloody scrapes on Robinson's face, arm and an elbow; red puncture wounds on his back and stomach from barbs reportedly fired by a Taser gun; and a bloody sore just above his buttocks, near his tailbone.

The photographs also show Eva Robinson's bruised wrist, which James said occurred when she thought her son was being shot with bullets and threw herself on top of him and struggled with the officers.

Under cross-examination by Little Rock attorney Daniel Wren -- who along with attorney John Wilkerson of the Arkansas Municipal League is representing Payton -- Matthew Robinson became defensive and gave terse answers to questions about his medical records.

The records indicated that for years before he was Tased, Robinson suffered from numerous skin infections and medical procedures in the area above his tailbone.

Robinson testified that the pain he began feeling in his lower back the day after the Tasing was something he had never experienced before. He said he couldn't bend down to tie his shoes, had to take a doughnut cushion to school to sit on and quickly became known as Taser Boy.

Despite notations in his medical records identifying the wound as stemming from a possible spider bite, Robinson insisted that the lower back wound was caused by Stevens rocking the Taser on that part of Robinson's body for an extended period of time. He denied ever being bitten by a spider.

Wren has said that after Payton drove past the Robinsons, who were out walking that night, he went back to talk to them because from his perspective the tall boy looked like a full-grown man approaching a small woman. Payton then saw Robinson stare at the police car, reach into his pockets and throw something away, Wren said.

Robinson said he stared only to see if the officer was someone he knew, and he admitted that he threw a rock -- something he had earlier denied. He said there was no reason Payton would think he was trying to be evasive, and that Payton was "agitated" when he first began questioning Robinson and "kept firing questions" at him.

"Are you a hyper-sensitive person?" Wren asked. Robinson said he wasn't.

Robinson denied refusing to identify himself at the officer's request and telling Payton to talk to the police chief, Rod Pfeifer, who was a friend of the Robinson family.

"So at what point in this process did you say, 'My name is Matthew Robinson, and here is my identification?'" Wren asked.

"I didn't," Robinson replied.

Asked if he had taken a "swing" at Stevens or the Taser as the officers ordered Robinson to get out of Payton's patrol car, Robinson said he "tried to bat the Taser wire down." After Wren played a video showing Stevens suddenly backing away from the open car door, Robinson said he was only "reaching out of the car" and not trying to strike the officer.

Robinson was found guilty in juvenile court of refusing to submit to arrest, but he would not admit to Wren that he resisted arrest, saying, "They never told me I was under arrest."

Metro on 09/30/2015

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