Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2002 | 10:45 a.m.
A Metro Police officer had no valid reason to kill an unarmed 32-year-old man in 1999, lawyers for the dead man's mother told a U.S. District Court jury Monday.
In opening statements for a $25 million lawsuit, Connie Perrin's lawyer, Brent Bryson, said that Officer Bruce Gentner failed to order John Perrin to put up his hands and that Gentner later made multiple inconsistent statements about the shooting. Basic civil rights were violated in the case, Bryson said.
Thomas Dillard, a lawyer for Metro and Gentner, countered that John Perrin, addled by methamphetamine use, provoked the shooting by refusing to follow the officer's orders and by moving in a threatening manner.
"The evidence will show that the officer repeated a loud, clear command of, 'Show me your hands,' but Perrin was not compliant," Dillard said. "Perrin's hands were down in the area of his waistband consistent with getting a weapon, and he moved toward the officer."
Bryson said even if John Perrin did not follow the officer's orders, " noncompliance does not equal violence."
"Officer (Bruce) Gentner will say that Mr. Perrin didn't comply with commands, but only two people know what really happened that night, and only one of them is here," Bryson said.
Both sides are expected to call witnesses who allegedly heard or didn't hear Gentner shout commands before firing, as well as experts in ballistics and law enforcement training. Connie Perrin's lawyers will try to prove that Gentner did not follow proper police procedure and that police who investigated the killing made a series of blunders.
Connie Perrin and Gentner are also expected to take the stand in what is likely to be a week-long trial before U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt.
In May 1999, a Clark County Coroner's inquest jury voted 6-1 that the shooting was justified, but Metro subsequently paid $325,000 to John Perrin's 3-year-old daughter after lawyers threatened to sue the department on her behalf.
The sequence of the shooting was rehashed during opening arguments Monday.
John Perrin reportedly jaywalked across the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and Rainbow Boulevard on the night of April 12, 1999, before meeting with a second man near the southeast corner of the intersection.
According to police reports, Gentner, who was headed south on Rainbow, saw the meeting and suspected a drug deal. Gentner continued driving his patrol car south, made a U-turn and stopped Perrin near a wash in the vacant lot along Rainbow.
At the Clark County Coroner's inquest Gentner testified that he believed Perrin was reaching for a gun as he partly turned away from the officer. Gentner said he fired two bursts of gunfire from his .40-caliber handgun. Six of those 14 shots struck Perrin.
One bullet struck Perrin in the chest and another grazed his flank, according to the autopsy. But four of the slugs struck Perrin from the back, Bryson said.
Dillard countered that the shots were consistent with someone turning themselves to conceal what they were doing. Dillard also said evidence will show that Perrin had toxic levels of methamphetamine in his blood at the time of the shooting and that users of the drug are often paranoid, confused, aggressive and uncooperative.
Dillard plans to call police training experts to testify about the speed at which someone can turn, and training that instructs officers to focus on a suspect's hands because that's where threats will come from.
Perrin didn't have a gun, but police say he was carrying a shiny black jar containing iodine crystals, a chemical used to manufacture methamphetamine. The jar, about four inches high and two inches in diameter, was found on the ground near Perrin's body.
Dillard said that Gentner saw the glint of something black and shiny that Perrin was pulling from his waistband before firing.
But Bryson told the eight jurors that the jar did not have Perrin's fingerprints on it and that the only thing Perrin was carrying was a purple and yellow Durango High School basketball.
The officers who investigated the shooting also mishandled the homicide scene, Bryson said. They pulled Perrin's belongings out of his pocket and let them blow around the lot, the lawyer said.
"A (Metro) officer will testify that he saw the jar close to Perrin's hand, and that when he returned later it had been moved," Bryson said. "A little baggy of marijuana was found in Perrin's clothes, not at the crime scene where he was patted down, but by a crime scene analyst back at the lab. His (Perrin's) fingerprints were not on the baggy either."
archive
