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Sheriff Doug Gillespie, center, attends a Clark County Commission meeting at the Clark County Government Center Tuesday, October 5, 2010. The commission voted to have a committee look into changes to the coroner’s inquest system, the fact-finding process that Clark County uses after a killing by police.
Published Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010 | 1:21 p.m.
Updated Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010 | 3:05 p.m.
Change is coming to the coroner’s inquest system, the process Clark County uses to ferret out the facts of a killing by police.
By Dec. 7, a committee consisting of a retired state Supreme Court judge, and a member from each of the ACLU, the NAACP, Metro Police, the District Attorney’s Office, the Public Defender’s Office, the police union, the coroner and a UNLV law professor will return to the commission with a proposed changed county ordinance.
The current process involves a county prosecutor picking witnesses, including the police officers, and questioning them in a quasi-judicial forum. At the end of the hearing, a jury panel decides if the shooting was justified, excused or criminal.
It’s controversial because parties outside of the police department have, for decades, complained they don’t get a fair shake in asking questions and they believe the district attorney is on the side of police.
All of it came to a loggerheads with two shootings in the last four months, one of Trevon Cole and the other of Erik Scott.
Commissioner Steve Sisolak asked that the group look at specific ideas: drug testing for officers involved in fatal shootings; allowing cross-examinations by attorneys for family members of the deceased, and potentially other parties; let attorneys for the officer ask questions; and at the hearing’s end, have no verdict. Instead, it would be up to the district attorney to decide if the case warranted civil or criminal charges.
“The goal of this is to arrive at the truth,” Sisolak said.
CORRECTION: This story originally reported the group would return to the commission with a proposed changed county ordinance on Nov. 7. It was corrected to Dec. 7. | (October 5, 2010)
I fully support the idea of drug testing officers who are involved.
I don't like the idea of doing away with the verdict and allowing the DA to make the decision to prosecute or not. I would rather have a verdict of "criminal" be binding upon the DA to bring charges.
I would also change the possible verdicts to be only "criminal" or "not-criminal". As it stands now, the inquest serves mainly to limit government exposure to wrongful death suits. Removing the verdicts of "justified" and "excusable" would reduce the inquests influence to some extent from other proceedings.
Public Review Board
When the DA's office brings a case to criminal court they are seeking a result. They bring charges that they think they can prove and then if successful they recommend sentencing.
Why don't they come to the coroner's process with a requested result? All they appear to do is provide a set of info which from the public perspective is in support of the police. I would imagine that the DA Office's intent is that the public good be served. So when a police officer kicks a door in and at the same instant his gun discharges and shoots a guy (as was the case a few weeks ago) the jury doesn't think that they're serving their community with a "justified" finding.
The shooting appears to the community as an accident and maybe "excusable". Some punishment to the cop may be in order, probably not criminal but clearly procedure was a problem.
As long as the DA's office holds all the cards in presenting evidence and all of the findings of the process are "justifiable" there are going to be serious concerns (not to mention as long as the cops keep shooting folks).
@casinokid: A public review board is a great concept if it's executed properly. It can't be voluntary and it has to have "teeth".
NYPD has a good example. If there is a complaint against an NYPD officer, the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board has civilian investigators that investigate. The Board also has the ability to subpoena officers, so there are some "teeth" behind the organization. It can't be a volunteer organization, while such a board should have some representation from Metro, it should all have representation from parts of the community that aren't tied to Metro.
NYPD also tracks excessive force complaints that are filed against its' officers after an internal study was performed showing that officers involved in shootings had disproportionately high numbers of excessive force complaints filed against them in the past. Once an NYPD officer accumulates a certain number of "points", supervisors then monitor the officers' performance.
As for the inquest process, there are SEVERAL areas from improvement:
1. The deceased should be afforded counsel and counsel should be permitted to cross-examine witnesses.
2. An outside agency should participate in the investigation of any officer involved shooting.
3. Any evidence produced by an investigation should be provided to both the DA and the deceased's counsel at the same time.
4. Clear jury instructions should be given to the panel. These panel instructions should included definition of gross negligence, reasonable mistake, criminal intent, etc. to better allow the panel to render an appropriate verdict.
5. The verdicts should just be "Possibly Criminal" or "Not Criminal". The inquest is not a courtroom. It should not be tasked with determining whether or not an officer's conduct is "criminal" or not. Instead, any finding of "Possibly Criminal" should be forwarded for an actual 12 person jury trial.
6. Each individual officer's conduct should be considered separately. It is quite possible that in one in a single shooting, one officer may have performed his/her job well, while another failed to do so. I believe this is the case in the Scott shooting.
7. Naturally, officer have 5th Amendment rights and can choose to invoke them at any such proceeding.
I also support the drug testing of officers following a shooting. Drug testing should include testing for steroids.
@lampshade. This agenda item was set up by Commissioner Sisolak prior to the end of the Scott Inquest. Not sure how much influence Scott supporters had to do that.
Chunky says:
If the process can be improved without additional expense to the taxpayers and additional burden on the court system he supports it.
However, a family such as the Scott family who were and are in denial to their son's prescription drug addiction and character issues are never going to be happy with the inquest process if it doesn't rule in their favor.
Chunky says they'll protest, complain and file civil suits no matter what the process or outcome is.
Improve the system if you can but don't hold your breath that it will make people like the Scotts go away.
That's what Chunky thinks!
@Chunky: Many departments have seen their liability insurance reduced and a decline in civil lawsuits after they have taken steps to investigate and punish instances of excessive force. Studies have shown that many of the cops involved in "bad" shoots, had relatively high numbers of excessive force complaints filed against them. Weeding the unnecessarily aggressive officers before they're put into a shooting situation helps prevent bad shoots.
After a shooting, the focus should be in ensuring that justice is done regardless if then creates an additional "burden" on the court system. That is the point of having a court system.
As for the Scott family, I don't blame them one bit. Now I'll be the first to say that Scott shouldn't have been carrying a weapon while on prescription meds, but the information on Scott's prescription drug use presented by the DA was heavily biased. The DA provided evidence that Scott had very high levels of painkillers in his body, but they didn't include medical reports that suggested why Scott may have needed very high levels of painkillers to get the same effect an average dose would have on an average person. Much of the DA's evidence would never be allowed in a real courtroom. It was less a fact finding process and more like the prosecution of a dead man.
I would suspect that if the Scott's family lawyer had been able to view the evidence beforehand and question witnesses, they would be far less upset.
As it stands now, every officer involved shooting will be ruled justified at the inquest while Vegas taxpayers will be on the hook for millions actual jury trials determine that Metro was at fault.
SummerlinCC, I will tell you the same thing that Southerners tell the damn Yankees when they migrate to the South for retirement and feel it is their duty to correct everything, "We don't give a damn how you did it up North!"
The current Coroner's Inquest process is flawed in essence becuase the processes utilized to achive its ultimate goal- to determine if the death of an individual at the hands of law enforcement was criminal, excusable or justified- seldom focuses on obtaining the necessary facts needed to render a "relevant" verdict. Instead, as the public has now witnessed, the process engages in a character assasisination campaign of the decendent which is
prejudicial in nature, often magnifying irrelevant testimony and information for the purposes of swaying the Jury's decision- the goal of which is to plant the seed that somehow the decedent's character profile (as portrayed by the DA) was the determining factor that led to his or her death at the hands of law enforcement.
Alternatively, testimony and facts regarding the specific procedural actions of the officer(s) are often sparse, confusing and/or glossed over, when such information should be primary focal points of the Inquest. What is troubling is that witnesses can be hand picked by the DA to reinforce his or her case, which history has suggested is to merely clear the officers of wrongdoing. While the decedent's
interested party has no time to prepare for or examine the veracity of any such witnesses. Likewise, the decedent's interested party has no opportunity to prepare for or examine the veracity of the evidence presented for or against any party involved with the Inquest itself outside of asking hand written questions based on what they have just heard.
To be sure, the usual rules of discovery do not apply. Such hardly makes for an unbiased fact-finding mission.
....continued
..continued
Similarly the decedent has no opportunity to defend his or her character. For the casual observer, not having much knowledge of what the Coroner's Inquest is charged with, he or she could easily mistake the process as a quasi-criminal trial of the decedent. In criminal trials, however, there are at least "Propensity" Rules whereby evidence aimed at drawing inferences about how a defendant might behave in a particular situation is prohibited. Alternatively, it would seem, however, that such constructed inferences are the very foundation of the DA's case "against" the decedent in the Coroner's Inquest.
In my humble opinion, by not focusing specifically on the actions of the officers and whether they had used proper procedure(s) in his/her/their use of deadly force renders the Coroner's Inquest process impotent with regard to its original mission. Instead, it reveals itself as a one-sided process focusing on disparaging the decedent in an effort to sway the Jury.
Remember this, or perhaps even write this down!!! Officer(s) typically have had no a priori knowledge of subject's (decedent) character at the time of the shooting. However, even if any such information was known to the officer(s), it would be irrelevant becuase it is only the actions of the subject at the time of the confrontation that apply. Thus, for the DA to present that the decedent may have had a violent past does not in and of itself justify the use of deadly force. To demonstrate that the decedent had used prescription phamaceuticals, in an of itself, does not justify the use of deadly force. To obtain a witness who would testify that he or she had some kind of incident with the decedent in the past does not justify the use of deadly force by officers. None of these domains are relevant unless it can be demonstrated that such information has a direct connection with the subject's actions at the time of the shooting. In fact, if the DA is not able to draw a relevant connection between of any potentially disparaging testimony and the specific actions of the decedent at the time of the shooting, it should not be allowed.
Without question, the current structure of the Coroner's Inquest is intrinsically biased. To simply reckon that "the process is not an actual trial" and therefore the aforementioned flaws are acceptable does little to instill any measure of public confidence in it's mission: fact-finding. Even worse, it does little to support any idea that somehow justice is blind.
Let's be real. This is all about Erik Scott. For decades people "other" than the Erik Scotts (he didn't fit the profile) has been killed and there was no uproar.
A change is way over due.
The public no longer trusts Metro, the DA or the Courts.
Doesn't that tell you anything?????
@sheepdog267: Your attempt to turn this into a native Las Vegan vs. a non-native Las Vegan issue is irrelevant. Anyone that lives in an area patrolled by Metro has an interest is this issue as do all of the taxpayers that are on the hook for civil damages in cases where Metro is determined to be at fault.
This also isn't a geographic issue. Look at other western police departments. Feel free to take a look at San Francisco's process where a civilian board nvestigates complaints against SFPD, the investigators can't have previously worked for SFPD and the board has full access to ALL SFPD files.
Or look at the Portland PD model, which allows that city's elected commission to overrule the Portland PD IA in determining whether a complaint is substantiated and can then force the department to discipline officers regardless of what the internal investigation shows.
Most of the proposed reforms before the County Commission are fairly moderate compared to what many PD's across the country operate under.
@halo182: I couldn't agree more. Although proponents of the process defend it by arguing that the inquest isn't an "actual trial", the reality is that the coroner's inquest is a government administered legal process that impacts the civil rights of a decedent.
Any 1L law school student can see the flaws in the current system. The DA essentially prosecutes the shooting victim in abstentia as opposed to presenting evidence about whether or not officers applied their training to a particular incident.
I think that it is very interesting that in the last 2 high profile cases, Cole and Scott, the officers involved had multiple shootings. Including the Cole case, Yant had 3 previous shootings, 2 fatal, with the first fatal shooting occuring with less than 2 years service with Metro. At the time of the Cole shooting, Yant had served 10 years with Metro. Including the Scott case, Mosher had 2 fatal shootings in a 5 year career with Metro. His first shooting occured with less than 1 year service with Metro. The other officers in the Scott case had both served less than 2 years with Metro. Maybe we have a training problem?
There should be a Screening Panel consistng of:
1) Forensic Pathologist
2) Forensic Pychologist
3) Medical Doctor (Pain specialist)
4) Retired District Attorney
5) Practicing Criminal Attorney
6) Practicing Civil Attorney
7) Sernior Representive from ACLU
8) Active Senior Police Officer
9) Police Union Representative
10)Male member of the Public
11)Female member of the Public
12)CEO of a Fortune 500 Company.
The Screening Panel, should decide (majority decision) that the case is either:
1) Criminal
2) Not Criminal (Case Closed with the defendant to pursue Civil damages only)
All Criminal cases, should go for complete Trial of the defendant/defendants, with a Jury.
There should be no indefinate time off with pay for the officer/officers involved (Only One Week off, for drug testing and investigation)
"I think that it is very interesting that in the last 2 high profile cases, Cole and Scott, the officers involved had multiple shootings. Including the Cole case, Yant had 3 previous shootings, 2 fatal, with the first fatal shooting occuring with less than 2 years service with Metro. At the time of the Cole shooting, Yant had served 10 years with Metro. Including the Scott case, Mosher had 2 fatal shootings in a 5 year career with Metro. His first shooting occured with less than 1 year service with Metro. The other officers in the Scott case had both served less than 2 years with Metro. Maybe we have a training problem?"
Tanker,
Have you or anyone ever thought that maybe these officers have worked the most dangerous areas of town...I for one have known both for many years, and I can tell you that both look for criminals to put in jail...They put themselves in the high drug/crime area looking for the people that prey on the innocent, and lock them up.
When you do this, you are dealing with the more violent criminals, the ones that don't want to go to jail, or back to prison. Like Yant and his 1st fatal shooting, the guy robbed multiple stores at gun point, then fled from officers. When he wrecked his car, he feld on foot and decided to challenge a cop to a gunfight...and lost.
Should Yant have been fired becaused he shot this guy? Should he have been forced to a career of desk duty?
If you do your job well, then are forced to defend yourself, should you be fired?
With Mosher's first, his partner was in danger of being run over by a criminal who publicly stated he wasn't going back to prison...Mosher shot him to save his partner's life....
Same questions, should he have been fired?
As far as training, both officers in their first cases, and the 3 in the Scott case, all followed their training, Dept. policy and the law to the letter no matter what people think...They did their job, they did it well and now are being vilified by people that have no clue how they were trained, how police work gets done or knows these officers personally.
I think we should leave the inquest process, have the officers tried by a "jury of their peers."
Yes 12 officers should decide if any fatal shooting is justified.
"The DA provided evidence that Scott had very high levels of painkillers in his body, but they didn't include medical reports that suggested why Scott may have needed very high levels of painkillers to get the same effect an average dose would have on an average person."
How about years of prescription drug abuse.
The fact that this guy could go to the gym and work out the way he did, all while having soooo much back pain, amazes me. Does anyone else not wonder why he needed so many painkillers, but still could work out so hard?
This is why the history of the decedent is relative to the inquest, it shows if the person has any history that could possibly lead a reasonable person (juror) to understand what was possibly going through his mind at the time.
Summerlin, you are so right! This is NOT a geographical issue, we are not in Portland or San Francisco. What might work there will not necessarily work here.
You also say that the inquset did not bring out if the officers applied their training in the Scott case...Sure it did.
#1 - you do not confront an armed person with a taser. (only SWAT can do that per policy)
#2 - when confronting a possibly armed subject, have your firearm out, and ready, if you need to use it, the time needed to draw it from the holster could get you killed.
#3 - you issue commands, if the subject does not comply - you may have to use force.
#4 - if the subject decides to draw a firearm, you do not wait to see if they are going to shoot...this leads to dead cops.
#5 - if you have to shoot, aim for the center mass of the target provided, this gives the best opportunity to hit the target, thus not hitting innocent bystanders.
#6 - handcuff bad guy and call for medical.
Sounds like the training paid off, armed bad guy down, no bystanders or officers injured.
I believe that the majority of shootings will minimize as a result of these proposed changes....The Officers will try by any means to avoid scrutiny or in some cases exposure.
I believe that the majority of shootings will minimize as a result of these proposed changes....The Officers will try by any means to avoid srutiny or in some cases exposure.
@DevilDog
your statement: "This is why the history of the decedent is relative to the inquest, it shows if the person has any history that could possibly lead a reasonable person (juror) to understand what was possibly going through his mind at the time."
You cannot know what was going through the subject's mind at the time of the shooting. You could only draw an inference based on his or her history. What is more, I could easily argue that the DA is neither trained nor qualified to draw any such inferences and by merely alluding to such outside of having it presented by someone who is qualified to do so is merely an attempt to sway the jury. Even when presented by an expert witness, such inferences are easily challenged.
For instance, I can easily present you with published scientific research demonstrating that controlled opiate use for pain management actually improves cognitive functioning rather than impairs it. So if you inferred that the decedent's use of pain medications resulted in poor judgment or an inability to follow instructions, how would you reconcile that with the contradictory findings I just mentioned?
The flaw with the Inquest is that you would never get the opportunity to hear such testimony because an interested party to the decedent has no opportunity to prepare for or offer their own expert witness to challenge the assumptions or inferences made by the DA.
This is essence allows the inferences that the DA alludes to or the testimony by his or her witnesses to go unchallenged by a qualified idividual. This is tantamount to stacking the deck against the decedent. This is not impartial. This is not fact finding. This is not a search for the truth.
@Devildog. I agree with you that Yant was in a foot pursuit of an armed robbery suspect who appeared to point a weapon at Yant. The problem I have is what happended after the first volley of shoots. According to his testimony during the inquest, Yant approached Brown after he fell. Yant said, "I see him extend his arm back and look up trying to see where I was. He's got it(the gun) clenched in his fist. I yell again for him to drop the gun." Yant testified that he fired a second round of shots and Brown dropped the gun behind his head.
Three other officers arrived on the scene immediately after the last volley of shots. They proceded to handcuff Brown, called an ambulance and began CPR. None of the other officers saw a gun near Brown's body. One officer said that he may have kicked it, but wasn't sure. A gun was found approximately THIRTY FEET away from Brown's body. Again, the laws of physics don't apply around Yant.
In Mosher's first shooting, his partner had blocked the suspect's get away car in with his patrol car, and was in the process of trying to break the driver's window and remove the keys. As the car moved backward towards his partner who was between the moving car and a parked car, Mosher and his partner both fired. At least several witnesses felt that his partner could have avoided any danger and moved out of the situation. Not sure that breaking a window and trying to remove keys was approved procedure. The car was not going anywhere since it was blocked in.
@Devildog. You're right what works someplace else might not work here, but the vast majority of the public, who Metro works for, don't think what we have works either. So let's try to fix what we have or if necessary throw it out and start over. The Scott Inquest was not just watched in Vegas, but was watched all over the world. I think if you ask the County Commissioners, they got emails from all over the US and the World.
The Scott inquest underscored what everyone thought was wrong with the Cole inquest. The Scott inquest being televised was in response to the public dissatisfaction with the Cole inquest.
There is little doubt that changes must be made to restore public confidence.
As an aside, it is my understanding that it is rare for any officer to discharge his or her weapon in the line of duty. For Metro to have several members who have done so multiple times suggests that officers might be assigned different duties after such incidents, even when cleared of wrong doing.
@Devildog. What are your thoughts and comments about the police officer in Arizona who was arrested and charged with aggrivated assualt on the scene of a fatal police shooting. It happened yesterday in Glendale, outside of Phoenix. After a review of the incident is done he may be facing more serious charges.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic...