Marvin Grant admits he’s had a history of running from the police and driving with a suspended license.
So when he saw blue lights behind him as he was speeding down U.S. 221 in Greenwood County the night of June 24, 2007, he said his “instincts” took over, and he hit the gas on his red Honda Prelude.
What happened less than a mile away would land him — and the state trooper who chased him — together in a federal courtroom.
Lance Cpl. Steve Garren, 39, of Greenwood, is charged with one count of violating the civil rights of Grant, who testified Tuesday in the first day of the trooper’s trial.
A 15-year Highway Patrol veteran, Garren is accused of deliberately hitting Grant with his patrol car while Grant was fleeing on foot after bailing out of the Honda.
“Once I was hit, I flipped,” Grant told jurors. “When I fell, I completely hit the ground, bounced right back up and kept running.”
The incident was captured on Garren’s dashboard camera video, which was played for jurors.
Garren showed no emotion during the showing, though his wife cried as several minutes of the tape passed with only the sound of wailing police sirens.
Garren, a father of two and a church member, is heard on the tape telling another officer, “I nailed the (expletive) out of him. ... I was trying to hit him.”
About two dozen of Garren’s relatives and other supporters showed up in court. The trial before Chief U.S. District Judge David Norton is expected to last several days.
If convicted, Garren, who is suspended without pay from the Patrol, faces up to 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine, though he likely would receive a much lighter sentence under federal sentencing guidelines.
The charge against Garren, who was indicted in June, is the first federal civil rights case against a state trooper since authorities launched an investigation in March into alleged misconduct into the department.
Gov. Mark Sanford in February ousted Department of Public Safety director James Schweitzer and Highway Patrol commander Col. Russell Roark, contending they should have fired another white trooper who used a racial slur and threatened to kill a fleeing black suspect during a 2004 Greenwood County traffic stop.
Schweitzer and Roark are on Garren’s witness list, though it’s unclear whether they will testify.
In his opening statement , Brent Gray, deputy chief at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., told jurors prosecutors were “not here to defend (the action of) Marvin Grant.”
“Steve Garren was doing his job in trying to stop him,” Gray said, but he added, “All of us — every American — has the right to be free from excessive force.”
Columbia attorney John O’Leary, one of Garren’s lawyers, told jurors the government’s priorities were misplaced.
“We’re in this courtroom today because he is pursuing a criminal, and now he’s the criminal.”
O’Leary told jurors Garren never intended to hit Grant, pointing out that Grant suddenly cut in front of the patrol vehicle while running away on Holman Street, a narrow residential street on Greenwood’s eastern edge.
Garren’s other attorney, Wally Fayssoux, who is O’Leary’s son-in-law, Tuesday renewed his request to have jurors visit the incident scene, though Norton didn’t make a decision.
O’Leary, a former police officer and ex-director of the state Criminal Justice Academy, verbally sparred with Grant at times during Tuesday’s testimony.
“You ran that night because you were drunk,” O’Leary said, noting Grant had been drinking earlier in the day at a family home in Cross Hill in neighboring Laurens County.
“No, I didn’t want to get another DUS,” Grant replied, though he acknowledged he had been drinking.
Grant confirmed he has at least four previous convictions for driving under suspension, plus convictions for failure to stop for a blue light and possession of contraband. A father of three, Grant was in cuffs for his testimony, explaining he has been in jail since May on a child support charge.
Grant testified he was driving “pretty fast” after Garren started to chase him, though he couldn’t agree with O’Leary that his speed was about 100 mph. The chase lasted about seven-tenths of a mile, O’Leary told jurors.
Grant said he ditched his Honda on Holman Street — described by officers as a high-crime area — because he knew the neighborhood.
After he was hit by Garren’s vehicle, he ran through a nearby wooded area and eventually made it to a female acquaintance’s apartment about two miles away, he testified, though he admitted he gave authorities conflicting accounts.
“I wasn’t thinking about no pain right then,” he testified, though he said the pain later became so intense on his right side that he had to borrow a friend’s crutches to walk.
Officers never located Grant that night. He testified he turned himself in the next morning at the Greenwood County Sheriff’s Department but was not arrested then — a story confirmed Tuesday in testimony from Deputy Dale Boyer, who took Grant’s statement.
Grant has never been charged with any crime in connection with the incident involving Garren. Federal authorities didn’t interview him until April this year.
In other testimony Tuesday, Greenwood County Sheriff’s Sgt. Derrick Smith said Garren made comments to him — while being recorded on Garren’s dashboard video — about hitting Grant minutes earlier with the patrol car. Smith told jurors he had to “apologize” to them about repeating an expletive Garren used.
Deputy Brad Ware testified Garren told him later that night, while they were searching on foot for Grant, that he had deliberately struck Grant. Ware said he notified his supervisor about Garren’s comments, noting he “had some concern about it.”
video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hOHNUX2cqk
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