Each time a police officer uses deadly force, wounding or killing a civilian, prosecutors gather facts and grand jurors weigh whether the actions may have been criminal, rarely returning indictments. Even less common, according to a Houston Chronicle review, are cases where an officer is convicted.
Last week’s indictment of Bellaire Police Sgt. Jeff Cotton, a white officer who shot a black man in his own driveway in an incident that raised allegations of racial profiling, marks the first time in more than three years that an officer in Harris County has been charged in such a shooting, the Chronicle found in a review of police prosecutions. In recent years, local officers have shot an average of 32 people.
Such incidents, ranging from a drunken off-duty officer’s 1989 shooting of Ida Lee Delaney in a traffic spat to the 2003 gunning down of two unarmed teens, have ignited community outrage. But, lawyers say, prosecutors in cases against those sworn to protect and serve have an uphill battle.
Only once in more than a decade has a Harris County jury found an officer criminally responsible for injuring or killing a citizen with a weapon.
The law is forgiving, lawyers said, and an officer can justify his use of deadly force by claiming he perceived grave peril to himself or others.
“Jurors will give police officers more credit because they put themselves in harm’s way to help others,” said Joe Owmby, who until December headed the police integrity division of the District Attorney’s Office and investigated numerous officers. “Jurors will bend over backward to hear it from the (officer’s) point of view, but if it appears an officer did not do what he was supposed to, they are more skeptical.”
Deadly force cases are emotionally charged, observed South Texas College of Law’s Geoffrey Corn. “These are hard cases,” he said. “I have a visceral reaction to those who say these cases aren’t fair, that juries don’t convict enough. … When we start saying that juries are incapable of trying this type of case or that, we kind of gut our concepts of justice. Juries are not always right, but if the process is fair, the outcome is respectable.”
Case in 2007 typical
Typical of many cases was Harris County’s most recent deadly force prosecution, that of two Pasadena policemen accused of killing Pedro Gonzales Jr. in July 2007.
Gonzales suffered eight broken ribs and a punctured lung as officers Jason Buckaloo and Christopher Jones used force to arrest him. They were indicted on charges of criminally negligent homicide.
Testimony in their trial revealed Gonzales was not intoxicated at the time of his arrest, as the officers suspected, but may have been suffering severe alcohol withdrawal.
Jurors acquitted the officers, who returned to work.
Owmby, who prosecuted the case, said jurors’ perceptions of Gonzales, a chronic alcoholic who often slept on the street, affected the outcome.
“The problem we had was that Mr. Gonzales was so ill, the jury just did not want to blame the police officers for what happened,” he said.
The only recent conviction of an officer in a fatal shooting came in a case with a sympathetic victim: a 14-year-old boy who had been playing video games minutes before an officer killed him.
On Nov. 21, 2003, Houston Police officer Arthur Carbonneau approached a group of youths, looking for two teens who had assaulted a 10-year-old boy. Eli Eloy Escobar, who had not been involved in the assault, tried to leave. Carbonneau detained him. During the scuffle, Carbonneau’s firearm discharged.
A grand jury indicted Carbonneau on a murder charge and he was convicted of criminally negligent homicide — the lightest conviction option — and got 10 years’ probation. The judge required him to serve 60 days in jail.
Owmby, who prosecuted Carbonneau, said he sees similarities between that case and the one against Cotton, 39, who is charged with aggravated assault by a public servant.
“It appears that in both cases we had an officer who overreacted, who never slowed down to evaluate what was happening and pulled the trigger when it was not necessary,” Owmby said.
Mistake on SUV’s plates
Cotton shot 23-year-old Robert Tolan, a former Bellaire High School baseball player, just after 2 a.m. on Dec, 31. Tolan and a cousin were returning to his parents’ house after getting off work at a restaurant.
An officer ran the plates on Tolan’s SUV but pulled up the wrong information, leading him to believe it was stolen.
Several officers approached as the men exited the SUV, ordering them to the ground. At one point, Tolan raised up to protest the treatment of his mother, who had come outside. Cotton fired several times, striking Tolan once in the chest.
Cotton’s lawyer said last week that he will prove Cotton’s actions were justified.
“When we get our day in court it will come out that the indictment against him was not warranted,” said David Donahue, a spokesman for Cotton’s lawyer, Paul Aman.
The case against Cotton will be prosecuted by Clint Greenwood, who joined the District Attorney’s Office in January after District Attorney Pat Lykos asked him to head the police integrity division. Greenwood, a peace officer who defended a number of policemen in his private practice, said he anticipates the Cotton case will be “a difficult case for both sides.”
He added, “Cases where a police officer is the defendant can be extremely difficult due to conceptions by the community at large. But, it is my job to advocate on behalf of the citizens of Harris County and I will do so vigorously.”
Another case involving police that resulted in a conviction was the 20-year-old fatal shooting of Delaney, a 51-year-old janitor killed in an encounter with three off-duty Houston officers after they had been out drinking.
The officers approached Delaney after a traffic altercation. One, Alex Gonzales, in civilian clothes and wearing no badge, charged her car with pistol drawn. She fired at the officer, striking him in the belly. He fired back.
Gonzales was tried twice and eventually convicted of voluntary manslaughter, receiving the minimum penalty — two years probation and a $5,000 fine. His light treatment prompted protest.
Former City Councilwoman Ada Edwards, who participated in those protests, called the outcome a “miscarriage of justice. I was not a jury member … but this was murder.”
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