By Gregory Korte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The family of Michael Carpenter, the Northside man shot and killed by police in a 1999 traffic stop, may finally have their day in court.

A federal judge threw out Cincinnati's last arguments against a trial in the wrongful death case Friday, clearing the last and biggest hurdle to a May 19 trial date.

Carpenter

McCurley

Miller

U.S. District Judge Susan J. Dlott said a jury should decide whether officers Michael B. Miller II and Brent McCurley violated Carpenter's civil rights the night he died.

In doing so, the judge suggested that the Carpenters have a strong case against the city.

In a lengthy footnote, for example, Dlott said that even if everything the officers said was true, a jury could find that they violated Carpenter's civil rights.

The officers maintain that Carpenter had veered forward, and then put the car in reverse in an attempt to run them over. They also say he reached under the passenger seat and was clenching an object that could have been a gun.

The judge said the plaintiffs have poked enough holes in the officers' accounts to let a jury decide those issues. The van in front of the car showed no signs of being rear-ended, as the officers claimed, and homicide investigators found the car still in forward gear, she noted.

INFOGRAPHIC

Police account of shooting

And given that Carpenter turned out to be unarmed, it's questionable whether he really made any threatening moves, Dlott said.

"Taking the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, Officer McCurley shot Mr. Carpenter with no more justification than Mr. Carpenter's commission of minor misdemeanors," she said. "Undoubtedly, this would be a violation of Mr. Carpenter's Fourth Amendment right to be free of excessive force."

The Carpenter family's lawyer, Kenneth L. Lawson, said Dlott's ruling against the city's attempt to have the case dismissed without a trial was a huge step forward.

"The motion for summary judgment is the biggest obstacle next to the trial," he said. "There are hundreds of motions filed in a civil case, and this is the most important one."

He said he now hopes the city will offer a settlement to spare the family the burden of a trial.

Cincinnati Solicitor J. Rita McNeil was in court Friday and could not be reached for comment. An assistant solicitor said she would let the ruling speak for itself.

But previous city lawyers maintained that it would be irresponsible to settle a case before trying all the city's legal defenses. The strongest defense, the lawyers believed, was the doctrine of "sovereign immunity." It holds that agents of the government cannot be sued unless they act "recklessly."

"Officer Miller reached into a running car to grab an unarmed, nonviolent misdemeanor suspect, without checking to see if the car was in park. Surely, a jury could conclude that such actions created an unreasonable risk of harm," Dlott wrote.

Carpenter's case was the first of three high-profile police death cases now in federal court. The families of Roger Owensby Jr., apparently asphyxiated in the back of a cruiser in Roselawn, and Timothy D. Thomas, shot while fleeing police in Over-the-Rhine, also have wrongful death suits pending.

Carpenter's case is different because, his family says, he was neither fleeing nor struggling with police when he was shot.

"A lot of people may have forgotten the Michael Carpenter case. I have not," Lawson said. "That, to me, may be the strongest police shooting case of that last 10 years in Cincinnati."

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com

Enquirer.com archive:
Aug. 11, 1999: Police review: Carpenter shooting justified