Legal News

Fatal Police Shooting Lawsuit Seeks A Fistful of Dollars

By Matthew Heller, Editor

A photo of Clint Eastwood's ?Man With No Name? character is part of the evidence in a wrongful death lawsuit against a Louisiana police officer, with the victim's family saying it shows the officer's ?trigger-happy? emotional state.

Gerald Rice, 54, was shot to death Jan. 27, 2010 in his Walker, La., home after Livingston Parish sheriff's deputies responded to a report that he had a gun and was suicidal. Police said he made threatening movements with the gun before one of the deputies shot him.

In the ?Dirty Harry? movies, Eastwood played the iconic Harry Callahan, a vigilante cop who memorably growls ?Go ahead, make my day? in daring a crook to shoot a hostage. But Rice's family says Deputy Joel Arnold ? whom it names as his killer ? was inspired by the enigmatic gunfighter of Eastwood's spaghetti westerns.

The family's wrongful death suit includes a screen shot from Arnold's MySpace page that shows a picture of the ?Man With No Name? above the caption, ?How I feel most of the time!!!!?

At the time Arnold shot Rice, the complaint says, he identified with ?a nameless, amoral, gunslinger.? The suit also says that in June 2009 ? a few months before the shooting ? Arnold ?battered, brutalized, falsely arrested, and maliciously prosecuted? Frank Livermore, a 70-year-old cancer patient.

?Rice was shot and killed not by all five deputies on the scene, but by the one deputy with a documented history of unprovoked violence and with the emotional state ? 'most of the time!!!!' ? of a trigger-happy anti-hero of 1960s cinema,? the family alleges.

According to the police version, Arnold and other deputies were called to Rice's home by a person who reported that he had taken pills, put a gun to his head and threatened to kill himself. Shortly after the officers arrived on the scene, Rice fired a shot from within a truck parked inside the carport, a spokesman told the Baton Rouge Advocate.

The deputy who shot Rice had given him several orders to put down the 9 mm handgun he was holding, the spokesman said.

The family tells a different story. Rice never pointed his gun at Arnold or any of the other deputies, the suit says, and he was walking toward the kitchen to get a beer when ?Arnold fired four shots from his 40 caliber Glock pistol, hitting Rice three times in the chest.?

Excessive force is generally beyond what a reasonable and prudent law enforcement officer would use under the circumstances. ?[T]o the extent the use of force was justified at all in this case ?  which is denied ? Arnold acted unreasonably, negligently, maliciously, and recklessly, in killing Rice without ever attempting to use any non-lethal methods of restraint or incapacitation,? the Rice family argues.

But whether the family can draw a meaningful connection between the shooting and Arnold's MySpace page isn't clear. The photo does not show Eastwood holding a gun and the caption is ambiguous to say the least ? perhaps Arnold identifies more with the character's sullen expression than his gunfighting exploits.

A photo of a snarling Dirty Harry above a similar caption would have made a stronger case for the plaintiffs.

Livermore has filed his own excessive force complaint against Arnold. His lawyer also represents the Rice family.

By Matthew Heller
On Point

Full post as published by On Point News on January 31, 2011 (boomark / email).