Some Officials Ruled Not Liable in LAPD Unit’s Shootings

Los Angeles City Council members, lawyers with the city attorney’s office and a number of Los Angeles police officers cannot be held liable for several controversial shootings by the LAPD’s Special Investigation Section, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned several earlier rulings by U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts.

The appeals court, however, did uphold Letts’ rulings allowing four people who had been shot by SIS officers to go forward with civil rights cases against the officers, their supervisors and Police Commission members.

On another major issue in the case, the appeals court judges said they did not currently have jurisdiction to rule on the issue of whether the police commissioners and LAPD supervisors, including the chief of police, can be held liable for failure to implement the 1991 Christopher Commission report, which recommended sweeping changes in police practices. That issue will have to be decided by a trial judge.

In an unusual move, however, the judges then offered their opinion that the Police Commission had taken steps to implement the Christopher report and thus there would no basis for commissioners or supervisors to be held liable.

At least 36 people have been killed and others seriously injured during shootings involving the SIS, which was formed in 1965.

Stephen Yagman, the Venice attorney representing the plaintiffs in the current case, has filed numerous suits against the SIS. He has tried without success to get the unit disbanded.

In one case, a jury awarded $900,000 to a man involved in a 1989 kidnapping, concluding that an SIS officer had used excessive force when he prevented the kidnapper from fleeing by running him over with his squad car. In another incident stemming from a 1990 shootout at a McDonald’s restaurant in Sunland, a jury awarded $44,000 to the lone survivor of a shootout in which three suspects died and to families of the dead men. The robbers had been armed only with pellet guns.

The current suit involves several other shootings.

It alleges that SIS officers violated the civil rights of known criminals by following them until they committed a crime. The officers passed up opportunities to prevent the crimes so they could instigate shootouts with suspects, the suit alleges.

The court emphasized that “there is no constitutional right to be arrested” at any particular time, meaning that officers did not violate the rights of suspects simply by waiting to make arrests until after a crime had been committed.

The question of whether the officers used excessive force must still go to a trial.

The most prominent incident in the case involved Robert Cunningham and Daniel J. Soly, who were shot during a 1995 gunfight with officers at a Newbury Park liquor store.

Cunningham, 36, was paralyzed from the waist down. Soly was killed. Cunningham said that the officers started the gunfight after he and Soly robbed the store. He was subsequently convicted of felony murder stemming from Soly’s death and of the attempted murder of several SIS officers. He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Yagman sued on behalf of Cunningham, Soly’s parents and Grover Smith, who was mistakenly shot by SIS officers who mistook him for a robber in a separate incident.

The suit alleged that the SIS officers violated the men’s rights in a variety of ways. It also charged City Council members with ignoring alleged police misconduct and acquiescing to questionable tactics by repeatedly agreeing to pay damage judgments against police officers found liable in civil suits.

The suit also contended that lawyers at the city attorney’s office should be held liable for recommending that the officers be indemnified.

In response, the council members and the attorneys said that they were constitutionally immune from any liability. The 9th Circuit ruling upholds that claim.

The ruling on these issues was “quite narrow,” said USC constitutional law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, noting that the decision turned on a number of highly technical legal issues. Under the ruling, council members and other senior city officials could still be held liable under different circumstances, but it would be very difficult, he said.

The decision was written by Frank J. Magill, a federal appeals court judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan who was sitting on the 9th Circuit by special assignment. His ruling was joined by 9th Circuit Judges Michael D. Hawkins and Sidney R. Thomas, both appointees of President Clinton.

The ruling overall was very critical of Judge Letts. The judge took himself off the case last year after being accused by government attorneys of prejudice against the Police Department.

One key part of the ruling dealt with the impact of a Supreme Court decision. The high court ruled in 1994 that a person who has been convicted of a crime cannot bring a civil suit based on the same incident unless the criminal conviction has been overturned. Since that decision was issued, lower federal courts have split on its breadth.

Letts had ruled that Cunningham could go ahead with his civil rights suit, even though he was convicted of attempting to kill the officers who had shot him.

The appellate judges said that for procedural reasons they could not overturn that decision at this time. But in a footnote to their ruling, they said they strongly disagreed with Letts and urged the trial judge who will now handle the case to reconsider the ruling.

If the police officers prevail on that point, it would bring the case to an end, Chemerinsky said.

All sides found something to praise in the complicated ruling.

Yagman contended that the ruling left the door open for a bevy of city officials and police supervisors to be held liable in future police litigation, including cases involving the Rampart scandal.

In contrast, Skip Miller, the Century City lawyer representing City Council members, said the ruling sets a very high burden of proof before a plaintiff could succeed in holding a City Council member liable.

Miller also stressed that the ruling had validated a number of SIS practices that have been the subject of controversy in recent years.