Six West Memphis officers’ immunity denied in lawsuit

A federal appeals court has ruled that six West Memphis police officers involved in a 2004 pursuit that ended with two people fatally shot are not immune from a civil lawsuit filed by relatives of those killed.

Judge Eric Clay of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati agreed Wednesday with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee’s earlier ruling that a lawsuit filed by the relatives of Donald Rickard and Kelly Anne Allen can proceed.

Clay denied the officers’ claim that they received qualified immunity from such legal action because they were acting in public duty.

Clay wrote that the courtfound that facts “did not support the finding that a reasonable officer would have considered Rickard’s continued flight a clear risk to others.

“The doctrine would not offer an officer protection for liability for an injury to the subject of the pursuit whose civil rights were allegedly infringed by that officer,” Clay wrote in his decision. “The doctrine has no application here.”

West Memphis police officer Joseph Forthman stopped Rickard, 38, and Allen, 44, both of Memphis, on July 15, 2004, after Forthman saw a broken headlight in Rickard’s Honda Accord. Rickard stopped on Southland Drive in West Memphis, but then fled east on Interstate 40, crossing the Mississippi River and heading into Memphis.

Forthman and five other officers pursued Rickard into Memphis. Police said Rickard lost control of his car and then attempted to run over officers as they approached him. Sgt. Vance Plumhoff and officers John Gardner and Troy Galtelli fired at Rickard, who crashed his vehicle through a brick wall and into a house at Jackson Avenue and Manassas Street in Memphis.

A coroner’s report ruled that Rickard and Allen had been shot in the head.

Tennessee prosecutors charged Gardner and Galtelli with reckless homicide, but later dismissed the charges after they met certain probationlike requirements.

Plumhoff, Gardner, Galtelli, Forthman, officer Jimmy Evans and officer Lance Ellis were named in the lawsuit.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 14 on 11/16/2012

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