A Sacramento federal judge Monday approved a settlement that calls for the family of a man who was shot and killed by a police officer nearly three years ago to collect $2.2 million from the city of Manteca.
“The final shots were fired after (Duenez) had fallen to the ground,” according to an order on cross-motions for summary judgment that U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton issued in December.
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Karlton ruled there were a number of factual issues that a jury would have to decide.
“The court finds that there is a genuine dispute about exactly what the video depicts,” Karlton wrote in his 56-page order on the summary judgment motions. “Defendants say it depicts (Duenez) with a knife, plaintiffs say it depicts (him) with ... tweezers. The video is not fine enough to resolve that dispute.
“Defendants say (Duenez) kept reaching as if for a weapon, plaintiffs say (his) body was simply responding to being shot,” the judge wrote. “The video does not resolve that dispute. Those are among the main facts that must be resolved to determine whether the shooting was a justified response to a dangerous parolee trying to throw a knife at a police officer, or the unjustified police killing of an unarmed man just trying to get out of a pickup truck.”
That order was filed on Dec. 23. Moody filed an interlocutory appeal – that is, an appeal filed before a case has been resolved in the trial court. The appeal was based upon the judge’s rejection of the officer’s assertion that he must be given qualified immunity because his actions were “objectively reasonable.”
Karlton found the appeal to be “frivolous” and refused to wait for it to run its course at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The judge confirmed an April 15 trial date.
However, in a conference presided over by U.S. Magistrate Judge Dale A. Drozd on Feb. 27, the parties agreed on a settlement, approved by Karlton, which included the $2.2 million payment.