In what A. Dwight Pettit, the lawyer for the family of a U.S. Marine veteran shot dead last year by off-duty Baltimore Police Officer Gahiji Tshamba, calls "a very significant victory," a federal judge yesterday ruled that Baltimore City, the Baltimore Police Department (BPD), and city and police officials will remain as defendants in a multi-million civil-rights lawsuit over the killing. The surviving family members of the Marine, Tyrone Brown, initially brought the suit as a $270 million wrongful-death complaint in state court in January, Pettit explained, but the case was moved in March to federal court. Now, thanks to U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett's ruling, the case will proceed to the discovery phase, Pettit said, during which the plaintiffs will gain access to police documents and witnesses in order to establish a factual basis for their claim that city and police officials should have acted to prevent Tshamba from having his service weapon on the night of Brown's killing. Pettit added that he has yet to re-calculate the dollar amount of damages sought, in light of Bennett's ruling, which dismissed the state wrongful-death charges. "The city and the Police Department usually get out of these lawsuits on a sort of immunity," Pettit said. "Usually all of them are out, but, in this case, all are in, and now will be subject to discovery as to policies and procedures" in place that may have helped prevent Brown's killing. Bennett's ruling doesn't mince words. Brown's surviving family members "have asserted sufficient claims to establish a 'deliberate indifference' on the part of BPD," Bennett wrote, and they "claim that Officer Tshamba unlawfully shot a person on two separate occasions prior to shooting Brown, and that on one of these occasions Officer Tshamba was intoxicated," yet "BPD continued to provide Officer Tshamba with a service weapon, despite [his] apparent history of misconduct." BPD Detective Kevin Brown, a police spokesperson, declined to make a statement about the ruling, saying, "We don't comment on pending litigation." Ryan O'Doherty, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's spokesperson, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. The killing occurred in June 2010, behind Eden's Lounge in Mount Vernon. Tshamba was charged with murder, but in June, Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Edward Hargadon found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter and a handgun violation. His sentencing is scheduled for August. Tshamba's attorney in that case, James Rhodes, vowed to appeal the convictions, but online court records do not reflect that an appeal has been filed. Rhodes did not immediately return a phone call asking about the status of the promised appeal.
