The family of a man wrongly shot and killed by a Prince George's County police officer in 2008 is challenging a state law that limits the amount of damages for which the county can be held liable. The case, which was heard by Maryland's highest court last week, is being closely watched by officials across the state who support the law because it protects local jurisdictions from potentially having to pay out millions of dollars to plaintiffs in police brutality lawsuits. But whether the law protects the interests of victims is another matter.
The case stems from an incident seven years ago when Officer Steven Jackson fatally shot 43-year-old construction worker Manuel Espina outside his Langley Park apartment after a brief scuffle. Mr. Jackson claimed Espina and four or five other men assaulted him, leading him to fear for his life. But witnesses said the encounter was provoked by the officer and that no other men were present when the fatal shot was fired.
Though prosecutors declined to bring criminal charges against Mr. Jackson, Espina's family filed a civil lawsuit against the county alleging excessive use of force. After the trial, a Prince George's County jury found Mr. Jackson acted out of malice rather than self-defense and that the county was responsible for Espina's wrongful death. It awarded his family $11.5 million in compensation for their loss.
However, the county succeeded in getting the judgment reduced on the basis of a 1988 law, the Local Government Tort Claims Act, which caps the amount of money plaintiffs can receive when they sue a government employee. The law limits monetary awards to $200,000 per claim or $500,000 for all claims connected to a single incident. As a result, the Espina family's award was reduced to $400,000, including $200,000 for Espina's death and another $200,000 for the wrongful arrest and assault of his son.
The Espina family is now challenging the reduction in compensation on the grounds that it diminishes the right of people injured by government to a "remedy" guaranteed by the Maryland constitution. The cap has been challenged and upheld several times in Maryland, most recently in 2012, when the state's intermediate appellate court, the Court of Special Appeals, rejected that argument. But civil liberties advocates say the penalties under current law aren't strong enough to deter officers from misconduct or to ensure justice for victims in police brutality cases.
That's in no small part because $200,000 is today worth only about half what it was when the law was enacted 27 years ago. Moreover, after all a plaintiff's legal expenses in the trial and appellate phases of a case are totaled up, there may be little, if anything, left to actually compensate victims and their families. As the Maryland Association of Justice argued in a brief for the plaintiff, "if the fees and expenses necessary to pursue his claim completely exceed the cap, he is left with no reasonable expectation of recovery, effectively depriving him of any remedy at all."
We leave it to the court to sort out the constitutional issues raised by the Espina case. But if the judges again choose to uphold the legality of the liability cap, lawmakers in this year's General Assembly need to consider raising the maximum compensation victims can be awarded in cases of police brutality or misconduct. The appropriate level for such awards is a difficult question that requires balancing various public interests, and that's best handled through the legislative process.
The issue is not so much whether larger jury awards would persuade the counties and Baltimore City to reform their police departments. The millions of dollars Baltimore has paid out in judgments, settlements and attorney fees in recent years as a result of police misconduct lawsuits didn't do that, but public protests related to questionable use of force by officers here and elsewhere have. Rather, the issue is that the caps are simply insufficient to fairly compensate victims of brutality, leaving them with no reasonable chance of recovering damages for the losses they suffered. That's unacceptable as a matter of both law and equity, and Maryland must move to change it.