Alexander Landau,
pictured in May 2011, said he is disappointed but not defeated by a Justice
Department decision that three Denver police officers who beat him in 2009
won't be charged with civil-rights violations. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)
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Alexander
Landau was shocked that the Justice Department opted not to charge three Denver
police officers with civil-rights violations in his 2009 beating case. But
Friday's news didn't surprise experts at all.
Taking
police officers to court is a tough call for prosecutors, who must prove
charges beyond a reasonable doubt in the face of politics, polarized
perceptions of police and evidence that different people view differently.
Proving
officers violated someone's civil rights is even more challenging because
"they have to show not just overreaching and callousness, but did they
mean to deprive someone of their civil rights?" said Eugene O'Donnell, a
former police officer and prosecutor who is now a professor at the John Jay
College of Criminal Justice in New York.
"People
will be viscerally outraged, but prosecutors learn and know that the visceral
outrage often will not see them through to a guilty verdict," O'Donnell
said.
With
the Justice Department's decision not to prosecute — and having already reached
a $795,000 settlement with the city in a federal lawsuit — Landau and his
supporters said Saturday that Manager of Public Safety Alex Martinez's pending
discipline decision is essentially their last hope that the officers will be
punished.
Landau's
lawsuit said that Cpl. Randy Murr and Officers Ricky Nixon and Tiffany
Middleton tried to cover up the Jan. 19, 2009, beating that left him scarred
and suffering neurological damage. He said the officers hit him with their
fists, flashlights and a radio and called him a racial epithet during the
incident that started as a traffic stop.
Police,
however, said Landau had reached for Middleton's gun.
The
Police Department's internal-affairs bureau has completed its own investigation
into the allegations, but leaders were awaiting the results of the Justice
Department's probe before making a discipline decision.
Martinez
said after a previously scheduled community meeting Saturday that he hoped to
obtain information from the federal agency about its investigation "that
may or may not add to the view we currently have of the situation."
He
would not elaborate or offer a time for when he might issue his order.
Mu
Son Chi, racial-justice and civil-rights director for the Colorado Progressive
Coalition, said there is no reason to wait.
"These
are different processes for different purposes," he said.
Chief
Robert White declined to comment, as did Mayor Michael Hancock, who said he had
been notified of the decision but had not had a chance to read it. Both were at
the community meeting, which was not related to the Landau case.
The
Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
The
decision not to prosecute has made many in the community feel that civil
lawsuits are their only recourse when they believe police have violated their
rights, said Landau's attorney, Anna Holland Edwards.
"The
public cannot rely on government prosecutors or internal audits to end these
types of government abuses," she wrote in an e-mail Saturday.
"Citizens must continue to demand that their elected representatives act
and take their cases to court where juries can decide whether this kind of
conduct is acceptable."
Cases
against on-duty officers are easier to prove in civil court, where the
standards of proof are lower, said Karen Steinhauser, former chief deputy
district attorney in Denver who now has a criminal-defense practice.
"Police
cases are just difficult to prove," she said. "Though jurors are
instructed to look at every witness the same, we tend to look at law
enforcement officers as being just that: officers who enforce the law and not
break it. There's still a tendency of most people to look at officers and say,
'I can't believe they would do something like that.' It's the intangible that
comes into play as far as proving these cases."
Sometimes
the only witnesses are other officers, who are reluctant to testify against
their own. And while evidence alone should determine whether charges are filed,
O'Donnell said cases also rise and fall on a victim's credibility, officers'
disciplinary records, politics, police-community relations and even a
prosecutor's personality.
"No
matter what they want to do, they have to say, 'Can this case be proven?' And
most of the time, it's not proving the use of force," O'Donnell said.
"It's disproving the cops' claim that it was legitimate. ... Proof beyond
a reasonable doubt looks like an awfully big mountain to climb."
Landau,
meanwhile, said he is disappointed but not defeated. He said he will continue
to encourage others to come forward if they feel they have been wronged by
police.
"There's
got to be a way to make (the department) take these cases more seriously,"
he said
