By Jacob Gershman | WSJ
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that four Dallas police officers can be held liable in the 2016 death of Tony Timpa, a mentally ill Dallas man who died after police knelt on his back and shoulders for more than 14 minutes in an encounter captured on body-camera footage.
A three-judge panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed last year’s ruling by a federal judge who dismissed a civil suit brought by Mr. Timpa’s family. Prosecutors earlier decided not to pursue any criminal charges.
The case on appeal emerged as the first major test of the lawfulness of such facedown prone restraints since former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd with a similar maneuver.
While Mr. Chauvin’s conviction showed that a police officer can be held criminally responsible for deaths involving prone restraints, it remained an unsettled question whether an officer can be held civilly liable for using such force.
Unless overturned on appeal, the ruling means the case can go before a jury.
Mr. Timpa’s family claimed Dallas officers asphyxiated Mr. Timpa, who had a history of mental problems and was unarmed, handcuffed and barefoot during a struggle with police. He stopped moving minutes before the officer got off him, the footage shows.
In filings, city attorneys have argued that the officer who knelt on Mr. Timpa, and others at the scene, didn’t act unreasonably. The city says the knee-on-back restraint was safe and justified by Mr. Timpa’s initial resistance.
To keep its lawsuit going, Mr. Timpa’s family had to overcome a legal hurdle known as qualified immunity, a doctrine that shields police and other government personnel from civil liability if the conduct wasn’t obviously unlawful and unreasonable.
A trio of Republican-appointed judges on the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit disagreed that the force police used against Mr. Timpa wasn’t clearly excessive, as a federal judge had earlier ruled.
While no precedent by the court precisely dealt with the same circumstances, the panel said the Fifth Circuit had clearly established the excessiveness of the continued use of force on a restrained and subdued arrestee.
“We recognize that our police officers are often asked to make split-second judgments about the use of force, but the Constitution demands that officers use no more force than necessary,” wrote Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement, who drafted the opinion.
The ruling revived the previously dismissed claims against Officer Dustin Dillard, who knelt on Mr. Timpa, and the claims against a supervisor at the scene and against two other officers who can be heard cracking jokes about Mr. Timpa after he lost consciousness.
“We are so relieved and grateful that a jury will finally get to see the evidence of how Tony Timpa died,” said MacArthur Justice Center litigator Easha Anand, who represents Mr. Timpa’s family and argued the case.
The Dallas City Attorney’s Office, which represents the Dallas officers named in the lawsuit, declined to comment.
Write to Jacob Gershman at jacob.gershman@wsj.com