Court: No Immunity For ‘So Anyway, I Started Blasting’ Cop Who Killed Someone For The Crime Of Being At Home

I’m going to quote at length from this decision because the things said by the officer who killed one person and wounded two others said so many amazing (in the pejorative sense) things while explaining and defending his actions. (h/t FourthAmendment.com)

Now, the Fifth Circuit often chooses to side with cops. That’s just the way it is. It has done it so often even the origin source of the qualified immunity doctrine — the US Supreme Court — has had to walk back some of its more egregious miscarriages of justice.

Nothing like this happens here. A cop screwed up. Unlike most people’s on-the-job miscues, it ended with one person killed and two people wounded.

Here’s the background: on October 18, 2018 Charles Roundtree (the person killed), Davante Snowden, and Taylor Singleton were all visiting Hence Williams in his San Antonio home. All three were sitting in the living room listening to music. Singleton was also looking at her phone and Snowden, according to Singleton’s testimony, was “half asleep.”

Unbeknownst to them, San Antonio police officers Steve Casanova, Alexander Garza, and James Panah were hanging out just outside the home, planning to engage in a “knock and talk” related to an alleged assault reported 15 minutes earlier. The officers had a description of the assailant, who was described by the victim as a tall, skinny black man with “no hair” who was wearing a gray sweater and blue jeans.

Armed with this information and the location the victim claimed to have seen the assailant come from, the officers approached Hence Williams’ house. Most of this event was captured by the officers’ body cams.

This is how it went down, as recounted by the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court in its decision [PDF]:

On the third knock, the door opened. The parties dispute whether Casanova pushed the door open or whether it swung open solely as a result of Casanova’s knocks. In any event, as the door swung open, Casanova’s flashlight shone directly into the house’s living room, which was illuminated by a ceiling light in the center of the room. At that point, Casanova observed Roundtree sitting on a chair (situated to Casanova’s left), whereas Snowden and Singleton sat on either end of an adjacent couch situated between Roundtree’s chair and the house’s front wall. The living room furniture on which the three sat faced the front doorway, where Casanova stood outside the closed iron door. Beyond being thin, young, black males, neither Roundtree nor Snowden matched Herrera’s description of her husband’s assailant.

Instead of identifying himself as a police officer upon knocking on the front door, or when it swung open, Casanova simply said: “What’s up, man?” At that point, seemingly not realizing that Casanova was a police officer, Snowden, allegedly attempting to see better, quickly stood and stepped toward the front door. At the same time, he exclaimed: “Hey, who the fuck is this?” Singleton remained seated on the couch but, allegedly attempting to better illuminate the area where Casanova stood, pointed the front, lighted side of her phone toward the front door.

Reasonable questions were asked by the occupants. The officer’s question was far less reasonable (even if similarly profane) because he was the intruder who chose not to identify himself.

There’s a footnote attached to this. It goes into greater detail about Officer Casanova’s inability to identify suspects based on descriptions, pass correct information about descriptions to other officers, or even to care if he was wrong about his assumptions.

Notably, Herrera told Casanova that the black man who had assaulted her husband had no hair, wore a gray sweater and blue jeans, was in his twenties (between twenty and twenty-five), and was skinny and tall. Glasses were not mentioned. Though Herrera had told Casanova that the assailant had “no hair,” Casanova later told other officers that the assailant had “short hair.” Yet, when Casanova saw Snowden sitting on the couch, he was wearing glasses, a white t-shirt, a black jacket with a hood (covering his scalp/hair), and khaki pants with zippered pockets, elasticized bottom hems, and no belt. The zipper on the right front pocket, which is black with a white pull string, was open. When the video later shows Snowden leaving the house (after the shooting), he is not wearing the black jacket because he had used it to try to stem Roundtree’s blood loss from his chest wound.

In his deposition testimony, Casanova acknowledged that Herrera’s “no hair” description meant that he should have been looking for a person with a bald head. He also was asked: “[W]hen you said that Snowden matched the description of the suspect, actually he had on totally different clothing than what she told you; correct?” Casanova responded: “Correct.

That’s ugly. And that explains the ugliness that happened once Casanova set foot in the home.

As Snowden began to walk forward and across the living room, Casanova suddenly yelled: “Let me see your fucking hands.” At almost precisely the same time, Casanova fired two shots, in quick succession, into the living room. According to Snowden, the noise of the gunshots prevented him from hearing Casanova’s command.

Upon seeing Casanova’s gun, Snowden turned right, away from Casanova, reportedly in an effort to retreat to safety in the rear of the house. But he was not quick enough. Casanova’s first bullet entered and exited Snowden’s left buttock before also grazing his right buttock. The bullet then continued past Singleton’s head (who still sat on the sofa) before becoming lodged in the wall behind her. Tragically, Casanova’s second bullet hit Roundtree squarely in the chest.

After the second shot was fired, Casanova left the house’s front doorway. Snowden, unaware that the shooter was a police officer and that other officers were outside, quickly shut the front door and followed Singleton to the kitchen where Roundtree had collapsed. The two remained there with Roundtree, futilely trying to stop his bleeding with Snowden’s jacket, until the police ordered them out of the house

There are more footnotes here. And they convey the same bleak reality: a cop entered a house and started shooting even though no one in the house matched the suspect’s description and seemingly just because he had a gun and power to use it.

The video footage, the district court concluded, shows that Snowden did not have time to comply. And in his deposition testimony, Officer Garza, another police officer on the scene, agreed that Casanova started shooting as he said “Let me see your F-ing hands.”).

There’s more:

According to Singleton and Snowden, none of the house’s occupants knew that the shooter was a police officer until they were ordered, by police loudspeaker, to come out of the house. In fact, Singleton called 911 after the shooting. Snowden testified that had he known it was a police officer at the door, he would have stayed seated on the couch because he would have known who it was and felt safer.

Still cops gotta cop. And these cops did, with Casanova taking the… um… lead by leading a retreat from the nonexistent danger, making him the Sir Robin of this particular pair of police cops.

Immediately following the shooting, Casanova and Panah “fell back to a position of cover in [] the street” with Casanova claiming that “[Snowden] had a fucking gun” and “[had] pulled it out.” As he ran away from the house, Casanova also yelled: “Shots fired! Shots fired!” though he actually was the only person to have discharged a firearm. Then Casanova and another officer went to their vehicles in order to obtain their AR rifles and put on their “bullet-proof” vests.

Yet no gun (other than those held or worn by police officers) is visible in the video footage from the cameras worn by Casanova and Panah. And no one, other than Casanova, ever claimed to have seen a gun inside the house, even after watching Casanova’s video.

The indignities and abuse didn’t end there. Officers claimed to have found a weapon in the backyard which Officer Casanova attempted to use to defend his shooting. The court here points out its not inconceivable the other two people in the house (the homeowner and his girlfriend) could have tossed it out of the bedroom window when they realized police officers were in the house. In any event, there was nothing linking it to Snowden and, due to its location in the back yard, it could not have been “observed” by the officer prior to his shooting of three people. In any event, no weapon can be seen in the body cam footage, which is linked to in the decision.

Nonetheless, the things Casanova claimed only he could see (the gun) and feel (the “immediate presence of danger”) justified his actions. Or, if it didn’t, it’s a close enough call he should be awarded immunity. The lower court disagreed. So does the Appeals Court:

[A] reasonable officer in Casanova’s position would have known, on October 17, 2018, that using deadly force in those circumstances (against the occupants of 217 Roberts Street) would violate the Fourth Amendment.

The case goes back down to the lower court to be decided by a jury. As the appeals court notes, any “reasonable” officer would have recognized these acts of violence to be unconstitutional. But as the narrative and numerous footnotes show, it would be extremely charitable to call Officer Casanova “reasonable.” He’s a loose cannon and a detriment to his department. Hopefully, this case resolves not only in favor of the plaintiffs, but with a firing of the officer for being exactly the sort of cop that makes cops look bad.