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Three Springfield police officers face a federal
trial on claims that they used excessive force in the 2002 death of a
mentally ill man. In a Jan. 10 opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
7th Circuit denied the city of Springfield’s motion for summary
judgment in a case based on qualified immunity, clearing the way for
plaintiff Mary Sallenger, mother of the late Andrew Sallenger, to proceed
with her case against SPD Officers Brian Oakes and Jason Oliver and retired
Sgt. James Zimmerman. In April 2002, family members had called 911,
saying that Andrew was “schizophrenic bipolar manic-depressive”
and asking for paramedics. Instead, only SPD officers were dispatched. They
found 35-year-old Andrew sitting in his bedroom, naked and muttering. When
they tried to arrest him for disorderly conduct, Andrew resisted, and the
officers used pepper spray, punches, flashlight blows, handcuffs, and a
hobble to subdue him. At some point, they noticed that Andrew was no longer
breathing. He died a day later, never having regained consciousness [see
Dusty Rhodes, “Why Andy won’t die,” March 13, 2003]. The Sangamon County coroner concluded that
Andrew’s death was caused by “agitated delirium” and
other natural causes. However, an expert hired by the Sallenger family
argued that the fact that the officers left Andrew lying on his chest while
hobbled resulted in “positional asphyxiation.”
The appeals court, bound to view the facts in the
light most favorable to the plaintiff, found that “a reasonable
officer would have known that administering closed-fist punches and
flashlight blows, including ones to the head, after the arrestee was
handcuffed, and continuing to strike him after he had stopped resisting
arrest and failing to place him in the proper position after hobbling him
violated the individual’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from
excessive force.”.
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Jan 11-17, 2007.
