ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A jury has awarded $50,000 to a Northern Virginia landlord who was shot three times with a stun gun when sheriff’s deputies mistakenly arrested him following a tenant complaint.
Matthew Souter, 57, of The Plains, Virginia, was arrested at his home in November 2018 after a tenant in his 19th-century farmhouse claimed he had violated a protective order she had obtained a day earlier. .
Before the trial began Tuesday in federal court, a judge ruled that the three Fauquier County sheriff’s deputies who arrested Souter violated his constitutional rights.
The tenant claimed that Souter violated the protective order by shutting off his utilities, which Souter denied. But even if he had shut off the power, Judge TS Ellis III said the protective order’s plain language simply prohibited Souter from committing violence against the tenant, and shutting off utilities would not qualify as a violation.
As a result, this week’s jury trial focused solely on the question of what damages, if any, Souter should be awarded.
The jury decided Thursday night to award a total of $50,000 in compensatory damages and no punitive damages.
The officers had argued that they should be exempted from liability; They pointed out that it was a magistrate who effectively issued the arrest warrant, although at the request of one of the deputies. And they said they were entitled to qualified immunity, which protects law enforcement officers from a wide swath of legal liability.
However, Ellis said “qualified immunity is not for blunders” and ruled as a matter of law that deputies violated Souter’s rights.
“If you have a lot of power, you have to be careful how you wield that power,” Ellis told attorneys at the start of the trial, outside the presence of the jury. “It was a mistake that a law enforcement officer should not have made.”
Ellis also said that it is established law that, based on the rulings of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, that people have the right to resist an unlawful arrest and that any force used to make a false arrest is, By definition, excessive force.
On the question of damages, the deputies’ attorney, Alexander Francuzenko, asked jurors to consider the potential danger the officers faced while weighing whether the deputies’ actions were unreasonable. There was an alert in the system warning officers to bring backup if they were called to Souter’s home, in part because of a 2015 misdemeanor conviction for brandishing a firearm.
One of the deputies, Andrew McCauley, testified that he used his Taser three times on Souter, marking the first time in more than 10 years of service that he used it.
Souter, for his part, said the arrest and Taser shots were the most excruciating pain he has ever suffered. He said officers beat and manhandled him for about seven minutes, and jurors saw photos of his bloodied face after the arrest.
Souter also said that when the officers came to arrest him, they gave him no warning. He testified that he came out and greeted the deputies amicably. He said McCauley responded with a question about the electricity in his house and grabbed Souter’s arm before telling him he was under arrest.
McCauley, in his own testimony, agreed that’s what happened, though he said he quickly told Souter after he got his hands on him that he was under arrest.
Souter said that if the officers had explained to him that he was under arrest, he would never have resisted, even though he knew he had done nothing wrong.
“I wake up sweating,” Souter told the jury. “Now I am afraid of the police. I have lost a lot of respect for police officers because of this.”
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