MADISON, Ala. — A lawsuit stemming from a 2015 claim of excessive force against Madison Police officer Eric Parker and the City of Madison may proceed, according to a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Their ruling affirms a lower court ruling.
According to court documents, Sureshbhai Patel was permanently partially paralyzed after an encounter with Parker in 2015. Parker and other officers responded to a call of a suspicious person in a Madison neighborhood. Police car dash cams recorded the incident between Parker and Patel, in which Patel attempted to tell the officers that he did not speak English and show them where he lived, and which ended with Parker using a leg sweep to take Patel to the ground. Patel contends that he was not resisting when Parker held his hands behind his back to frisk him. The court document notes, "[Officer] Spence later testified that when arrived on the scene before the takedown, he did not see anything that would have caused him “to lay hands on . . . Patel.”
One of the key issues in the case is whether Parker is entitled to immunity under Alabama law. In the decision, the court says that he does not:
"But the court determined that Parker was not entitled to immunity on Patel’s excessive-force claims under the Fourth Amendment because disputed issues of fact remained about whether Patel was resisting before Parker took him to the ground.
Specifically, the court found that the parties disputed three things that the video recordings could not resolve: whether Patel jerked his hands free from Parker, whether Patel’s alleged resistance prevented Parker from handcuffing Patel, and whether Parker had finished his frisk before leg sweeping Patel. And if a jury decided these questions in Patel’s favor, the district court concluded, Patel’s right to be free from the use of excessive force in this case was clearly established. For basically the same reasons the court ruled it could not grant summary judgment on Parker’s qualified-immunity claim, it denied Parker state-law immunity from Patel’s claims for assault and battery under Alabama law, since that defense was unavailable when the officer used more force than the situation warranted."
The decision lays out in great detail the history of the case, the incidents of the day, and why the case should be allowed to proceed.
View the court document here:
