Jury Selected in Escobedo trial - Ft. Wayne Police Face Criminal Charges for Killing Latino Man

From [HERE] An eight-man, four-woman jury was selected Tuesday to decide whether a handful of Fort Wayne police officers acted with excessive force in a 2005 fatal standoff with Rudy Escobedo.

Filed in late 2005 by Escobedo’s estate, the lawsuit alleges police violated Escobedo’s constitutional rights by using excessive force and causing his wrongful death. It named the police department, the city of Fort Wayne and a number of Fort Wayne police officers as defendants, including Deputy Chief Martin Bender and now-retired Deputy Chief Douglas Lucker.

According to court documents, Escobedo, a waiter at a local restaurant, was high on cocaine and armed with a handgun when he called 911 about 4:20 a.m. on July 19, 2005.

He was in his seventh-floor unit at Westberry Apartments at Fulton and Berry streets when he told dispatchers he wanted to shoot himself and wanted help, and he wrongly believed police were already inside his apartment, according to court documents.

In 2008, U.S. District Judge Theresa Springmann dismissed the wrongful death claims against the city of Fort Wayne and a few of the officers. The case remains against Bender, Lucker, Lt. Kevin Zelt, Sgt. Kevin Hunter, Sgt. Tim Selvia, and officers Scott Straub, Jason Brown and Brian Martin, in their individual capacities.

The jury now must decide whether specific officers, including command staff and members of the city’s emergency response team, used excessive force in the decision to storm Escobedo’s apartment.

After the jury was selected, attorneys for both sides presented their opening statements, laying out the evidence and testimony they plan to present.

According to attorneys for the plaintiff, both sides agree there was a breakdown in communication between Escobedo and police.

But while the police claim Escobedo was responsible for that, the plaintiffs contend it was the police who cut off communication without giving the situation enough time to play out safely, making the decision to “assault” the apartment.

But Robert Keen, one of the attorneys representing the officers, said the jury should not decide the case like a group of “Monday morning quarterbacks,” basing their decision on what is known now.

He asked the jury to consider what information the officers and command staff had at the time of the standoff, knowing Escobedo was high on cocaine and refused to put down his handgun despite hours of pleading by police negotiators.

“The reason Rudy Escobedo died that day is because he refused to put the gun down,” Keen said, asking the jury to see the situation from the officers’ points of view.

The trial is scheduled to last through next week. Jurors were pulled from Allen County and the other counties that make up the Fort Wayne division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana: Adams, Blackford, DeKalb, Grant, Huntington, Jay, LaGrange, Noble, Steuben, Wells and Whitley.