Police Taser Incident Settled For $850,000
By Pru Sowers
A little more than a year after the Key West Police Department settled the Charles Eimers wrongful death case for $900,000, the city has agreed to pay another large settlement in an unrelated case involving a police officer’s use of a Taser that left a man with permanent brain damage.
The Key West City Commission unanimously approved a $850,000 payment to settle a civil suit filed against the city by the family of Matthew Murphy, who has been hospitalized since the April 16, 2011 incident. According to Michael Burke, the city’s outside litigator, Murphy became involved in a fight with another man who had made “racially derogatory statements” against Murphy’s finance, who is Haitian American. When police officers responded to the scene, Officer Mark Siracuse observed Murphy hit Jason Moffet in the face with a closed fist. Siracuse then drew his Taser and shot two dart-like probes into Murphy. He suffered a head injury when he fell and was transported immediately to a hospital.
“Murphy sustained a traumatic brain injury and as a result is unable to breath on his own, eat on his own or move his arms or legs,” Burke told commissioners in a memo recommending they approve the settlement.
Murphy’s family has charged Siracuse used unnecessary force during the Taser response. Siracuse was cleared of any wrongdoing by the Key West Police Department and the state Attorney General’s office.
Burke told commissioners he believed that Siracuse acted appropriately and would be cleared by a jury if the case went to court. However, if the city turned down the settlement, went to trial and ultimately lost, taxpayers would have to pay for any settlement recommended by the jury. By settling out of court, the city’s insurance company will pay the entire $850,000 cost.
“It’s a business decision. We stand firm that Officer Siracuse used reasonable force in the encounter with Mr. Murphy,” said Key West Police Chief Donie Lee, adding that Murphy’s head injury was a “sad, unfortunate situation.”
“Yes, this is unfortunate,” said Commissioner Margaret Romeo about Murphy’s permanent brain damage. “But I also don’t want our police officers to hesitate using it [Taser] or pulling it out when necessary.”
Burke said Murphy will require 24-hour intensive care for the rest of his life costing an estimated $18 million to $26 million.
“If we rejected [the $850,000] settlement and then we go to trial and it comes in $20 million or $10 million, we have to pay it all,” said Commissioner Richard Payne, a retired judge. “We should not expose the city to a large verdict that we would have to pay. This is the proper way to handle this case.”
In January 2014, city commissioners agreed to a $900,000 settlement to the family of Charles Eimers in return for dropping a civil lawsuit against 13 police officers accused by the family of contributing to Eimers’ death during an arrest in 2013. Despite being cleared by four separate law enforcement agencies investigating the death, the city’s insurance company decided instead to settle out of court.
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Pru, Naja Girard told me the settlement was for $1,000,000, $150,000 was for Murphy’s son, the rest for Murphy. Martha Huggins told me yesterday that she talked with City Finance Director Mark Finigan about Key West’s liability insurance coverage, did the rates go up after the Charles Eimers case? How about after the Murphy Case? She said Finegan said maybe the city is going to start self-insuring itself. She told me, she wondered if the city now is already doing that? I said I could not imagine the city’s insurance carrier sticking around after it paid out for the Charles Eimers case, knowing the city was not going to clean up its police department. Then came the Murphy settlement, even higher, right at the policy limits. I told Martha, if an insurance carrier does not take an offer to settle for the policy limits, then if a money damage award is higher, the insurance company has to pay for it, even if it’s, say, $10,000,000. There seems little doubt, from the hard evidence, that Officer Siracuse tasered Murphy from behind, without any warning. The plaintiff lawyer had that evidence; the jury would see that evidence, and that Siracuse said he was in front of Murphy and warned him to stand down, and Murphy tried to hit Moffet again and Siracuse tasered Murphy, whose head struck the sidewalk when he fell. My own “investigative corps”, some human, some angelic, told me, Murphy, who was white, and his wife, who were black, were accompanied by 2 black male friends, and when the awful racist slurs were spoken to Murphy and his black girlfriend by a white woman with her pet pit bull, with her white boyfriend beside her. and Murphy went after the white boyfriend, who tried to talk Murphy into letting it go, his girlfriend was drunk, then Murphy punched him – Jason Moffet. That incited Siracuse to taser Murphy from behind. In all ways, my “investigative team” found, this was a racially prejudiced incident. The irony, before going to Duval Street to party late that night, Murphy told his girlfriend he thought he would have trouble on Duval Street, if he went there. He went anyway, and when the premonition showed up in human form, he chose to fight, instead o walk away, and the catastrophe happened. Duval Street is a very dangerous place late at night, due to high incidence of booze and other narcotics consumption. That, too, and the racial prejudice, I imagine the plaintiff lawyer was going to prove to the jury. I can’t imagine the city commission wanted a blow by blow report of that trial appearing in the local newspapers, which Naja’s Key West the Newspaper newspaper would have taken center state, having discovered and broken the Murphy case, after the KWPD had tried to hide it, including making Murphy out to be a fugitive from the law.