CONGRESSWOMAN SHEILA JACKSON LEE JOINS HOUSTON LAWYERS ASSOCIATION, NATIONAL BAR ASSOCIATION, NAACP HOUSTON CHAPTER, 100 BLACK MEN OF METROPOLITAN HOUSTON IN DEMANDING JUSTICE FOR ROBBIE TOLAN
Houston, TX –Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, released the following statement today at the rally and press conference organized by the Houston Lawyers Association demanding justice for Robbie Tolan, a young unarmed African American male who was shot and seriously injured by a Bellaire Police Department officer in the driveway of his home even though he had had committed no crime, and whose innocence had been affirmed to the officer by his mother and father:
"I stand today with the Houston Lawyers Association, the National Bar Association, the Houston Chapter of the NAACP, 100 Black Men of Metropolitan Houston, the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, and those everywhere who strongly support justice in demanding justice for Robbie Tolan.
"The U.S. Supreme Court's decision vacating the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judgment and remanding the case was a welcome and positive step. Now we call upon the lower courts to finish the job by giving Robbie Tolan his constitutional right to have his case heard by a jury.
"According to the FBI's most recent accounts of ‘justifiable homicide,' in the seven years between 2005 and 2012, a white police officer used deadly force against an African American person almost two times every week.
"One of the most notorious of these shootings occurred close to home. We all remember the outrageous case involving young Robbie Tolan, a promising professional baseball player, who was shot and seriously injured by a Bellaire Police Department officer while in the driveway of his home, 15 to 20 feet away from the officer, had committed no crime, and whose innocence had been affirmed to the officer by his mother and father.
"This case appears to be another strong and clear case of racial profiling in which an innocent African American male is yet again the victim of gun violence at the hands of a law enforcement officer who assumed him guilty and dangerous because of his race.
"So sure was the officer that the young, gifted, and black Robbie Tolan was guilty of some crime and dangerous that within 32 seconds of his arrival at the scene, he shot Robbie Tolan in the chest, the bullet piercing his lung, lodging in his liver, and ending Robbie Tolan's once promising prospects of becoming a major league baseball player like his father had been.
"When Robbie Tolan filed a lawsuit seeking justice against defendant pursuant to 42 U. S. C. §1983 alleging, inter alia, that the officer had used excessive force against him in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, he was met with another injustice when his case was dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Melinda Harmon on the ground that the officer acted reasonably in shooting Robbie Tolan within less than a minute of arriving on the scene. The injustice was compounded when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the lower court judgment on appeal, holding that regardless of whether the officer used excessive force, he was entitled to qualified immunity because he did not violate "any clearly established right" of Robbie Tolan.
"The U.S. Supreme Court rightly reversed that judgment, taking the extraordinary action of simultaneously granting the petition for certiorari and summarily vacating the decision and remanding the case for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.
"The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Fifth Circuit committed reversible error by violating the well-settled principle that a "'judge's function' at summary judgment is not ‘to weigh the evidence and determine the truth of the matter but to determine whether there is a genuine issue for trial.'" 572 U.S. ___, slip op. at 7, quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U. S. 242, 249 (1986). The court compounded its error by weighing the evidence not "in the light most favorable" to the non-moving party, Tolan, as required by law, id., slip op. at 7, but instead by drawing all inferences from the evidence in favor of the moving party, the officer. Id., slip op. at 8.
"The significance of the Supreme Court's decision is that the claim that the officer acted reasonably as a matter of law in shooting an unarmed man who was at least 15-20 feet away is no longer tenable and leaves little to no room for doubt that: (1) plaintiff Tolan had produced sufficient evidence of the officer's culpability to have the case decided by a jury; and (2) Robbie Tolan's evidence, if believed by a jury, would be sufficient to sustain a verdict in his Tolan's favor that his clearly established civil and constitutional rights under 42 U.S.C. §1983 and the Fourth Amendment had been violated by the officer.
"As Americans we must demand that the law is applied fairly and equally to all persons in the courtroom and on the street. And one of the first steps to take in achieving this goal is for the court to permit Robbie Tolan to have his case heard by a jury."
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Congresswoman Jackson Lee is a Democrat from Texas's 18th Congressional District. She is a senior member of the House Committees on Judiciary and Homeland Security and is Ranking Member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security