WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court has dismissed the lawsuit filed by the family of a District man who died, cuffed and face down on the floor of the Prince George’s Hospital Center, while in police custody in 1995.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that there was not sufficient negligence on the part of officers from the Prince George’s Sheriff’s Department and the Mount Rainier and Cottage City police departments for the suit by Gene A. Young Jr.’s family to stand.
A three-judge panel of the court also upheld a ruling by the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt that said the officers enjoy statutory immunity.
“We’re happy that the court agreed with us,” said Frank Mann, a special assistant Maryland attorney general who handled the case. “This is what we asked for. It’s unfortunate that Mr. Young died. He needed medical attention and they tried to get him medical attention.”
Young’s family and their lawyer declined to comment on the case Thursday.
The suit began after police were called to a disturbance in Mount Rainier on May 3, 1995, and arrived to find Young lying in the road yelling “get it off me,” according to court documents.
When sheriff’s department Sgt. Raymond Bunner and Mount Rainier Police Sgt. Jody Shegan tried to take Young to the hospital for an emergency psychiatric evaluation, he resisted. The officers said they were forced to use pepper spray to subdue him.
Young was handcuffed, his legs were shackled and he was placed face down in the back of Cottage City Police Officer Robert Szabo’s cruiser and taken to the Prince George’s Hospital Center. A nurse who later noticed Young lying face down on the floor of the emergency room could not detect a pulse and could not revive Young.
Court documents say that the autopsy found phencyclidine (PCP) in Young’s system and indicated that the cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia, a change in the rhythm of the heart.
Young’s parents, Phyllis and Gene A. Young Sr., sued, charging wrongful death, negligence, and violations of their son’s constitutional rights.
The suit claimed that their son’s death was the result of his being face down in the police car and in the hospital, which, with pepper spray and PCP, combined to cause “positional asphyxiation” when his airways swelled closed.
The district court dismissed the portions of the case against Bunner and the police departments and suggested that the case would be dismissed against Shegan. The family then filed an amended complaint that named the departments — but did not specifically mention the officers — but that was thrown out, too.
The family challenged those dismissals. But the appeals court agreed with the lower court and said that Bunner was immune from the suit under state law, and the actions of the individual officers and the police departments were not of sufficient “deliberate indifference” or negligence.
The officers did not know that Young was under the influence of PCP, and they were not aware that he was in distress, the court found.
The panel’s ruling could be appealed to the full 4th Circuit or petitioned to the Supreme Court. The family’s attorney would not comment on a possible next step.
Bunner, reached at the sheriff’s office, was surprised to know that the case was still active.
“To tell you the truth, I thought it was dead,” he said. Bunner and a sheriff’s spokesman referred all questions to the attorney general’s office.
Officials with the Mount Rainier and Cottage City police departments were not available for comment Thursday.