Miami-Dade police facing excessive force, wrongful death accusations

A federal appeals court said Miami-Dade County police officers can face excessive-force and wrongful-death allegations in a lawsuit stemming from the 2014 death of a man who was tased and kicked after leading officers on a chase.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday overturned a district judge’s ruling that granted summary judgment to six officers in a civil lawsuit filed by the mother of Maykel Barrera. The panel said Barrera’s mother, Maria Acosta, can pursue wrongful-death claims against the six officers and excessive-force claims against five.

“To be sure, no single piece of evidence alone proves that the officers’ tases and kicks caused Barrera’s death. But when considered together, the evidence indicates ‘that reasonable and fairminded persons in the exercise of impartial judgment might reach different conclusions,’” Judge Kevin Newsom wrote, partially quoting a legal precedent.

Barrera’s death came after a chain of events that started when he showed up at his girlfriend’s apartment on Feb. 27, 2014, acting “paranoid” and “restless,” Thursday’s opinion said.

Barrera left the apartment, and his mother later called 911 because she feared he was “high on drugs.” Barrera returned to the apartment and, after a confrontation, his girlfriend called 911.

Three police officers responded and, after what Thursday’s opinion described as a “tumultuous exchange,” Barrera slammed the door and fled out the back of the residence. The officers chased Barrera and called for backup help.

Officers ultimately caught Barrera, and a witness testified that they couldn’t immediately handcuff him and that he knocked one officer down. Officers got Barrera on the ground by tasing him, with one officer holding him in a chokehold, the opinion said.

The witness said Barrera stopped resisting when he was on the ground. Two witnesses said officers kicked and tased Barrera. He later died at a hospital, and doctors said he was bruised and had brain injuries, the opinion said.

Newsom, who was joined by Judges Robin Rosenbaum and Robert Luck, wrote that an expert witness for the officers said “drugs in Barrera’s system and his ‘extreme exertion and resistance’ made his abnormally enlarged heart more volatile and that this ‘combination of events’ more likely than not caused his death. From that evidence, the district court reasoned that Barrera’s death wasn’t caused by a taser or any other force-related injuries. But we agree with Acosta that a jury could reasonably conclude that the officers’ expert’s reference to Barrera’s ‘extreme exertion and resistance’ was attributable to both the officers’ tases and kicks and to his own struggling.”