Thomas MacMillan Photo
Where officer’s bullet exited Richardson’s body.
The cops lied to protect their own — and avoid responsibility for acting against orders on “primordial” “dog”-like instincts.
Or: Jewu Richardson was determined to hurt a cop and bears all the responsibility for causing a police chase that ended with a police officer firing a bullet into his chest.
A defense attorney and a state prosecutor offered those conflicting messages in closing arguments to eight jurors Tuesday afternoon.
The arguments capped an emotional 10-day trial that put an alleged cop-attacker’s actions under scrutiny — and also trained the spotlight on the police department. Anti-police brutality demonstrators, cops and prosecutors filled the courtroom’s spectator benches for the passionate two-hour presentation by defense attorney Diane Polan and state prosecutor Jack Doyle.
Now the jurors have begun deliberating about whether to convict Richardson on 10 separate criminal counts related to a seven-minute car chase that took place shortly after 7 p.m. on Jan. 16, 2010.
Richardson, stopped in the Hill neighborhood for driving with a broken headlight, fled from the cops in a cross-town chase that a supervisor tried to call off three separate times. He rammed into several cars (including a police car). In the end an officer ran up to his car, ended up on the hood, and fired a bullet into Richardson’s chest. Richardson survived the incident and was charged with, among other offenses, assaulting a cop. (Click here for an in-depth report on the case and here for a look at some of the trial action.)
The jury will almost certainly convict Richardson on some of the charges, such as evading responsibility for at least one of the car crashes and interfering with police by fleeing from them rather than stopping. Polan herself several times told the jurors her client is indeed guilty on those charges.
But she and prosecutor Doyle, addressing jurors from a lectern placed directly in front of the jury box, offered dramatically different versions of the overall incident, of the conduct of the cops — and of Richardson’s guilt on the bigger charges of assaulting and attempting to assault police.
Doyle urged the jurors to avoid “sit[ting] back and somehow blam[ing] this situation on the police … that he did anything because the police caused this … [that] the police did something wrong.”
“He was attempting to kill that police officer. He didn’t care who was in his way,” Doyle declared.
“This is a story about a lot of people who broke the rules” and of a “broken headlight [stop] that almost ended in death,” countered Polan. She said the officers involved compared notes before writing reports and then “testi-lied” — lied in their testimony — on the stand.
“That’s what police officers do,” Polan said, “to cover up misconduct.”
1 Man’s Deadly “Intent”
Doyle drew on the testimony of officers as well as several witnesses to walk the jurors through the state’s version of what happened on that fateful Saturday evening in 2010.
When an officer stopped Richardson for the broken headlight, Doyle began, Richardson knew he was driving an unregistered car with a license plate borrowed from a different car. He knew he was uninsured. And he knew he’d been drinking. (His blood alcohol level was above the legal limit.) So he decided, “I’m going to get away from the cops,” Doyle said.
The initial officer in the case chased after him until a supervisor told him to stop. Other cops found Richardson at a nearby intersection. Richardson then “smashed” into a civilian’s car in his path to get away again, Doyle said.
He intentionally rammed his car into a cop’s cruiser when the police tracked him down at another intersection, according to Doyle. He quoted Richardson’s alleged thought bubbles: “I’m not stopping for the cops. I’m going to drive through the pylons. … I’m going to drive into this police officer here. Because I’m going to get away form the police officers.”
As police followed him, Richardson rammed into a third vehicle, and was seen speeding, Doyle said. He disobeyed the orders of one officer, a rookie named Ross Van Nostrand, to stop.
“Jewu Richardson is not going to stop for anybody,” Doyle continued. “His intent is to get away. His intent is to interfere with police officers.”
Two officers boxed Richardson’s Acura in when they followed him into the Mobil gas station at Whalley and Sherman. Richardson struck one of the cruisers with his car and then spun around, Doyle alleged. “That still was not enough to stop Jewu Richardson,” who still intended to flee “if that was the last thing he was going to do.”
Officer Van Nostrand left his car and approached Richardson’s. He ordered Richardson to stop. Richardson’s thought bubble, in Doyle’s telling: “I’m going to take out that cop.” Richardson hit the gas, struck Van Nostrand in the leg, propelling Van Nostrand to the hood of the Acura, where he grabbed for life with his left arm while firing into the windshield with his right in order to try to save his life, Doyle claimed.
Key to the assault charges is Richardson’s intent. His intent from the moment of the initial stop in the Hill was to “interfere” with police, Doyle argued. He said that’s what “caused” him eventually to strike Van Nostrand, who ultimately had to shoot to defend himself.
“Primordial Instincts”
When she took her position at the lectern, Polan challenged details at every step of the chase. She cited evidence that cast doubt on the idea that Richardson was speeding; that he, rather than the officer, caused one of the collisions, and perhaps most important of all, whether Van Nostrand was propelled onto the hood of the Acura — or whether he in fact, as Polan alleged, leaped onto it in a deadly adrenaline-fueled rage. She noted that police destroyed the car rather than preserving it for crucial evidence that could have resolved that question.
The larger thrust of her argument: Police repeatedly violated the department’s ban on chases except in the cases of a felony that involves a threat to people’s safety. Not only did they violate it by starting to chase three times; they disobeyed three separate orders from their supervisor, Sgt. Doug Harkins, to call it off. (Click here to read more about that, including a memo Harkins wrote blasting the officers’ actions.)
The cops’ actions “escalated” a routine traffic stop into a potentially deadly encounter, she argued.
“Who broke the rules?” Polan repeatedly asked the jury at each step of the narrative. Sometimes it was her own client, she said. Often it was the cops as well.
She accused several officers of lying about the incident, in one case to preserve an insurance claim (the officer had originally reported not having been hurt when his cruiser collided with Richardson’s car), in another to defend Van Nostrand’s actions in running up to Richardson’s Acura, allegedly jumping on the hood, and firing the potentially fatal bullet. Richardson was unarmed and, according to Polan, in no way attempted to drive into the officer. In no way did he ever intent to hurt an officer, she argued — and in fact it was the cops who intended to hurt him, first by ramming a cruiser into his car, then through Van Nostrand’s actions.
She compared the officers’ decision to keep chasing to “a dog’s response when a cat jumps off the couch and starts running.
“The dogs are chasing the cats. They just can’t stop themselves. … The public is put at risk.”
“Police officers are not supposed to act on primordial instincts. They’re supposed to obey the rules. They’re supposed to obey direct orders,” Polan argued.
Their actions pumped up their adrenaline and led to “Rambo” tactics, she argued. By the time Officer Van Nostrand leaped onto the hood of the Acura, she told the jury, he felt like “Superman” — and felt the need to shoot to resolve a situation he and his fellow officers created.
“A young officer on the force five or six months, he was terrified for his life, I am sure. He was also pumping adrenaline,” she said. “And he’s probably not the best reporter of what happened in those 10 seconds.”
Deliberations resume Wednesday.