Summary Judgment

Robert (Robbie) Tolan was a minor league baseball player and the son of Hall of Fame baseball player Bobby Tolan who played for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds. As a young man Robbie's dream was to follow in his father's footsteps and play major league baseball, but all of that changed on December 31, 2008 in the driveway of his parent's home in the predominantly white city of Bellaie, Texas.

Robbie and his cousin, Anthony Cooper, had made a late night trip to Jack in the Box on New Years Eve and on their return home  pulled into his family's driveway, when a policeman emerged from the darkness with his gun drawn and shinning a flashlight in their eyes.

The police officer yelled stop before ever announcing his status. After ordering the two young men to get down on the ground, the parent's came outside to see what the ruckus was all about. As this incident continued Police Officer Jeffery Cotton arrived on the scene as backup to the original arresting officer.

Family members and other witnesses state that an altercation
ensued when Officer Cotton threw Robbie's mother against the garage door for complaining too much and aggressively while questioning the police officers as to why her son and nephew were laying on the ground with his gun pointed at them.

Robbie got up from the ground and moved towards the Policeman. Officer Cotton  turned and fired three shots at Robbie with one  shot entering Robbie's chest that sent the bullet through his lung and settling into his liver and threatened his life.

Of course the Officer stated that he feared for his life because he thought that Robbie had a gun. He then searched Tolan and found that he did not have a weapon. The Bellaire Police Department placed Officer Cotton on administrative leave while rejecting that this incident had anything to do with racial profiling and called the shooting of this young man, in his driveway, "tragic".

The Harris County district attorney's office pressed charges against Officer Jeffery Cotton for aggravated assault by a public servant. The case included discussions of racial profiling and lesser charges
ranging from Assault to Deadly Conduct to Reckless Endangerment. The jury which consisted of two Black women and the rest, white men found Officer Cotton "not guilty" of any wrong doing.

The Tolan family filed a civil lawsuit against Jeffrey Cotton and the City of Bellaire, Texas. The federal civil case was initially dismissed by the District Court based on "Qualified Immunity". It was then appealed to the full 5th Circuit Court who also upheld the ruling from the previous court.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals did revise their original decision slightly, vacating a small portion of the District Court's decision, and remanded the case back to the District Court for further review.
The District Court's review resulted in the same decision and now the Tolan's case has gone to the U.S. Supreme Court and is being hailed as a victory by some who think that the shooting was racially motivated but as a simple procedural mistake by others.
 
Last week, and 7 years later, the Justices of the Supreme Court ordered the 5th U.S. District Court of Appeals to reconsider a lawsuit by Robbie Tolan, now 28 years old. Due to the earlier dismissals of the charges against Officer Cotton, the Tolan family was ordered to pay $ 7,000 in legal fees for him and the city.

"The case will probably go back to trial in 2 years and the Tolan's may lose but it will still be a victory because the summary judgments by the lower courts represented such one-sided deference to the police claims" says Rogers Smith, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "It was clear the police had made a mistake in thinking that the car was stolen and ended up shooting an innocent young Black man."

Sidebar:  A summary judgment is a judgment entered by a court for one party against another party summarily, i.e., without a trial. Such a judgment may be issued on the merits of the case or on discrete issues of the that case. In Layman's terms this simple means that a summary judgment is made to prevent people from suing the police department and the city.
Furthermore, the case can be reviewed as the court deems necessary.

Maybe young Robbie Tolan will be compensated for having to live with a policeman's bullet lodged in his liver for the rest of his life.

AND TO THINK THAT ALL OF THIS OCCURRED WHEN A POLICE OFFICER. JEFFREY COTTON, THOUGHT THAT ROBBIE WAS DRIVING A STOLEN CAR BECAUSE HE WROTE DOWN AND RAN AN INCORRECT LICENSE PLATE NUMBER.

Respond privately to Mad Man at: Observationsofamadman@verizon.net

Mad Man