A federal judge has partially sided with the family of a Black man who was fatally shot by a now-imprisoned white Kansas City, Missouri, police detective, ruling that the officer should not have entered the man’s backyard.
U.S. District Judge Beth Phillips ruled Wednesday that Eric DeValkenaere violated 26-year-old Cameron Lamb’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure by entering his property in 2019 without a warrant or other legal reason to be there.
However, Phillips declined to issue a summary judgment on the family’s claim that the ensuing shooting amounted to excessive force, and made no immediate decision on any damages in the wrongful death case filed against the Kansas City police board and DeValkenaere.
There’s no need for any new case law here. It’s already established that the cops can’t go into a fenced off yard unless they have a warrant or accident circumstances, which they didn’t. No precedents are going to be set, because they already were, long ago.
I believe that the victim filed a civil rights lawsuit with multiple claims, and this one claim was so obvious that the judge ruled there’s no need for a jury to rule on it, but that the other claims would have to go before a jury.
This means the city is going to lose on at least one aspect of the case, and they could choose to fight the other aspects of it in court, or they could settle, as you suggested.