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Attorney Terry Gilbert, who represents Smith's family, called the case and the way it has been handled disturbing.

Gilbert Thursday questioned the thoroughness of the investigation, including why a grand jury never heard from a detective who investigated the shooting or officers who were present when it happened.

ones was either in the parking lot behind Wilbert’s or drinking at Tops and Bottoms Gentlemen’s Club — his sworn deposition clashes with what he told a 9-1-1 dispatcher that night — as the scuffle erupted out of the building and into a nearby alley. When he heard gunshots, he took off onto the street and chased down Hill’s car.

“Rather than proceeding to the driver’s side where he supposedly saw the alleged shooter from the parking lot enter, Jones ran to the passenger side and kicked in Smith’s window and ordered him from the car at gunpoint,” according to the civil complaint, a sequence of events later corroborated by Jones during a sworn deposition.

Smith was unarmed, but Jones saw a gun laying on the seat next to him. Jones pointed a semi-automatic handgun toward the left side of Smith’s head and fired one bullet. The 20-year-old man took a few steps away from the car, collapsed and “lay gurgling for breath for many minutes before an ambulance was called,” according to the complaint.

“It’s totally insane, this case — the way the system has treated it,” Terry Gilbert, an attorney for Smith’s family in the federal court case, tells Scene. “[That includes] McGinty by not prosecuting the cop and putting the blame on this driver, who was already out of the car and on the ground when the off-duty cop shot [Smith] at point-blank range in the head.”

CLEVELAND — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a $4 million jury award to the family of a man fatally shot by an off-duty Cleveland police officer in 2012.

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected numerous arguments made by Cleveland city attorneys about why the 2015 federal jury award shouldn't be paid, including a claim that officer Roger Jones' actions were "objectively reasonable" when he shot and killed 20-year-old Kenneth Smith in downtown Cleveland.

Jones was the lone defendant in the civil rights lawsuit but was defended at trial and on appeal by staff attorneys from Cleveland.

Cleveland spokesman Dan Williams said Friday that the city was reviewing the ruling and had no comment. Jones remains a Cleveland police officer.

According to the ruling, Jones was in a parking lot in the early morning of March 10, 2012, when a fight broke out and someone fired a shot in the air. Three men in a gold car tried to drive from the scene but were blocked by police cruisers at an intersection.

Jones, who was wearing a Cleveland Indians jacket, told investigators he approached the car with his gun drawn, yelled at Smith to put up his hands and kicked out the front passenger window when Smith refused to comply. Jones said he shot Smith because he feared he was reaching for a gun sitting on the console. Jones also said Smith got out of the car after being shot and took several steps before collapsing.

Trial witnesses testified that Jones dragged Smith out of the car and shot him in the head while Smith was lowering himself to the ground to surrender. A medical examiner testified at trial that Smith was immediately incapacitated after being shot and couldn't have taken any steps.

Then-Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty called Jones a hero after Jones was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.

The appellate judges said the testimony of eyewitnesses and forensics experts provided a "reasonable basis" for the jury's verdict.

"Suffice it to say ... that a police officer cannot shoot a person simply because the person is near a gun," the ruling said.

catfish86 wrote:http://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/ ... cleve.html

He was charged with Felonious Assault and a host of firearm specifications. The guy was the man who fired into a crowd that started the whole scenario.

catfish86 wrote: The driver, who knows how involved he was...did he know his passenger was a moron who was going to shoot into a crowd, we'll never know. The driver is the one who was shot though. Hence Officer Jones was a hero until he executed the driver. He had a badge though, so he gets nothing. You and I can expect the fate of the pharmacist in OK.

Jones, an officer since 2007, shot Smith, a Euclid resident, in the head after Jones and other officers stopped a car at East Ninth Street and Euclid Avenue. The officers approached the car because they say Hill, who was behind the wheel, fired into a crowd outside a downtown nightclub and caused chaos.