Court Error – Exclusion of Evidence

Listen to this article

7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Kasey Burton v. City of Zion, Lake County, Illinois, et al.

Case No.: 17-1557

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and ROVNER and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Court Error – Exclusion of Evidence

On March 13, 2014, Kasey Burton was driving to pick up her roommate’s niece for a barbeque. Unbeknownst to her, her license was suspended. Officer Jonathan Meyers, a City of Zion police officer, however, had learned the news in that day’s “hot sheets” (a list of items of current interest to police). After he spotted her driving, he verified by radio that the police had an active warrant for her arrest for driving on a suspended license, and then pulled behind Burton’s van and activated his squad car’s emergency lights. Burton saw the flashing lights and heard the siren and knew that an officer wanted to pull her over, but according to her testimony at trial, Burton was afraid to pull over because of her experience with a Zion police officer five and a half years earlier, in 2008. During that earlier incident, Zion police officer Joseph Richardt pulled Burton over for operating a vehicle with sound amplification. By the end of that stop, Officer Richardt had handcuffed Burton and then, while she was handcuffed, used a taser to stun her. Burton filed a citizen’s complaint against Officer Richardt and, after an internal investigation, the Zion Police Department sustained the allegations of unnecessary force. Burton filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Zion, Officer Richardt, and other officers and eventually reached a settlement with the City.

Prior to trial, each party filed motions in limine, including the one at issue here, in which the City of Zion asked that any evidence regarding Burton’s 2008 encounter with Officer Richardt be omitted from evidence. The district court granted the defendants’ motion, thus removing any evidence of the 2008 encounter from the jury’s consideration. In other words, the jury heard testimony about and saw video of the 2014 stop, including Burton’s failure to stop, her slow drive home, and the arrest itself, but nothing about her prior experience with Officer Richardt. Burton filed a motion for reconsideration, but that too was denied. R. 118. After a three day trial, the jury found in favor of the defendant officers and City of Zion. Burton now appeals, arguing that the district court erred in its order on the motion in limine by disallowing the evidence of her 2008 encounter with Officer Richardt.

The fact that Burton had been subjected to excessive force by the police on a prior occasion was not propensity evidence and could not be excluded under Federal Rule of Evidence 404. On remand, the district court will have to weigh the probative value against the potential prejudice keeping in mind the ways in which any prejudice can be mitigated. We REVERSE the district court’s ruling on the motion in limine and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this decision.

Reversed and Remanded

Full Text

Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.