BANGOR, Maine — A jury most likely will decide whether Bangor police used excessive force when officers used a stun gun to subdue a man under the influence of bath salts who later died, after the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed an appeal last week.
While that lawsuit has been pending, two other cases alleging police brutality involving different agencies have been settled, including one for $150,000 against a Farmington officer.
In the Bangor case, U.S. Magistrate Judge John Nivison in October allowed the suit to go forward. He said a jury needs to determine whether the police officers “reasonably should have known that Mr. [Phillip] McCue ceased resisting arrest and that the force that they employed after he ceased resisting was excessive.”
McCue, 28, of Bangor died at Eastern Maine Medical Center on Sept. 17, 2012, five days after Bangor police attempted to arrest him at an apartment building on First Street. The autopsy concluded McCue died as a result of complications from overdosing on bath salts.
His father, Michael McCue of Jackson, filed an eight-count wrongful death lawsuit in March 2014 in U.S. District Court in Bangor seeking $6.65 million in damages.
The defendants in the lawsuit are Bangor police officers Kim Donnell, Wade Betters (who is now a sergeant), Joshua Kuhn, David Farrar and Chris Blanchard.
Attorneys on both sides objected to Nivison’s decision, which was reviewed by U.S. District Judge George Singal. Singal in November affirmed Nivison’s decision.
McCue’s attorney, David Van Dyke, appealed to the 1st U.S. District Court of Appeal in Boston. On April 4, the court dismissed the appeal on technical grounds.
A trial date has not been set, but settlement efforts so far have not been successful.
A separate suit filed by the parents of a troubled Army veteran shot outside the Farmington police station in 2011 was settled earlier this year for $150,000, according to Town Manager Richard Davis.
The parents of Justin Michael Crowley-Smilek, 26, of Farmington, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, in 2013 filed a wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit against the town, police Chief Jack Peck and Ryan Rosie, the officer who fired the fatal shot. The town and Peck were dismissed from the lawsuit in October 2015 by a federal judge.
Rosie and Peck are employed by the Farmington Police Department, the town manager said Friday in an email. The Maine attorney general’s office in May 2012 found that Rosie was justified in shooting Crowley-Smilek.
The bill that created the Maine Veterans Court, which is paired with the state’s mental health court, was submitted in memory of Crowley-Smilek. Signed into law by Gov. Paul LePage, it requires courts to screen veterans who enter the system and to coordinate with administrators at the Togus Veterans Affairs office to ensure veterans know about treatment programs.
A separate lawsuit filed against a Maine state trooper by a Brooks woman was settled in December for $22,500, according to the Maine attorney general’s office. As part of the settlement, Trooper Thomas N. Bureau II admitted no wrongful conduct.
Rebecca C. Abeyta, 39, sued the trooper in October 2015 in federal court in Bangor. She alleged Bureau kicked open her door and pulled her out of the house when she refused to come out of her home when told to. The trooper went to her home because of a noise complaint.
Abeyta alleged the trooper deprived Abeyta of her constitutional rights to be secure in her home against unreasonable searches and seizures, bodily integrity, be free of the use of unreasonable force, substantive and procedural due process and be free from arrest except upon a finding of probable cause she had committed a crime.