The Supreme Court could decide if four Dallas police officers should face a federal civil rights trial in connection with the 2016 death of Tony Timpa.
The Supreme Court of the United States said Tuesday it would not review the case involving four Dallas police officers involved in the death of a man back in 2016.
A federal appeals court ruled back in January that "qualified immunity" should not protect the officers from potential liability resulting from the death of Tony Timpa, a man with mental illness who died after being restrained for nearly 14 minutes by Dallas police officers in 2016.
To keep the case from going to trial the City of Dallas fought all the way to the Supreme Court and on Tuesday the court refused to weigh in, which means the case will go forward to trial.
"At last!" Timpa family attorney Geoff Henley said in a statement. "The family has waited for years on this decision just to get their day in court."
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Timpa is the one who called 911 to report that he was off his medication and that he needed help.
Body camera footage released by Dallas police, following a lawsuit by our partners at the Dallas Morning News, showed the officers in question restrain Timpa by placing him in handcuffs, with his hands bound behind his back, and pinning his back, shoulders, and neck to the ground.
In the video, Timpa can be heard pleading for help more than 30 times before he lost consciousness and was pronounced dead minutes later.
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The Dallas County Medical Examiners Office ruled Timpa's death a homicide due to the effects of cocaine and being restrained.
A Dallas County grand jury indicted three of the officers on misdemeanor charges of deadly conduct before District Attorney John Creuzot dropped those charges in 2019.
The current legal matter is the question of whether the officers violated Timpa’s civil rights.
"There's nowhere else for the city to go now, except to trial," Timpa family attorney Henley said. "We still have a long way to go, but the road to the jury box is clear."
Henley said the family hoped the case would go to trial sometime between June and September, but the City Attorney's Office has been pushing to delay the case another year.
