A jury in Saratoga County has sided with the defense in the wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Darryl Mount Jr.
Just after 3 a.m. on August 31st, 2013, 21-year-old Darryl Mount Jr. was seriously injured during a police foot chase in downtown Saratoga Springs. Mount died of pneumonia linked to his injuries nine months later.
For years, questions surrounding Mount’s death drove calls for police accountability, as his mother and activists claimed police brutality. Throughout, police denied wrongdoing.
City officials maintained that Mount fled from officers after he was observed pushing his girlfriend into a wall. After unsuccessfully firing their tasers at Mount, police said they lost sight of him in a dark alley off Broadway that ended in a construction site. Mount was purportedly found moments later at the base of a construction scaffold 20 feet below, unconscious and bleeding from the head.
In reaching their decision before Judge Thomas Buchanan in Saratoga County Supreme Court Tuesday, jurors decided there was no proof of battery, negligence or excessive force on the part of three responding city police officers.
Defense attorney John Aspland, representing the city, spoke with reporters after the verdict was returned following nine days of arguments.
“I think it should bring some closure because the best investigation is a full civil trial, in some respects, right? Because, there’s no opportunity to miss anything because both sides have the opportunity to present the evidence. So, I’m hopeful that now the family can say, ‘We had our beliefs, we made our arguments, and this matter is resolved.’ I hope,” said Aspland.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs declined to speak with reporters. Mount’s mother, Patty Jackson, sat in the courtroom with family members on several occasions throughout the trial, but was not in court when the verdict was returned Tuesday afternoon. Black Lives Matter activists also appeared in the wooden benches throughout the civil trial.
Aspland surmised jurors likely were persuaded by security camera video that showed the moments police chased Mount on Broadway into the alley, and footage taken from the bar beside an adjacent alley that shows police arriving at the location where he was found.
“I think they looked at those and you can see the timestamps on them. And it just wasn’t…there was not a sufficient period of time to fit the narrative that was put together,” Aspland said. “You have these three officers who are doing their job that night. And that's basically what the jury understood the case to be.”
Plaintiffs’ attorneys attempted to make the case that police encountered the fleeing Mount in the adjacent alley, below the scaffold, and caused his injuries. Hired expert witness Dr. George Shaw, an emergency medicine physician with a PhD in physics, gave his opinion that injuries to Mount’s face and brain were not consistent with a fall.
Plaintiffs also attempted to characterize the Saratoga Springs Police Department as fostering a “culture of corruption,” and questioned former Police Chief Greg Veitch as to why an internal affairs investigation was never opened following the claim from Mount’s mother that police beat him. Veitch, in his deposition, acknowledged misleading a reporter about the status of an internal investigation in 2013.
The defense contended officers who faced misconduct allegations in separate incidents under Veitch’s watch were ultimately disciplined, and claimed the city acted transparently in releasing photos and other materials on the Mount investigation via the city website.
Speaking with WAMC after the verdict was announced, Saratoga Springs Mayor Ron Kim, a Democrat and former Public Safety Commissioner who has long sought answers, said he supports the jury’s decision.
“As difficult as it was to determine after 10 years, I'm glad that they were able to come to a resolution on this,” said Kim.
