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Olivia Covington for www.theindianalawyer.com

A federal complaint alleging coercion, constitutional violations, and falsification at the hands of Evansville and Kentucky police officers investigating a murder will continue after the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals determined qualified immunity was not appropriate for certain claims against the officers.

In June 2012, Marcus Golike’s body was found on the banks of the Ohio River, and an autopsy determined he had died from strangulation. Evansville police detectives began questioning Golike’s foster nephew, William, who was with Golike the night before he died.

A subsequent conversation with Golike’s brother revealed he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and had threatened to commit suicide by jumping from a bridge over the Ohio River. But Kentucky and Evansville police officers requested that William come in for a police interview, during which he gave a consistent account of what had happened the night before Golike’s death — that the two had played chess, and Godlike then left.

The officers accused William of being a liar, so he “confessed” that he and his sisters, Deadra and Andrea, were responsible for Golike’s death by punching and choking him to death, dumping his body in the river and using his debit card after the murder.

Deadra also “confessed” after undergoing a similar interrogation, and all three, including Andrea, were arrested based on those confessions. But according to a Wednesday 7th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion, the confessions were replete with evidence that could have been proven as inaccurate, and the siblings seemed to be guessing at answers to the officers’ questions until the officers seemed satisfied. Similarly, a summary report omitted a critical detail — a clerk at the store where the teens claimed to have used the debit card said she did not recall the teens coming into the store that night.

Andrea was eventually released, the charges against Deadra were dropped, and William was not found guilty of any of the charges against him.  The siblings then filed a federal complaint alleging constitutional and state-law violations at the hands of the state medical examiner, and Kentucky and Evansville police officers. The Indiana Southern District Court granted authorities summary judgment on all but four of those claims: the siblings’ Fourth Amendment claims against the officers who questioned them; their failure to intervene claims against the Evansville and Kentucky State police departments; Deadra and Williams’ malicious prosecution claims against EPD; and Deadra and William’s due process claims against the interrogating officers.

In a Wednesday opinion, 7th Circuit Chief Judge Diane Wood, taking the facts of the case in the light most favorable to the Hurts, agreed with the district court that there were material factual disputes precluding immunity on the false arrest claims and undermining even arguable probable cause to arrest them.  Similarly, because a trier of fact could reasonably determine the Evansville police defendants were aware of Fourth Amendment violations against the siblings, the denial of summary judgment on the failure to intervene claim was also proper, the chief judge wrote in William Hurt, Deadra Hurt and Andrea Hurt v. Matthew Wise, et al., 17-1771, -1777.

“Perhaps, as the officers argue in their briefs, a trier of fact might come to the opposite conclusion and think that they were pushing, but doing nothing that crossed a constitutional line,” Wood wrote. “It is not for us to resolve that question. It must await further proceedings.”

Paddock took interest in the park in hopes of creating a destination park just like the one in Fort Wayne.

“What we did in Fort Wayne was to address a couple of things, flood control was important having a downtown festival center, and ice skating rink and also have something that’s self-supporting,” says Paddock.

Several attempts to use city money to fund the park have been rebuffed in the past. Creating a nonprofit to raise funds continues to work for Headwaters Park and may work for Evansville too.

Tyrone Morris

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Unemployment rate drops to 3.4 percent

 Indiana’s unemployment rate stands at 3.4percent for December and remains lower than the national rate of 4.1 percent. With the exception of one month when it was equal (October 2014), Indiana’s unemployment rate now has been below the U.S. rate for more than four years. The monthly unemployment rate is a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicator that reflects the number of unemployed people seeking employment within the prior four weeks as a percentage of the labor force.

Indiana’s labor force had a net decrease of 14,195 over the previous month. This was a result of 10,696 unemployed residents no longer seeking employment within the past four weeks, and a 3,499 decrease in residents employed. Indiana’s total labor force, which includes both Hoosiers employed and those seeking employment, stands at 3.30 million, and the state’s 63.6 percent labor force participation rate remains above the national rate of 62.7 percent.

Learn more about how unemployment rates are calculated here: http://www.hoosierdata.in.gov/infographics/employment-status.asp.

Employment by Sector

Private sector employment has grown by more than 24,400 over the year, and has increased by 6,000 over the previous month, primarily due to gains in the Manufacturing (4,700) and the Private Educational & Health Services (3,500)sectors. Gains were partially offset by losses in the Professional & Business Services (-4,100) and the Financial Activities (-1,900) sectors. Total private employment stands at 2,697,700 and is 20,800 above the November 2016 peak.

Midwest Unemployment Rates

  

EDITOR’S NOTES:

Data are sourced from December Current Employment Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics – U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

December employment data for Indiana Counties, Cities and MSAs will be available Wednesday, January 24, 2018 at noon (EST) pending U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics validation.