Jury leaves $4 to family of man killed by sheriff's deputy, along with many questions

For more than four years, questions swirled about the shooting death of Gregory Vaughn Hill Jr. at his home in Fort Pierce, Florida. After all, there were only three witnesses to how the entire episode unfolded: two St. Lucie County sheriff’s deputies and Hill.

Hill, a 30-year-old African-American, was fatally shot by a white sheriff’s deputy who had responded to a noise complaint about music Hill had been playing in his garage. Toxicology reports showed Hill was drunk at the time. And after a brief encounter with the deputies, he was discovered dead inside the garage with a gun in his back pocket; the deputies said he had been holding it during their confrontation, though that claim is in dispute. Hill had been shot three times by one of the deputies, Christopher Newman.

Among other things, a federal jury hearing a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by Hill’s family was asked to decide whether his constitutional rights had been violated and whether his estate should be awarded damages. How much, jurors were asked, were the pain and suffering of Hill’s three children worth?

Last week, the jurors delivered their verdict. Newman had not used excessive force, they concluded, but the St. Lucie County sheriff, Ken Mascara, had been ever so slightly negligent given Newman’s actions. The jury awarded $4 in damages: $1 for funeral expenses and $1 for each child’s loss.

Because jurors also found that the sheriff’s office was only 1 percent at fault in the death, that award was reduced to 4 cents. And furthermore, because jurors found that Hill was intoxicated and mostly to blame for the shooting, a lawyer for his family said Tuesday that a judge wouldreduce the 4-cent award to nothing.

“I don’t get it,” the family lawyer, John M. Phillips, said.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Hill’s fiancée, Monique Davis, said. “There are a lot of questions I want to ask.”

So far, Davis and Phillips said, they have not gotten any answers. Phillips said jurors did not stay after the verdict May 24 to speak with lawyers and have not approached him since. Through a spokeswoman, Judge Robin L. Rosenberg declined to comment on the case or release any information about the jurors.

In a statement posted on Facebook after the verdict, Mascara said his office was “pleased to see this difficult and tragic incident come to a conclusion.”

“Deputy Newman was placed in a very difficult situation, and like so many fellow law enforcement officers must do every day, he made the best decision he could for the safety of his partner, himself, and the public given the circumstances he faced,” he said. “We appreciate the jury’s time and understanding.”

A lawyer representing Mascara and Newman did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The lawsuit was filed in 2016 by Hill’s mother, Viola Bryant, on behalf of his estate. Phillips said that although he had deferred to the jury, he had signaled in court that the estate was seeking at least several hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

Phillips said a grand jury did not bring criminal charges against Newman.

Court documents lay out what happened Jan. 14, 2014. Around 3 p.m., a mother picking children up from an elementary school heard loud music coming from the garage of a home nearby. She called in a noise complaint, and two St. Lucie County sheriff’s deputies — Newman and Edward Lopez — responded. When they arrived at Hill’s home, the garage door was closed; they banged on it, and eventually it opened to reveal Hill.

Whether Hill, who worked at a Coca-Cola factory and had a history of serious traffic offenses, was holding a gun and whether he was ordered to drop it are in dispute.

Regardless, the garage door was eventually closed, and Newman fired four times through it, striking Hill once in the head and twice in the abdomen. The entire episode took less than two minutes.

Eventually, a SWAT team arrived, released chemical agents into the home and used a robot to pierce the garage door and photograph the inside. Authorities then realized Hill was dead.

The only gun recovered was found in Hill’s back pocket and was not loaded. Lawyers have argued about whether it was possible for Hill to have moved the gun to his pocket after the garage door closed.

Toxicology reports revealed that Hill’s blood-alcohol content was several times the legal limit to drive.

According to a verdict form, the jury found that Hill was responsible for 99 percent of the negligence in the case.

Phillips said he would have preferred for the jury to have found that there was no negligence than to have found that there was and awarded such paltry damages.

“I think they were trying to insult the case,” Phillips said of the jury. “Why go there with the $1? That was the hurtful part.”

Eight hours into a 10-hour deliberation the jury indicated that it was unable to reach a verdict. Phillips said some appeared visibly “incensed” and red in the face.

Still, they were sent back to continue deliberating; eventually, the jury said they had a verdict.

“There was a tug of war somewhere in there,” Davis, 35, said. “And then everybody’s mind changed to one? Something went on.”

Phillips added, “It seems like jurors gave up.”

He said he was drafting a motion for a new trial. If the motion is denied, he said, he will file an appeal.

“I’m going to keep fighting until I get some justice,” said Davis, who had planned to marry Hill less than two months from the day he died. “That’s the only way I’m going to get peace.”