Seven years after a police dog killed a Montgomery man, his family continues their fight for justice.
The family of Joseph Lee Pettaway is fighting back against court rulings that dismissed their lawsuit against the City of Montgomery.
In 2018, Pettaway, a Black man who was 51, bled to death after a police dog named Niko bit his thigh.
“This case could set a precedent that could help out the hundreds of U.S. citizens killed by police officers each year that don’t see justice,” said Griffin Sikes, attorney for the Pettaway family.
In 2019, the family sued the city, K9 officer Nicholas Barber, and Ernest Finley, who was the police chief at the time.
Last year, Barber reached a confidential settlement with the family. A federal judge in Montgomery also dismissed the case against the city and the former chief.
However, the family’s fight continues in an effort to hold the city accountable. Last week, they filed an appeal to the Eleventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, arguing that U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks should have let the lawsuit go forward against the city.
Lawyers for the city and Finley did not respond to requests for comment.
In their brief to the appeals court, Pettaway’s lawyers argue that the city had an unconstitutional policy that prohibited officers from administering first aid to Pettaway as he lay bleeding to death on a sidewalk.
“We really believe we have a strong case here,” Sikes told AL.com. “This for sure could be Supreme Court worthy.”
In July of 2018, Pettaway had been performing maintenance work on an old dilapidated house on Cresta Circle in Montgomery.
In the early hours of July 8, Pettaway attempted to enter the house, disturbing one of his co-workers who was already staying there, say the court documents. Thinking there was an intruder, he called the police.
Barber unleashed Niko inside the house. Officers did not give a warning that Pettaway would have been able to hear before releasing the dog to attack, the lawsuit says.
The dog found Pettaway under a bed, grabbed him with his teeth and clamped down on his groin area for over two minutes, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit describes police body camera video from the night of the bite. The city and a federal judge have declined to release the video to the public.
In fighting to keep the video from going public in 2020, the city argued in court that it would cause “annoyance, embarrassment” for officers who were acting in good faith and could end up “facilitating civil unrest.”
In a 2022 decision blocking release of the video, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerusha Adams wrote that, “Due to its graphic nature and emotional impact, the footage from the police body cameras cannot be unseen, ignored, or easily set aside.”
Barber had to choke Niko nearly to the point of unconsciousness to get him to release his grip on Pettaway, the family’s lawyers wrote in court records, citing the bodycam footage.
[Read our series Mauled: When police dogs are weapons]
Pettaway soon lost consciousness, bleeding heavily, but the lawsuit says police officers were not allowed to provide any treatment because the city had not trained them to administer first aid and even had a policy that prohibited them from doing so.
Instead, Pettaway bled out with “half a dozen” MPD officers standing around him. They were prohibited from helping the unconscious, bleeding man who posed no threat to them, according to the lawsuit.
It was not until well over 10 minutes later that the EMTs arrived and began treating the wound, the lawsuit states. By that point, it was already too late.
Pettaway died at the hospital.
Court documents later detail that in a deposition, the police chief conceded that this practice could put lives at risk as certain wounds can cause death in under five minutes, while EMTs take around seven to 10 minutes to arrive at the scene.
“The treatment that Pettaway needed was basic,” said Sikes. “You just had to apply pressure, and he likely would have been fine. They teach this to 12, 13-year-old boys in cub scouts.”
“The fact that a municipal ‘policy’ might lead to ‘police misconduct’ is hardly sufficient to satisfy [the legal] requirement that the particular policy be the ‘moving force’ behind a constitutional violation,” the city has argued in court files.
For this reason, the city argues that they cannot be sued, as “considerably more proof than the single incident will be necessary in every case to establish both the requisite fault on the part of the municipality, and the causal connection between the ‘policy’ and the constitutional deprivation.”
The practice of not providing immediate first aid contrasts with the 14th Amendment, which holds authorities responsible for the care of individuals in their custody, the Pettaway family’s lawyers argue.
Montgomery police did not respond to a request for comment on whether this policy is still practiced, taught and enforced in the city.
There are two ways the case appeal will likely go, either the the case is sent back to the federal court in Montgomery, or the Eleventh Circuit will hear oral arguments to further inform their decision, Sikes said.
“The problem is that the case is now dead in the water,” he said. “They could address it in 90 days, but I have other similar cases that I have been waiting on for years.”
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