Update: The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has revived the excessive force lawsuit over the death of Reggie Doucet, saying a jury should decide whether an LAPD officer acted reasonably in shooting him after cornering him at the entrance to the Metro’s South Tower.

The appeals court cited the report of the plaintiff’s forensics expert in reversing Judge Stephen Wilson’s decision to dismiss the case before trial.

“Assuming, as we must, that [Officer Aaron] Goff fired two shots, the first to Doucet’s torso from a kneeling position and the second, after Doucet fell backwards, from an angle downward into Doucet’s neck, we are unable to conclude as [a] matter of law that the use of force in its totality was reasonable,” the court said.

PLAYA VISTA, Calif. — Framed by two giant palm trees and set back from the road, the narrow entrance to the South Tower of the Metro apartment complex can easily be missed by passing pedestrians or motorists. A short flight of steps leads to a pair of glass doors that a resident can open by punching a code into an intercom mounted in an alcove immediately to the right of the doors.

The Metro is one of the landmark buildings of Playa Vista, an upscale master-planned community that stands on reclaimed wetlands a short drive from the Pacific Ocean and Los Angeles International Airport.

But in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 14, 2011, the entrance to the South Tower was the scene of a confrontation between three men, one of them a half-naked former college football player working in Los Angeles as a personal fitness trainer. The other two were Los Angeles Police Department officers.

After the confrontation ended in a burst of gunfire, former Middle Tennessee State cornerback Reggie Doucet, 25, lay dying near the alcove, a bullet through his neck having pierced his jugular vein. The fatal shot was fired — probably from a distance of less than two feet — by Officer Aaron Goff. In addition to shooting Doucet in the neck, Goff fired a bullet into his leg just below the waist.

According to the LAPD, the use of deadly force was justified because Goff reasonably feared he was in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death after the well-built, athletic Doucet punched him at least six times and reached for his gun.

“It was the most devastating punch I’ve ever had,” Goff has said of the first blow Doucet allegedly landed on him.

Goff, a rookie, and his partner, Officer Jonathan Kawahara, had initially responded to 911 calls reporting that a man who had not paid his cab fare was running around naked in Playa Vista and jumping on parked cars.

Doucet’s daughter has brought a federal civil-rights lawsuit in which she alleges the officers used excessive force and did not follow their training in confronting an obviously mentally ill — and unarmed — suspect who, at worst, had committed petty theft and indecent exposure, both of which are only misdemeanor offenses.

“If this had been treated as someone that was suffering from a mental illness, we would never have gotten to the point where he would have been killed,” said Jamon R. Hicks, the attorney representing Doucet’s daughter.

A judge dismissed the case in April 2012, shortly before it was scheduled to go to trial. At a hearing earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals appeared receptive to Hicks’ argument that the physical evidence in the case, including the trajectory of the fatal bullet, is inconsistent with Goff’s account of the shooting.

That evidence suggests a disturbing scenario — that the shot to Doucet’s neck followed the one to his leg and that Goff may have fired it downward from a standing position as Doucet was falling to the ground.

“Why couldn’t a reasonable jury have thought that the second shot was the one that went downward from the neck and that it was an execution?” Circuit Judge Andrew Kleinfeld asked a lawyer for the City of Los Angeles.

Petty theft

Playa Vista is a 1.3 square-mile oasis of order and tranquillity on LA’s densely populated Westside, a self-contained community of high-end condominiums, leafy promenades, and manicured parks. It might be the last place where anyone would expect to see a naked man jumping on cars.

The first call to police came at about 3 a.m. from Abraham Grigoryan, a cab driver who said a man he had picked up at a hotel in Hollywood had refused to pay his fare when he arrived at the Metro complex. After Grigoryan told him he could only go inside the complex to get the money if he left some collateral, the man began taking off his clothes.

As Goff and Kawahara are driving to the scene, police dispatch says another caller has reported that a naked man was running around and jumping on cars. They make the connection with the petty theft suspect and Kawahara, according to his testimony in a deposition, thinks the man might be a “5150” hold, shorthand for a California law that allows people who pose a danger to themselves or others to be detained for a mental health evaluation.

After the officers locate Grigoryan, he directs them to where the naked man is standing on a sidewalk. They try to handcuff him, but he breaks free and runs away. The policemen chase after him; Goff taking his Taser out of the holster as he runs.

The man puts on his basketball shorts and stops at the entrance to the Metro’s North Tower where, using the intercom, he tries to enter the building. Goff aims his Taser at the man, but he doesn’t fire, and he stays six to seven feet away from him.

The officers can see the man is a light-skinned African-American, 5 feet 10 inches tall, about 180 pounds and in extremely good physical shape. They can see he is not armed and that there is something very wrong with him.

“He was yelling,” Kawahara recalled. “He seemed agitated, uncooperative with my commands.”

Kawahara and his partner don’t know yet who the man is. And they don’t know that the way he is behaving is totally out of character.

Only witness

Doucet grew up in Prunedale, Calif., and was a star high-school athlete. After graduating from North Monterey County High in 2003, he played football at a junior college and then at Middle Tennessee State, where he majored in university studies. According to Hicks, he was a “fitness freak” whose ultimate ambition was to open a fitness club in his hometown.

In LA, Doucet worked as a trainer and part-time model and rented an apartment in the Metro with a roommate. He was, Hicks said, a devoted father to the daughter he had left behind in Tennessee with her mother.

There appears to be no explanation for Doucet’s behavior that January night. An autopsy showed there was no alcohol and only a miniscule amount of marijuana in his system at the time he died. Hicks said family members and friends of Doucet told him he was never diagnosed with a mental illness and “nobody ever knew of him to be on any medication.”

The LAPD has special units that deal with mentally ill suspects. But Goff and Kawahara are on their own at the North Tower. And after a brief standoff, Doucet eludes them again, initiating another pursuit. This time, he goes no further than about 100 feet to the entrance to the South Tower. Goff catches up with him first and, this time, he does not keep his distance.

“As I got to the top of the steps, Doucet turned around, he faced me, planted his feet, and then he threw a punch across my jaw,” Goff testified in a deposition. The blow leaves him “disorientated to the point where I was about to lose consciousness” and he falls to his hands and knees.

After landing a couple more punches, Goff said, Doucet reaches for the officer’s gun but cannot extract it from the holster. As Doucet is hitting Kawahara, Goff unholsters his gun and, still on his knees, fires upward at the suspect’s torso from “the close contact shooting position.”

Strangely, Goff could remember shooting only once.

“I found out at a later time that there were two shots fired,” he testified.

The only witness to the fatal altercation is a Playa Vista security guard who was patrolling the neighborhood on his bicycle. John F. Jones testified that Goff “initiated the physical struggle with Mr. Doucet by attempting to tackle him.” He said Goff went down “real slow” after the suspect punched him and that Doucet “whaled” on both men. But he did not see Goff draw his gun or fire any shots.

“I heard the shots,” he recalled.

From certain angles, the alcove at the South Tower entrance is not visible from the street.

“They were, like, back in that corner,” Jones said.

“That’s execution-style”

Hicks, a veteran of excessive force lawsuits, says the case has “really bothered” him since he began representing Doucet’s daughter.

“I would say it’s one of the worst [officer-involved shootings] I’ve seen … given what the police were there for,” he told MintPress in an interview at his law office.

“Most of my cases I’m dealing with a gang-member, a person suspected of having a gun, so when the police come to the scene they’re dealing with some heavy stuff,” he continued. “I rarely get a college kid, a guy who was a great dad … I never have that.”

Hicks opened his argument to the 9th Circuit by saying, “Witnesses can be biased, the physical evidence cannot; witnesses can be impeached, the physical evidence cannot.”

And in his view, Goff’s account of the shooting of Doucet is “totally inconsistent” with the physical evidence.

For one thing, Hicks points out, photos of Goff taken shortly after the incident do not show bruises or lacerations to the head that would be expected if he had been beaten up in the way he described. Goff said in his deposition that he couldn’t recall telling a doctor he almost blacked out or getting a CAT scan for a concussion.

Kawahara, in fact, testified that he never saw his partner get punched or go down to the ground. When he arrived at the South Tower entrance, what he saw was Goff flying into a wall. One photo of Goff shows an abrasion to the back of the head, which could be consistent with striking the stucco surface of the wall.

Even more important are the coroner’s findings about the trajectory of the two shots Goff fired. According to the autopsy report, the non-fatal shot to Doucet’s left flank traveled horizontally and exited his body through the middle lower back. The fatal shot to the right side of his neck traveled at a steep downward angle and lodged in his right back.

Interpreting that evidence, a forensics expert hired by Hicks said the different locations and trajectories of the two gunshot wounds “would require a significant change in the body positioning of Mr. Doucet or that of Officer Goff between those two shots.” From a kneeling position, the expert said, Goff “could not have positioned his pistol to produce the neck wound on Mr. Doucet in terms of height, wound directionality, or firearm distance.”

In Hicks’ view, assuming the first shot was to Doucet’s flank, that was excessive force, because Goff had no need to confront in such a violent way an obviously mentally ill suspect whose crimes were at most misdemeanors. If the officer shot Doucet again as the suspect was falling down, Hicks said, “then you get the trajectory through the neck.”

“That’s execution-style,” he added.

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson took a different view. In his ruling dismissing the civil-rights case, he said Goff and Kawahara were faced with “sudden, actual physical violence from a muscular subject in peak physical condition” and agreed with the City of Los Angeles that Doucet “posed a threat of serious harm to Goff and Kawahara such that … deadly force was necessary [and] objectively reasonable under the circumstances.”

Goff’s testimony, the judge said, was corroborated by Jones, and the plaintiff had not “presented evidence other than speculation in support of her theory that the pivotal events occurred differently than as reported by the only witness.”

“Flip-of-the-coin speculation”

The fate of the case is now in the hands of the three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit. At the Feb. 7 hearing, Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz said he was “troubled” by the autopsy report and homed in on the ballistics evidence.

“If Mr. Doucet did fall on his back and was shot in the torso first,” he reasoned, “then the shot going downwards through his neck area is hard for me to imagine unless somebody stood up and walked to the other side of him.”

The facts, he suggested, appeared to “raise a dispute about when the fatal shot was administered, and perhaps it was administered when [Goff] was no longer in danger.”

The city’s attorney, Lisa Berger, insisted there was no evidence that Doucet was shot in the neck from above as he was falling, and the only way a jury could make such a finding “would be complete, flip-of-the-coin speculation.”

“But there is evidence,” Hurwitz interjected. “The evidence is that the fatal shot was fired on an angle different than the shot into the torso — nobody disputes that — that it went downward from the neck out … That’s not an explanation consistent with the way the officers testified.”

Judge Kleinfeld, meanwhile, noted that the character of the suspect’s offense is important in determining whether use of force is justified.

“The character of the offense that led to this deadly confrontation with Doucet seemed so trivial,” he said.

Hicks is hoping the appeals court will allow him to take the case to trial so a jury can decide whether Goff is credible. Doucet isn’t available to give his version of the events, he says, but through the physical evidence, he is speaking from the grave — and he deserves justice.

“He was a good kid that had a bad day,” Hicks said.

This article was originally published Feb. 18, 2014.