GRAND JURY NEVER TOLD THAT OFF-DUTY HOUSTON POLICE OFFICER WAS DRUNK WHEN HE SHOT UNARMED BROTHERS

The grand jury never saw any of the evidence collected about the officer's intoxication by HPD internal affairs because the courts have ruled that in internal police investigations, testimony officers are ordered to provide cannot be used against them in criminal proceedings

By Lise Olsen and James Pinkerton

Houston Chronicle
April 16, 2016

Jose Coronado Jr., an off-duty Houston police officer, downed six beers and a triple shot of whiskey when closing time arrived at a crowded pub called Sherlock's on upscale West Gray five years ago. Minutes later, amid a chaotic fight outside in a strip mall parking lot, he pulled a Ruger pistol he was not authorized to use and shot two men, one fatally.

Multiple eyewitnesses told police that Coronado had been drinking and that neither Omar Ventura, who died of a gunshot wound, nor his brother, Rolando, had threatened the officer, newly released documents from the Houston Police Department's investigation reveal. Both were unarmed.

Coronado's blood-alcohol level wouldn't be tested for six hours, when he scored just below the 0.08 legal limit, those records show. The Harris County grand jury that later cleared Coronado of murder and aggravated assault never knew about that test or that HPD's own experts had concluded in an internal review that he was "legally intoxicated" at the time of the shootings.

The records in federal civil rights lawsuits provide a wealth of detail on this and four other cases in which Houston police officers shot and killed unarmed civilians. Attorneys representing the father of one of those victims, Kenny Releford, broadly challenge HPD's internal review process and argue that HPD officials have established a custom of condoning lethal use of force. In all five shootings, the records show that HPD's internal investigations repeatedly ignored or downplayed witnesses, police reports or forensic evidence that contradicted statements provided by shooters.

All intentional shootings by HPD officers involving injuries or deaths - more than 150 since 2010 - have been ruled justified.

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The Ventura shootings took place on Feb. 19, 2011, outside Sherlock's in a trendy strip mall on upscale West Gray Street. When doorman William Swick told Coronado, his wife and their friends to finish their drinks, Coronado replied: "You don't realize who you are speaking to" before gulping down a final pint and wandering out, according to witness statements and other documents from HPD's long secret internal investigation.

In the parking lot, one bar patron pounded on the hood of another's truck. Words were exchanged. Pushing and shoving turned into fighting. A friend of Coronado's was knocked to the pavement. Coronado said in his statement to police that he got involved to help his friend. Rolando Ventura told police that Coronado shot his brother in the stomach as Omar Ventura raised his palms in exasperation and retreated from the brawl. Rolando Ventura said Coronado then fired at him and would have hit him in the head had he not raised his left arm, which still bears the jagged mark of the bullet.

Swick, the doorman who was standing on a bench to watch, later told homicide investigators that the fight was winding down and no one had done anything to threaten or harm Coronado when Coronado began firing.

"As close range as he was, he was shooting to kill, no doubt. It was gruesome," Swick told police.

After the shooting, Coronado ran to the cruiser of an on-duty officer, Sherwin Johnson, who by chance had pulled into the parking lot to grab breakfast in the grocery store next door, records show. Coronado said he'd been threatened. Then he pulled out a badge and identified himself as an HPD officer, according to police reports.

Though Coronado had a duty to report he'd fired his weapon and to render aid, he didn't initially mention shooting anyone, a police report shows. Johnson later said he didn't think about doing a sobriety test.

It was a bar patron who told the patrolman to call 911. A man was bleeding to death from a belly wound on the bar's porch - and the officer was the shooter, the police report shows. In a statement to homicide officials, the same witness later said Omar Ventura appeared to be trying to calm down Coronado when he got shot.

Rosa Rodriguez, Omar's wife, attempted to accompany her husband to the hospital that night, but HPD officers pulled her out of the ambulance and held her for questioning for hours and she never saw him again. The last words she heard him say were: "It hurts. Everything is going dark," according to federal court records.

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The critical issue raised by the documents in the Ventura shootings is why no one from the Houston Police Department performed a sobriety test at the scene or sought a warrant to test Coronado's blood-alcohol level in timely fashion. Had they done so, that information could have been among the evidence presented to the grand jury considering whether to indict Coronado on murder or aggravated assault charges.

Instead, Coronado was ordered to submit to a Breathalyzer six hours later, after consulting with his police union attorney. When the Breathalyzer was finally performed for an internal affairs investigation, Coronado scored just below the 0.08 blood-alcohol level used in Texas law to define legal intoxication for DUI cases, the records show.

Much later, as part of the department's internal investigation, an HPD expert calculated Coronado's level of intoxication at the time of the shooting at 0.11, 1½ times the legal limit, based on information the officer was compelled to provide about the number of drinks he had consumed. But the grand jury never saw any of the evidence collected about Coronado's intoxication by HPD internal affairs.

The reason: The courts have ruled that in internal police investigations, testimony officers are ordered to provide cannot be used against them in criminal proceedings.

Former prosecutors and law professors say that without that knowledge it would have been difficult for the grand jury to weigh Coronado's account that he used deadly force only because he had a "reasonable" fear for his own safety against several other witnesses who described the shootings as unprovoked acts of violence.

Kenneth Williams, a South Texas College of Law professor and expert in use of force, said it would have been "extremely important" for the grand jury to know about the officer's level of intoxication in deciding whether his use of deadly force was based on a "reasonable" fear, which is the constitutional standard set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court. Williams reviewed the police internal affairs reports at the Chronicle's request,

A grand jury might reasonably conclude, he said, that an intoxicated officer's perception of the dangers might have been "distorted."

"Obviously, the grand jury and the internal review believed the officer's version and discounted the other witnesses," Williams said. "But it's certainly questionable - whether they reached the right conclusion … the fact that (the officer) was intoxicated would have called into question whether his actions were reasonable."

Houston Police Union President Ray Hunt said the procedure and delay in testing Coronado was typical for all incidents involving officers suspected to be drinking in other situations involving death or injury, such as car accidents. Hunt said that by agreement, department officers use only one specific Breathalyzer machine to measure officers' blood-alcohol levels and generally those tests are conducted under orders hours later.

Most criminal suspects who have been drinking receive no such deference from HPD officers or detectives, especially if they are suspected in a fatal shooting or car accident, said Brent Mayr, a defense attorney who formerly led the Vehicular Crimes Section of the Harris County District Attorney's Office.

After most police shootings, officers typically provide voluntary statements and conduct walkthroughs of the incidents. Coronado did not do a walkthrough with homicide investigators until five hours later.

"That's not ideal. That's not how we like to do business," said Julian Ramirez, a prosecutor who now reviews officer-involved shootings at the Harris County DA's Office but did not participate in the 2012 case.

Joe Owmby, a former prosecutor who reviewed officer-involved shootings until 2009 in Harris County, said he didn't understand why HPD officers or the prosecutor assigned to that scene would not have sought court authorization for a blood test in the Coronado case since it was immediately obvious that the off-duty officer who'd been drinking had killed an unarmed man.

"I would have seen that as relevant because it impacts why he made the decision to claim this was a police action," Owmby said. "… It's relevant as to (whether there was) recklessness - which is a lesser offense. … I can't think of how that happened - if everybody was doing what they were supposed to be doing, I can't see how that happened."

Rolando Ventura and his slain brother's wife and three children sued Coronado, Sherlock's bar and the city of Houston in federal court, seeking damages for negligence. Their attorneys have filed an appeal before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Hughes removed the city of Houston as a defendant, finding that HPD bore no responsibility for the Ventura shootings because Coronado violated district policies. The Venturas reached separate settlements last year with Coronado, who paid $5,000, and Sherlock's, which paid $200,000.

The Releford shooting case, filed on behalf of Audry Releford, a former Houston schoolteacher whose son, Kenny, was shot and killed by an HPD officer, is also before the 5th U.S. Circuit. The city of Houston appealed, on behalf of Officer Jason Rosemon, a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Keith P. Ellison earlier this year that the case could proceed to trial.

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In the context of a heated national debate over hundreds of police shootings, many involving unarmed citizens, almost none involve intoxicated off-duty officers.

But a year after Coronado shot the Ventura brothers, a similar case in Louisville produced a dramatically different outcome. It involved an off-duty detective named Chauncey Carthan who was driving his unmarked car through a dark neighborhood when he made a traffic stop that ended with him shooting an unarmed African-American male suspect in the leg. An officer arriving at the scene smelled liquor on Carthan's breath. Within three hours, officers sought authorization for a Breathalyzer and later a blood test. The results were quickly made public.

The officer had been drunk, the police chief announced. Kentucky court documents show the grand jury was presented with an array of charges that included assault as well as "wanton endangerment" and driving while intoxicated. In a jury trial, the officer was convicted only of the DUI but was disciplined for his drinking and misuse of force and resigned from the department.

Jeff Cooke, an assistant commonwealth attorney in Louisville and spokesman, said the officer's level of intoxication made everything he did and said subject to "extra scrutiny."

He said that, in his opinion, any time an officer who is intoxicated chooses to pull out a firearm constitutes "reckless" behavior.

In the aftermath of the Ventura shootings, neither then-Police Chief Charles McClelland, who recently retired, nor the police department's spokesmen ever publicly revealed that HPD's internal investigation had concluded the officer involved in the controversial shootings had been drunk. Based on its internal analysis, the department suspended Coronado for 30 days for using his gun while intoxicated, demonstrating a "lack of sound judgment" and other policy violations. The explanation for that suspension was divulged years later only after the Ventura family sued.

Chad Hoffman, Coronado's attorney, repeatedly insisted to reporters in 2011 that Coronado was not intoxicated when he shot the Ventura brothers out of fear for his own safety, claiming that Omar Ventura was killed because he reached for "his waistband." Hoffman did not respond to questions for this story.

If the Houston Police Department wants to reduce the shootings of unarmed civilians, said David Klinger, a professor at the University of Missouri in St. Louis and an expert on officer-involved shootings, its culture of secrecy in shooting reviews has to change.

"A summary of the shooting and a summary of the findings of the (department's) review should be published - there should be an abstract of the event and the findings, including the tactical concerns - and it should be published on the website of the police department, along with recommendations for improvement," he said.

EDITOR'S NOTE: All the anti-police rhetoric aside, this case stinks, pure and simple. Why is this guy still a cop? Coronado should be charged with murder, and since the charge does not carry a statute of limitations, the case should be presented to a grand jury now!

Six beers and a triple shot of whiskey? The testimony of multiple witnesses should overcome the prohibited results of the Internal Affairs investigation.

It's cases like this that fuel the hatred of cops which is so prevalent now.