NINE YEARS LATER

Evidence suggests sniper, not Metro officer, shot policeman, court says

 

By Daniel Fisher 

Southeast Texas Record

Dec 2, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOUSTON - A trial judge improperly denied the Houston metropolitan transit authority a chance to blame a police officer’s shooting on a sniper instead of one of its own employees, a Texas appeals court ruled.

Granting rare pretrial relief to the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, the 14th Court of Appeals found the trial court abused its authority when it refused to allow METRO to present an alternative theory to how Houston police officer Terry Smith was shot.

Smith sued METRO in 2016 after he was shot in the abdomen with a .22 caliber bullet. Smith blamed Gregory Hudson, a METRO police officer who was issuing citations in the same parking lot where Smith was conducting traffic enforcement. METRO responded by claiming an unidentified third party, not Hudson, was responsible for the shooting.

Two years later, the parties agreed to postpone a trial after Houston police said they recovered a .22 caliber rifle they believed had been used in the shooting. METRO then filed for summary judgment, citing an affidavit by Houston Police Detective Michael Burrow, who said the shooter was Jamin Stocker. 

Stocker had expressed anti-police views, kept news articles about the Smith shooting and other similar incidents, and his rifle ballistics matched the bullet found in Smith’s abdomen.

Smith filed a motion to exclude all evidence related to third parties, which the trial court granted. The judge also struck METRO’s amended answer naming Stocker as a responsible party, ruling the transit agency failed to disclose the information in time and didn’t produce “sufficient evidence to establish a genuine issue of material fact.”

METRO filed for a writ of mandamus, a rarely granted order by an appeals court reversing the trial judge’s decision. The 14th Court of Appeals granted it a in a Nov. 5 decision by Justice Meagan Hassan.

Texas law allows defendants to designate “responsible third parties” they claim caused or contributed to the plaintiff’s damages, the appeals court said, and trial court should allow the designation if there is “more than a scintilla of evidence” to support it.

In this case, Detective Burrow testified during the investigation of Jamin Stocker, “we developed solid information that he was the shooter in the Terry Smith case.” Stocker had expressed “extreme antipolice views” and a search of his home found a .22 caliber rifle whose ballistics matched the bullet that hit Smith.

“This evidence is sufficient to raise a genuine issue of fact regarding Stocker’s responsibility for Smith’s shooting,” the court concluded. Denying METRO’s motion would “skew the proceedings, potentially affect the outcome of the litigation, compromise the presentation of the defense in ways unlikely to be apparent from the appellate record, and likely necessitate additional litigation.”