Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03721/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03721-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Terry Joe Smith
Appellee
United States of America
Appellant

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

Nos. 14‐3744, 14‐3721

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff‐Appellee / Cross‐Appellant,

v.

TERRY JOE SMITH,

Defendant‐Appellant / Cross‐Appellee.

____________________

Appeals from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Indiana, Terre Haute Division.

No. 2:14‐cr‐00006‐WTL‐CMM–1 — William T. Lawrence, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED JANUARY 6, 2016 — DECIDED JANUARY 28, 2016

____________________

Before POSNER and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges, and

PALLMEYER, District Judge.

*

POSNER, Circuit Judge. Terry Joe Smith, a police officer in

Putnam County, Indiana (roughly midway between Indian‐

apolis and Terre Haute), was convicted by a jury in federal

court of violating 18 U.S.C. § 242 by depriving two persons,

under color of state law (which is to say in Smith’s capacity

 

* Of the Northern District of Illinois, sitting by designation.

Case: 14-3721 Document: 41 Filed: 01/28/2016 Pages: 8
2 Nos. 14‐3744, 14‐3721

as a police officer), of their constitutional right not to be sub‐

jected to the intentional use of unreasonable and excessive

force. Sentenced to 14 months in prison to be followed by

two years of supervised release, Smith appeals his convic‐

tion and the government appeals his sentence, the brevity of

which, it contends, the judge failed to justify.

One night in September 2012 several Putnam County po‐

lice officers, including Smith, set out in pursuit of Cletis

Warren, a known criminal for whom an arrest warrant was

outstanding. Warren was driving a pickup truck. The police

caught up with it and were able to box it in with their police

cars. Warren got out of the cab of his truck, jumped onto the

truck’s bed, and lay down on his back. Several officers fol‐

lowed him onto the truck’s bed, picked him up, and handed

him out of the truck to officers on the ground. All the officers

except Smith testified at his trial that they had Warren under

control when suddenly Smith punched him in the face with

a closed fist, making a sound that two of the officers de‐

scribed as that of a tomato hitting a concrete wall. (Warren

testified that he was in handcuffs when he was punched,

whereas the officers testified that he was put in handcuffs

after the punch. The sequence doesn’t matter, and there is no

evidence that the government knowingly elicited false testi‐

mony from Warren, as Smith argues.) Warren’s face imme‐

diately swelled and bled extensively, and he was carried off

in an ambulance to a hospital. Smith was overheard to say to

one of the officers “I guarantee I broke that mother fucker’s

nose,” and another officer testified that Smith “basically was

stating that ‘He [Warren] fucking deserved it.’”

Several months later Smith and other police officers were

summoned to a domestic dispute in a trailer park; the dis‐

Case: 14-3721 Document: 41 Filed: 01/28/2016 Pages: 8
Nos. 14‐3744, 14‐3721 3

pute had turned violent. Smith handcuffed the man involved

in the dispute, who was named Jeffrey Land, and led him

toward his patrol car. When they arrived, Smith raised Land

in the air with Land’s body horizontal to the ground,

dropped him, and drove his (that is, Smith’s) knee into

Land’s sternum or back, causing him to defecate. Later that

day Smith bragged to another officer that it wasn’t the first

time that he’d made someone defecate himself.

The critical witnesses at Smith’s trial (which lasted five

days) were the police officers who had been present when he

committed the violent, gratuitous, and sadistic batteries of

Warren and Land. Smith’s lawyer objected to portions of the

police officers’ testimony on the ground that it was expert

testimony and the officers hadn’t been qualified as expert

witnesses under Fed. R. Evid. 702. The judge overruled the

objection on the ground that the testimony was authorized

by Rule 701. That rule provides that “if a witness is not testi‐

fying as an expert, testimony in the form of an opinion is

limited to [an opinion] that is: (a) rationally based on the

witness’s perception; (b) helpful to clearly understanding the

witness’s testimony or to determining a fact in issue; and (c)

not based on scientific, technical, or other specialized

knowledge within the scope of Rule 702.”

Rule 701 was not needed to nail Smith. His bragging

about breaking Warren’s nose and causing Land (and ap‐

parently others) to defecate were admissions against interest,

hence admissible regardless of Rule 701. And the testimony

of the officers, who said they saw the punch to Warren’s

nose and simultaneously heard a sound like a tomato hitting

a concrete wall and later saw the kneeing of Land’s body,

Case: 14-3721 Document: 41 Filed: 01/28/2016 Pages: 8
4 Nos. 14‐3744, 14‐3721

was offered not as opinion evidence but as eyewitness evi‐

dence.

The officers did offer some opinion evidence, mainly that

Smith had used excessive, unreasonable force against War‐

ren and Land, but that evidence was not based on “scientific,

technical, or other specialized knowledge” of the sort that

only a witness whom the judge had qualified to be an expert

witness would be allowed to testify to. See United States v.

Perkins, 470 F.3d 150, 155–56 (4th Cir. 2006). Anyone who

saw what the police saw Smith doing to Warren and Land

would have been able to offer an opinion on whether the

force was reasonable and would have characterized Smith’s

conduct the same way the officers did.

The recurring theme of the testimony of the officers who

had witnessed Smith’s assaults on the unresisting Warren

and Land was that his use of force against them was unjusti‐

fied because they weren’t resisting. It would have been ab‐

surd to require the police officers to be qualified as experts

on the use of force—perhaps subjected to a Daubert hear‐

ing—in order for them to be permitted to give testimony that

a witness with no police training or experience could have

given with utter confidence—and indeed that jurors would

have found obvious without any evidence other than what

the police had witnessed.

There is thus no basis for reversing Smith’s conviction.

But, turning to the government’s cross‐appeal, we find com‐

pelling reasons for vacating the sentence and thus requiring

the district judge to resentence him. Smith’s guidelines sen‐

tencing range was 33 to 41 months. The judge sentenced him

to 14 months—less than half the bottom rung of the range. A

sentence that far, or even farther, below the bottom of the

Case: 14-3721 Document: 41 Filed: 01/28/2016 Pages: 8
Nos. 14‐3744, 14‐3721 5

range need not be unreasonable. But the farther down the

judge goes the more important it is that he give cogent rea‐

sons for rejecting the thinking of the Sentencing Commis‐

sion. See Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 46–47 (2007).

The judge discussed at some length Smith’s positive and

negative characteristics. He described him as “indeed a per‐

son who does not shy away from work,” who had been “an

elected public official” and done service “as a volunteer

coach in local leagues and schools,” who had served on “vic‐

tim impact panels,” and whose criminal history was limited

to a misdemeanor battery conviction—though for battering a

child. The judge also said, however, that “you have used

your official position to commit civil right[s] abuses” and

that “there is no excuse for punching or otherwise abusing

people who are handcuffed”—and “thus far, it would seem

you have not taken responsibility for your actions.” From

the battering of the child the judge inferred that the defend‐

ant may have “some unaddressed anger control issues.” (No

kidding!) In addition, he noted that the defendant, when he

was a corrections officer, had been accused of assaulting

“two juveniles” in the correctional facility and having “lied

to cover up [his] conduct.” The judge also noted with disap‐

proval Smith’s “ghost employment ... in the private sector

... at the same time [that he was] working for the Putnam

County Sheriff’s Department.”

Addressing him, the judge said that “if you appropriately

address your anger management issues, ... the risk of you

reoffending will be slight. ... I believe [your conduct in this

case] will not be repeated if you focus on self‐improvement.”

That’s a big “if.” And while the judge did require Smith, as a

condition of supervised release, to undergo an anger‐

Case: 14-3721 Document: 41 Filed: 01/28/2016 Pages: 8
6 Nos. 14‐3744, 14‐3721

management program offered by the probation service, he

said nothing about the likely efficacy of such a program in

Smith’s case, given his history and his bizarre conduct to‐

ward Warren and Land. The period of supervised release

imposed by the judge was two years, but the length of the

anger‐management program offered by the probation ser‐

vice is not mentioned; nor is the program described, or even

identified.

The judge devoted the bulk of his sentencing statement

to recounting cases in which defendants had been sentenced

for crimes comparable to Smith’s. In one case, United States v.

DiSantis, 565 F.3d 354 (7th Cir. 2009), a police officer had

struck a bystander who was filming a traffic stop by the of‐

ficer, hitting the man on the head and face with the man’s

camera, then throwing the camera on the ground and stomp‐

ing on it, and finally patting the man down and—for good

measure, as it were—squeezing his genitals. For this brutal

and bizarre behavior the officer was sentenced to 66 months

in prison. It’s not obvious to us that his behavior was more

brutal than that visited by Smith on his victims, particularly

when we note that Smith had assaulted two persons in sepa‐

rate incidents and had a history of violence; no such history

is mentioned in Judge Lawrence’s discussion of the camera

case.

In United States v. Christian, 342 F.3d 744 (7th Cir. 2003), a

police officer kneed and punched a suspect in the face after

the suspect hurled insults at him, including a racial epithet.

The officer received a 33‐month prison sentence. In United

States v. White, 68 F. App’x 707 (7th Cir. 2003), a police officer

struck a woman, causing bruises, a laceration of her lip, and

a hole in her cheek that required stitches inside and outside

Case: 14-3721 Document: 41 Filed: 01/28/2016 Pages: 8
Nos. 14‐3744, 14‐3721 7

her mouth. The officer was sentenced to 27 months in pris‐

on—again just one victim, yet given a sentence almost twice

as long as Smith’s. In United States v. Cozzi, 613 F.3d 725 (7th

Cir. 2010), a police officer used a “nonpolice‐issued weapon”

called a “sap” (commonly a flat, beavertail‐shaped leather

impact weapon weighted with lead on at least one end) to

beat an arrestee. No injury is mentioned yet the sentence

was 40 months, almost three times the length of the sentence

in this case.

In the last case the judge discussed, United States v. Bart‐

lett, 567 F.3d 901 (7th Cir. 2009), three police officers were

convicted of severely beating, kicking, and otherwise brutal‐

ly assaulting two people they suspected of having stolen the

badge of one of the officers. One victim’s face was cut, and

the other was threatened with being killed, had a pen thrust

deep into his ear canal, suffered several broken bones, and

was left lying naked in the street in a pool of his own blood.

Two of the officers were sentenced to 188 months in pris‐

on—more than 13 times the length of the sentence imposed

on Smith for his unjustified assaults on his two victims—and

the third was sentenced to 208 months—roughly 15 times

the length of Smith’s sentence. Were Smith’s crimes so slight

a fraction of theirs? In short, does the judge’s review of

these cases provide any basis for thinking 14 months a prop‐

er sentence for Smith? Apart from the judge’s reference to

anger management and comments on Smith’s minor good

works in the community, no reason for the light sentence he

imposed can be found in the transcript of the sentencing

hearing.  

We add that the judge imposed the standard conditions

of supervised release without stating them in the sentencing

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8 Nos. 14‐3744, 14‐3721

hearing. That was error too; the entire sentence must be giv‐

en orally. E.g., United States v. Harper, 805 F.3d 818, 822 (7th

Cir. 2015).

Conviction affirmed, sentence vacated, case remanded

for full resentencing.

Case: 14-3721 Document: 41 Filed: 01/28/2016 Pages: 8