Appeal rejected in Tyjuan Hill case

A lawsuit against NYPD Sergeant Patrick Quigley that began with the 2012 shooting of Red Hook Houses resident Tyjuan Hill ended on September 26, 2019. The NYPD will not compensate Hill’s estate for the loss of his life at age 22.

The deceased’s mother, Carol Hill, filed the civil suit seven years ago after a prostitution sting operation by the 76th Precinct at Henry and Huntington streets ended in Hill’s death on Hamilton Avenue. Hill had fled from an attempted arrest, and after police had tackled him, five officers held him to the ground while Quigley shot him in the back of the head. Allegedly, Hill, while struggling against the other policemen, had pointed a gun backward at Quigley, who would face no criminal charges for the incident.

After an initial mistrial owing to a hung jury, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York found Quigley not guilty of excessive force in 2018. The plaintiff filed an appeal, but in the fall of 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the verdict of the lower court. Only the Supreme Court could overturn the most recent decision, which brought the lawsuit to a close.

Carol Hill’s lawyer, David B. Shanies, had hoped to persuade the appellate court that, at the trial, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein had used insufficiently restrictive language when describing for the jury the circumstances that would permit a police officer to use lethal force. Judges Peter W. Hall, Debra Ann Livingston, and Jane A. Restani dismissed this argument, along with complaints about the exclusion from the trial of recordings of 911 calls and “confusing” judicial instructions regarding the question of intent in the shooting.

“It’s very disappointing that we were unable to obtain justice for Mr. Hill and his family,” Shanies said. “One of the hardest tasks for me in my job is to try to get people and the system to place equal value on black and brown lives as they do on white lives, and too often that fails to happen.”