Honolulu police officers sued in man’s death

On the night of March 16, 2016, Honolulu police officers repeatedly pepper-sprayed 38-year-old Sheldon Haleck and shot him with a Taser gun before he fell to the ground in the middle of South King Street. As Haleck screamed, police handcuffed him and put him in leg shackles.

Haleck became unresponsive within seconds of being cuffed and was rushed to the emergency room at The Queen’s Medical Center. He never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead the next morning.

A panel of eight jurors — three men and five women — are now tasked with deciding whether police officers used excessive and unreasonable force as they tried to get Haleck out of the middle of the street in a trial that began Wednesday in U.S. District Court in downtown Honolulu, just two blocks from where Haleck had been spotted walking through traffic that night on the street fronting Iolani Palace.

Three Honolulu police officers — Christopher Chung, Samantha Critchlow and Stephen Kardash — are being sued in their individual capacities by Haleck’s family. Such cases rarely go to trial, but this time the City of Honolulu has chosen not to settle.

Honolulu attorney Eric Seitz, who is representing Haleck’s family, has not yet specified the damages that are being sought in the case.

Jurors have so far heard from officers Chung and Critchlow, heard from the emergency room doctor who treated Haleck when he was brought to Queen’s that night and seen video of Haleck being Tasered that night. The case is being overseen by Judge Helen Gillmor.

The plaintiffs are arguing that Haleck, who was high on methamphetamine, was pepper-sprayed about a dozen times and shot with a Taser gun as many as three times, all within a span of just five minutes — a timeline corroborated by the defense. Seitz has argued that Haleck wasn’t threatening anyone that night and that traffic already had been stopped along the busy street as officers tried to get him to move to the sidewalk. His only offense was disorderly conduct, a petty misdemeanor.

In evaluating the level of force that should be used, police must take into account the severity of the crime, the level of threat and the subject’s behavior or level of resistance, noted Seitz as he questioned the police officers.

The defense is arguing that the pepper spray wasn’t working on Haleck, which is why officers sprayed him so many times. Honolulu Deputy Corporation Counsel Traci Morita is also seeking to convince jurors that the Taser gun, while deployed by Chung, likely didn’t shock him. Not only was the officers’ use of force reasonable, according to the defense, it wasn’t what killed him.

Police officers stressed throughout testimony that Haleck, by being in the middle of a major, five-lane street, had not only put himself in danger, but also the responding officers.

“The threat there was that there were vehicles in the area and we could be hit at any time,” said Chung.

Chung, 66, testified that he was the first on the scene that night and repeatedly told Haleck to move onto the sidewalk, to no avail. He kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Chung, who said he suspected Haleck was on drugs.

Chung said he sprayed him once with his pepper spray, and Haleck began running around and it didn’t seem to have an effect. So he sprayed him two to three more times — each time from about 2 to 5 feet away.

Chung said he then deployed his Taser twice, but the two probes didn’t seem to connect with Haleck’s skin to deliver a shock. Chung said Haleck was not being threatening toward him, but he needed to get him out of the street.

“He still placed us in a bad situation,” said Chung.

Critchlow, who soon arrived to back up Chung, said she pepper-sprayed Haleck four to five times but that she wasn’t sure whether the spray directly hit him. She said she has to make split-second decisions every day as an officer.

“I went there to back up my officer, my fellow officer,” she said, choking up with tears. “Would have been simple like that — just get him out of the road. But it didn’t happen that way.”

Critchlow called the level of force used that night “very reasonable” given the “totality of circumstances.”

But the plaintiffs poked holes in the officers’ arguments that the major threat that night was being hit by traffic, pointing out that Critchlow wrote in her “use of force” report that cars were stopped waiting for the police to clear the area.

Critchlow also wrote that Haleck appeared to be high on drugs and was sweating profusely. Seitz asked whether that should have guided her response, insinuating that maybe pepper- spraying him or Tasering him wasn’t safe.

“Honestly, I’m not sure,” she said. “All I know is that I tried to grab him and that didn’t work. I tried to pepper-spray him and that didn’t work.”

Irminne Van Dyken, the doctor who treated Haleck that night, testified that she removed two Taser darts from Haleck’s back, casting doubt on the defense’s argument that the Taser gun hadn’t actually shocked Haleck. She also testified that there were two puncture wounds on his chest, surrounded by bruising, suggesting that the Taser darts may have hit him there as well.

Asked by Morita whether she could be sure that Haleck was actually shocked, Van Dyken said she could not. “But you have to wonder why he went into cardiac arrest,” she said.

The plaintiffs could conclude its case as early as today, with the defense presenting its case next week.