St. Tammany deputy challenges appeals court decision allowing civil rights suit to move forward
26th December 2023 · 0 Comments
By Richard A. Webster
Contributing Writer
(Veritenews.org) — A St. Tammany Parish sheriff’s deputy has challenged a federal appeals court ruling that found he likely violated the First Amendment rights of a 14-year-old boy when he tried to stop the boy from filming his mother’s arrest at their Slidell home, at one point threatening him with a stun gun.
Following a recent federal appeals court decision, the alleged First Amendment violation is the one remaining claim in a 2021 federal civil rights suit filed by the boy’s mother, Teliah Perkins, against Ryan Moring and Kyle Hart, the two deputies that arrested her in May 2020. She also claimed the deputies, who forced her to the ground and pinned her head to the pavement during the arrest, used unconstitutionally excessive force.
Earlier this month, a three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit tossed out the excessive force claim, overturning a July 2022 order from U.S. District Judge Wendy Vitter. The panel, however, found that the First Amendment claim against Moring — over the son’s video — should move forward.
Last week, Moring’s attorney, Chadwick Collings, filed a petition asking the panel to reconsider their ruling on the First Amendment issue. Collings said Moring didn’t violate the boy’s First Amendment rights because the deputy never instructed him to stop filming. He simply requested that D.J. back away and film from the porch of his house.
“When he repeatedly refused to do so, he was met with a show of non-lethal force to induce compliance,” Collings wrote. “Never once was D.J.’s right to record hindered – his video angle was merely blocked momentarily in a reasonable effort to secure the scene of an active arrest.”
Perkins’ confrontation with the two deputies began over a minor traffic offense. An anonymous tipster had reported that she had been riding a motorcycle without a helmet in the Ozone Woods neighborhood of Slidell.
When Moring and Hart confronted Perkins in her driveway, the situation quickly spiraled out of control. Perkins, who is Black, said she was innocent and accused the deputies, both of whom are white, of racial discrimination. The deputies said she was belligerent and repeatedly ignored their orders, forcing them to take her to the ground and pin her head to the pavement as they arrested her.
Perkins’ 14-year-old son started taping the encounter on his phone. Moring shoved the teenager several times, telling him to “Get back.” The deputy then stood in front of the boy’s phone so he couldn’t record what was happening to his mother and said he would Tase him if he didn’t stop recording.
“You can’t Tase a child,” the son, who is referred to only as D.J. in court documents to protect his identity, says on the video.
“Watch me,” the deputy responds.
Perkins was later found guilty on a single charge: resisting arrest. She filed suit in May 2021, a year after the arrest. In July 2022, Vitter rejected an attempt from the deputies to throw out the case, finding that both the excessive force claim and First Amendment claim should be put before a jury.
Moring and Hart appealed. And on Nov. 30, the 5th Circuit judges determined that the deputies’ actions were “reasonable” and did not amount to excessive force. The panel did find, however, that Moring likely violated the boy’s First Amendment rights, citing the deputy’s deposition in which he admitted that he “stood in front of D.J. and blocked him from recording Perkins’s arrest.”
The appeals court ruled that while the son was close to the arrest scene, he “was not a hazard, was not too close, and did not impede the Deputies’ ability to perform their duties.”
5th Circuit Judge James Ho was the sole dissenter on the First Amendment issue, faulting the teenager for refusing to move away from the scene and for shouting at the deputies.
Collings, in asking the panel to reconsider its ruling, described the arrest as “violent” given Perkins’ resistance, and said Moring was simply trying to establish a “safe and effective perimeter” when he blocked the boy’s phone and ordered him to step back.
He also said it is “immaterial” that the incident happened on the family’s private property.
“Just feet away, on this same private property, his mother was resisting arrest by flailing in the driveway and creating an increasingly uncertain situation for the Officers,” Collings said in his petition. “Both D.J. and his mother were hostile and uncooperative.”
Nora Ahmed, legal director for the ACLU of Louisiana, which represents Perkins, said she hopes the panel will reaffirm its original decision on the First Amendment issue, which she called “essential and groundbreaking as it upholds the rights of individuals, bystanders, children, everyone to film the police.”
This article originally published in the December 18, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
