A federal jury awarded $3.25 million on Monday to the family of Cordale Handy, who was fatally shot by St. Paul police officers in 2017.
Handy’s mother filed a federal lawsuit and, in a trial in summer 2023, a jury found one of two officers who shot the 29-year-old used excessive force. That jury decided the city of St. Paul should pay Handy’s family $1.5 million in punitive damages and $10 million in compensatory damages.
The city filed an appeal about the amount of compensatory damages and U.S. District Judge David Doty, who presided over the original case, wrote in a February order that the $10 million civil award was “patently excessive.” Handy’s mother, Kimberly Handy-Jones, opted for another trial to decide compensatory damages.
During Friday’s closing arguments, Assistant City Attorney Tony Edwards asked the jury to award Handy’s family about $100,000-$400,000 in compensatory damages. Kevin O’Connor, an attorney for Handy-Jones, told the jury the amount should be $17 million.
The jury began deliberations on Friday afternoon and continued Monday morning, deliberating for about 3½ hours between both days before returning with their verdict Monday morning.
Shooting in 2017
St. Paul Police Officer Nathaniel Younce and Mikko Norman responded about 2:20 a.m. on March 15, 2017, to a 911 call about a female screaming in an apartment building in the 700 block of East Sixth Street. Handy lived there with his girlfriend of 10 years, Markeeta Johnson-Blakney.
Younce and Norman didn’t know before they shot Handy that he’d fired 16 gunshots at a couch in his apartment. He was seeing people who weren’t there and thought they were hiding in the apartment, Johnson-Blakney testified during the first trial.
A toxicology report showed Handy had a stimulant drug in his system known by the street name of “bath salts.” O’Connor told the jury on Wednesday that Handy had used marijuana or “Molly” and it was apparently laced with another drug, which caused him to not be “in his right state of mind.”
The officers encountered Handy outside the building. They reported they saw Handy fall down backward, lower his gun and raise it briefly toward Norman. The officers said Handy raised the gun toward Norman a second time and they shot him 10 times, seven of which struck him when he was on the ground. The incident occurred out of view of security cameras, and the police department hadn’t yet rolled out body-worn cameras.
The previous jury concluded Younce violated Handy’s constitutional rights and wrongfully caused his death. Norman fired just after Younce and jurors found him not civilly liable. Neither officer was criminally charged. Norman left the police department in 2021 and Younce last summer.
Possible appeal
O’Connor said outside of court Monday that he plans to file an appeal over the new amount. He told jurors last week that the case was about the value of Handy’s life to his family and the losses they suffered.
U.S. District Judge John Tunheim told jurors Wednesday that they should consider factors including Handy’s past contributions, his life expectancy and what he would have provided to his next of kin if he’d lived. He said they should not consider an amount that would punish Younce or the city, or for the “pain and suffering” of Handy before his death.
In an October 2023 filing, the city asked Doty to order compensatory damages be reduced to $1 million at most or to order a new trial.
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In a legal memo, the city wrote that factors the jury could consider “include funeral expenses, medical expenses and loss of income or economic support, and the loss of the decedent’s ‘advice, comfort, assistance, and protection.’”
But the city wrote that the $10 million initially awarded by the jury “bear no reasonable relationship to the evidence introduced at trial,” and added that the only testimony related to money damages was provided by Handy-Jones, who said her son didn’t provide her with financial support, but periodically sent her gifts.
Handy worked at the Salvation Army. He did not have children he needed to provide for, the city noted.