Second trial starts in suit over St. Paul police killing
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The mother of a man killed by St. Paul police in 2017 returned to federal court on Wednesday for a second trial in her lawsuit against the city.
In 2023, a jury awarded Kim Handy Jones $1.5 million in punitive damages plus $10 million in compensatory damages after finding St. Paul Police Officer Nathaniel Younce civilly liable for fatally shooting her son Cordale Handy, 29.
But in February, U.S. District Judge David Doty sharply reduced the compensatory portion to $2.5 million. In his decision, Doty wrote that while Handy was a loving and engaged member of his family who cared for his mother and siblings, he did not financially support them, and Handy Jones’ attorneys provided “meager evidence” of "quantifiable monetary loss."
Instead of accepting the lower amount, Handy Jones opted for a new trial, over which Judge John Tunheim is presiding.
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At a news conference following jury selection, Valerie Handy-Carey said Doty’s decision devalued her nephew's life.
“When is enough going to be enough that we have to justify, we have to keep fighting over and over and over again to say we’re human and you can’t do this?" Handy-Carey said.
Because jurors in the first trial already found Younce liable for Handy’s death, the new jury is tasked only with determining compensatory damages.
“This case is all about the connection that this family had with Cordale Handy. It’s not about what individuals think the value of somebody’s life is,” plaintiff’s attorney Kevin O’Connor said in his opening statement.
O’Connor acknowledged that Handy did not provide financial support to his mother and siblings, but said that Handy supported them in other ways, including by caring for Handy Jones while she recovered from back surgery and teaching his siblings how to resolve conflicts peacefully.
In her opening statement, defense attorney Stephanie Angolkar said that jurors will need to balance Handy’s contributions to his family with the estimated length of his natural life based on government actuarial statistics.
“This case is not about whether Mr. Handy’s life mattered or that it had value or that he was an important person in his family’s life, because of course he mattered and he was loved by his family,” Angolkar said. But Angolkar added that when jurors calculate the damages, “that number will fall well under $1 million. It’s not going to be the multiple millions of dollars that the plaintiff will ask you for.”
In the 2023 trial, the first jury delivered a mixed verdict where they found a second officer, Mikko Norman, not to be liable in Handy’s death. Ramsey County Attorney John Choi determined later that the officers’ use of deadly force was justified and they would not face criminal charges.
The lawsuit stemmed from an incident in which Norman and Younce responded to a domestic violence call in the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood. It happened on March 15, 2017, about six months before the St. Paul Police Department began using body cameras. Security cameras in the area captured some video related to the incident, but not the shooting itself.
In her lawsuit, Handy Jones alleged that the officers shouted conflicting commands at her son and shot him seconds after he tossed his gun away.
Handy Jones said her son was experiencing a mental health crisis and acknowledged that he had earlier fired 16 shots inside his apartment because he thought someone was “trying to hurt or kill him.”
Younce testified in the first trial that he opened fire when Handy pointed his gun toward Norman and said Handy posed an “active deadly threat … If he did not point the gun at my partner, I would not have shot him.”
Younce fired four of the seven shots that struck Handy; Norman fired the other three.
Investigators later determined that Handy’s gun was unloaded. An autopsy found that Handy had drugs in his system including N-Ethylpentylone. The drug, commonly known as “bath salts,” can result in agitation and erratic behavior.