Estate of Heenan v. City of Madison

The City of Madison and its insurance company have agreed to pay $2.3 million to settle the civil rights claims of the family of Paul Heenan, the thirty-year old musician and recording engineer who was shot and killed by Madison Police Officer Stephen Heimsness, on November 9, 2012, after he mistook a neighbor’s Baldwin Street house for the one he had moved into a week earlier, prompting a 911 call. Heenan, who had grown up in Madison, had recently returned to the city after living in New York, and had recently moved into the Baldwin street home with another musician with whom he planned to work, Amelia Royko Maurer, and her family. He had gone out on the evening of November 8 to take in the live-music scene, and was dropped off near his new home just after bar time. When he began to enter the wrong house, the neighbor who lived there, Kevin O’Malley, came to the front door. Recognizing Heenan as his neighbor, O’Malley began walking Heenan to his residence two doors away. In the meantime, O’Malley’s wife, unaware that her husband was walking Heenan back to the Maurer residence, erred on what she believed to be the side of caution, and called 911, specifically reporting that her husband “went down to the door, and I just said is everything okay and he said yes, but I have no idea what’s going on,” and that she wanted “everything to be fairly calm when somebody comes.” The first officer on the scene was Stephen Heimsness, a Madison police veteran who had been the subject of multiple prior settlements based on his excessive use of force. As far back as 2001, MPD found that “Heimsness employed poor judgment and tactical decision making” and that “he places himself in a position that he eventually believes poses an imminent threat,” and concluded that he used unreasonable deadly force. After the sustained unreasonable use of deadly force in the parking ramp in 2001, Heimsness received six more excessive force complaints, only one of which was investigated to completion. The family claimed that failure to fully investigate complaints of excessive force was one of the factors allowing Heimsness to inexplicably remain on the force despite having 11 excessive force complaints lodged against him in a 10 year period between 1999 and 2009. Heimsness drove to the scene without lights or siren, and silently approached with his gun drawn, as O’Malley tried to waltz an intoxicated Heenan down the sidewalk. Though it was almost 3 a.m., Heimsness did not announce himself as a police officer. He did not approach in a calm or helpful manner, but instead angrily shouted at ”get down, get down.” O’Malley stepped off to the side, but Heenan moved toward Heimsness, and, O’Malley said, swatted at Heimsness with an open hand. By all accounts, Heenan appeared unarmed and had visibly empty hands. Believing that Officer Heimsness might shoot Heenan, Kevin O’Malley tried desperately to prevent the tragedy, shouting, “He’s a neighbor! He’s a neighbor!” According to Heimsness, he then employed a one-handed light shove which was sufficient to push Heenan backwards. According to O’Malley, Heenan backed up of his own volition, and began to cower down with his back against the utility pole on scene. Heimsness, then, squared up and fired three shots into Heenan’s body. Heimsness had claimed that Heenan had been reaching for Heimsness’s gun. The City took DNA swabs of Heimsness’s gun for the purpose of preserving relevant evidence as to whether Heenan’s DNA was on the gun, but the City never processed those DNA swabs for evidence. The Chief Dane County Medical Examiner testified that the autopsy showed that Heenan’s left hand was flush or near flush against his abdomen, his right arm was flush with his ribcage, and his back was likely up against a hard surface as Heenan sustained the shots – one through the back of the left hand, one through the chest, and one through his right arm and into his ribcage. A backup officer, Stacy Troumbly, was on the scene, standing behind Heenan directly in the line of fire. She had her Taser in hand when Heimsness fired. Within seconds, Heenan died at the scene.