The verdict is in for Nick Hillary’s civil rights trial against Potsdam Police: former chief Ed Tischler and current chief Mark Murray and the...
Jun 10, 2022 , The verdict is in for Nick Hillary’s civil rights trial against Potsdam Police: former chief Ed Tischler and current chief Mark Murray and the village of Potsdam are cleared by a jury in the U.S.
Northern District court in Albany Friday.
The jury found Hillary's team did not prove with a preponderance of evidence that Potsdam police unlawfully detained him in 2011.
Hillary had alleged police violated his civil rights when they detained him for six hours without a warrant in 2011 in connection with the murder of 12 year-old Garrett Phillips.
Hillary was found not guilty five years later for that crime in a bench trial.
The burden on Hillary’s lawyers was to prove that Potsdam police broke the law when they detained Hillary on October 26, 2011. "Unlawful" in this case, under the 4th amendment, means without good reason.
Potsdam police’s attorney Gregg Johnson successfully argued that his clients’ reasons for detaining Hillary deserved an exception to the 4th amendment.
One probable cause, he argued, was that Hillary could have had evidence on him that could be destroyed or altered, so they couldn’t let him leave.
Related stories: Nick Hillary's civil rights case: a decade in the making But the defense also argued that Murray or Tischler weren’t the ones actually responsible for detaining Hillary, because it was New York State Police Investigator Gary Snell who first announced to Hillary that was wouldn’t be allowed to leave the station.
Snell or the state police were not named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Hillary initiated his civil rights claims over a decade ago, though by the time the case went to trial this week the scope had been extremely pared down to this one claim about wrongful detention.
Attorney Thomas Mortati, who was the lead attorney for Potsdam for years and took all the depositions preparing the case over the years, said Friday this verdict shows Hillary’s claims are unsupported by the law.
The fact that Murray began applying for a search warrant that morning, even though it only arrived towards the end of that day after Hillary had been detained for six hours, also may have made Hillary’s claim harder to prove.
In a civil case like this, the jury is instructed that they need to be convinced there was a preponderance of evidence to support the claim.
That’s a lower burden of proof than in criminal cases.
The jurors needed to believe that it’s more likely than not , 51 percent likely , that Hillary was wrongfully detained for those six hours.
Because this suit has been going for eleven years, almost as long as it’s been since the murder of Garrett Phillips, this week’s trial at times felt like a relitigation of the criminal case.
And in Hillary’s attorney Brett Klein’s closing argument, he focused on pointing out discrepancies in the timeline police had put together by the time they detained Hillary based on conflicting witness statements.
In that way, Nick Hillary said Friday he believes the record was set straight this week. “And that victory is actually getting the truth into the public sphere for the first time," Hillary said.
Attorney Mani Tafari, who represented Hillary from the time Hillary initiated his civil case, said Hillary bringing forth this civil suit against the officers is going to benefit other people in Potsdam and St.
Lawrence county. “Because now I believe that those in law enforcement who tried to violate Mr.
Hillary's rights will think twice before they do it to any other citizen of Potsdam, said Tafari. "And in that respect, it’s also a very big win.” As for whether they plan to appeal, Tafari said he and Hillary’s legal team are considering all legal options at this time. source