Nearly 10 years after former Tulsa police officer Betty Shelby shot and killed Terence Crutcher, a court ruled his family’s civil lawsuit against Shelby could move forward.
His sister Tiffany Crutcher, their attorneys and clergy members gathered Tuesday at Morning Star Baptist Church to celebrate the March 30 appellate court ruling.
“This moment did not come easy, it came after a decade of unimaginable loss,” Crutcher said at the north Tulsa church. “There were days when justice felt far away and days when hope was tested in ways I never thought I could endure and yet we did not give up.”
“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice,” she said, quoting Martin Luther King Jr.
Shelby shot and killed Terence Crutcher in September 2016. She was one of the first officers to arrive at the scene after his car had stalled and was idling in the road near 36th Street North and North Lewis Avenue.
Relatives maintain he posed no threat to the officer and that she used unreasonable force when she shot him. Shelby claimed he repeatedly ignored her commands throughout the interaction.
He was unarmed.
Crutcher’s estate sued Shelby and the City of Tulsa in June 2017, a month after a Tulsa County jury found Shelby not guilty of manslaughter. Two years later, the Department of Justice closed their federal investigation into Terence Crutcher’s death.
Shelby resigned from her position with the Tulsa Police Department after her acquittal but was later hired as a reserve officer with the Rogers County Sheriff’s Office.
“The Estate brought a Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim against Shelby, a wrongful-death claim under Oklahoma law against the City, and Monell claims against the City for unconstitutional policies and practices resulting in Crutcher’s death,” the March 30 appeals court decision states.
A federal district court judge dismissed the family’s original lawsuit in 2024, on the grounds that Shelby had qualified immunity saying “the Estate failed to plausibly allege municipal liability,” the March 30 appeals court order states.
On Monday, the United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed there was no basis to hold the city liable under the Monell statute but reversed the decision granting Shelby qualified immunity.
“We conclude that the evidence supports the Estate’s claim that Shelby violated Crutcher’s constitutional rights by using unreasonable force,” the court stated.
While speaking to an audience of supporters on Tuesday, attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons said Terence Crutcher “did everything he was supposed to do and then he was shot and killed.”
“The Tenth Circuit validated what we’ve been saying since the first day that we saw what happened to Terence,” the attorney said. “He was shot as an unarmed individual that was complying, that was walking away from the shield. He did not have a weapon. She said ‘put his hands up’ and he put his hands up.”
Shelby did not activate her dashcam video or body-worn camera during the fatal interaction but the incident was captured from above by a police helicopter and on the dash-cam of another officer who had arrived at the scene.
Crutcher’s sister thanked her attorneys, the community and a “coalition of faith leaders” for their unwavering support over the last decade and declared: “This is not the end.”
Tiffany Crutcher vowed “to keep fighting not just for our family, but for every family facing injustice across this nation.”
“We always talk about full justice. Full justice includes criminal justice. Well unfortunately, that did not happen,” Solomon-Simmons told The Eagle. “But on the civil side, it is important that a court says what happened was unconstitutional, it was unlawful and these are the people that are responsible. That is important to the family.”
He added financial compensation was also necessary.
“These kids have been growing up without their father for 10 years,” he said. “So they should be properly compensated for that loss and what they’ve been through.”
