Sentencing Guidelines Not Applied to White Birmingham Cop who Beat Handcuffed Black Man - Appeal of Sentence Filed

Alabama.com

The U.S. Attorneys Office on Thursday filed a notice that it was appealing to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals the sentence handed down to a former Birmingham police detective, who was convicted last year on an excessive force charge related to hitting a handcuffed man in the backseat of a patrol car in 2007.

Corey Hooper had been sentenced March 7 by U.S. District Court Judge Inge Johnson to five years probation, including six months home detention, for his conviction the excessive force charge.

At Hooper's sentencing hearing Assistant U.S. Attorney Pat Meadows objected to the sentence because he said the judge varied greatly from the sentencing guidelines. He said after the hearing that prosecutors would review the sentence for a possible appeal. He had suggested more than seven years in prison for Hooper.

Last year a federal jury in a civil trial of a lawsuit filed against Hooper found that Hooper had used excessive force against Gulley for the same incident. The jury awarded Gulley $71,290 in the case. Gulley's injuries were so severe he had to go to the hospital three separate times, Gulley's attorney Wendy Brooks Crew told jurors.

According to the lawsuit, Gulley had been arrested and was in handcuffs in the back of a police car when Hooper, who was not the arresting officer, pulled him from a patrol car and repeatedly punched him in the face with a closed fist causing severe injury to Gulley. Jurors found that once apprehended, Gulley was not trying to escape and was not posing a threat. The jury deliberated less than an hour and a half before finding Officer Hooper, guilty of depriving Gulley's civil rights. [MORE]

U.S. District Court Judge Inge Johnson, who is a white woman, also ordered that during probation Hooper is not to get into any new debt so he can repay a civil lawsuit judgment against him to Martez Gulley, the man he was charged with hitting. Hooper also can't get a job in law enforcement or security and must participate in an anger management program, she said.

"I think you snapped that day. You're not allowed to snap," Johnson said. "So I want you to get some treatment." "Your conduct was inexcusable. You shouldn't have beaten a man with his hands handcuffed behind his back," the judge said. [MORE]