Federal judge rules $10 million lawsuit against NYC can go forward: NYPD Officer Tasered Latino Man on Ledge of Building

From [HERE] A federal judge will allow a mother of a Latino man who fell 10 feet and died after a cop Tasered him to sue the city for using excessive force.

Judge Sandra Townes rejected a city effort to dismiss the $10 million suit against two cops because there is enough evidence they violated police guidelines in using the stun gun to bring down Iman Morales even though he was standing on a second-floor ledge. In the Sept. 24, 2008 incident, Morales, who had a history of mental illness, had been running naked on a fire escape of a building on Tompkins Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, wielding a fluorescent light bulb.

With Morales perched more than 10 feet above the sidewalk, Officer Nicholas Marchesona fired the 50,000-volt electroshock on the orders of Lt. Michael Pigott, then a supervisor in the NYPD's elite Emergency Service Unit.

Morales suffered a seizure and pitched forward, striking the pavement head-first. Police Department guidelines state the a Taser should not be used if a person could fall from a height. After the incident Offier Pigott committed suicide. According to reports, his suicide note indicated that he was afraid of being charged for the death of Morales. 

The city's lawyer argued Marchesona and Pigott acted reasonably under the circumstances — but the judge said it’ll be up to a jury to decide.

"The circumstances surrounding (the) precarious perch, the challenges facing officers at the scene, and the resulting order to use the Taser on Morales have not been illuminated at this point in the litigation," Townes wrote in an 11-page decision that pushes the lawsuit ahead.

The cops, the judge wrote, may have "departed from ordinary care in using a Taser when they were in a position to know that he could fall from an elevated surface."

Two days after Morales' death, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly appointed a new commanding officer to the ESU.

Pigott was stripped of his badge and gun, and later shot and killed himself with another officer's service gun. Marchesona has since been promoted to detective.

The city Law Department and lawyers for all the parties did not respond to requests for comment.