St. Paul’s $7.5M payment closes Cordale Handy shooting lawsuit

A federal judge ordered the city of St. Paul to pay $1.7 million in attorneys fees after a jury found an officer used excessive force in fatally shooting a 29-year-old man.

The payment was on top of $3.25 million in compensatory damages and $1.5 million in punitive damage, plus interest. The city sent payment of more than $7.5 million last week.

Cordale Handy’s mother pursued the lawsuit, and her attorneys filed a notice in federal court on Monday that the city had paid the full amount.

The Handy case was a rare occasion of a lawsuit against the city of St. Paul in a shooting by an officer being heard by a jury — and it’s the largest amount that’s been awarded in a case involving the city of St. Paul. Other lawsuits have been dismissed before trial or ended in settlements negotiated between attorneys.

A $2 million settlement approved by the St. Paul City Council in 2017 had been the largest the city had agreed to. It was for a man who was hospitalized for two weeks after he was bit by a police dog and kicked by a St. Paul officer while he was unarmed and not the suspect police were looking for.

St. Paul is self insured, meaning the money comes out of the city’s budget. The city budgets annually for legal purposes and is also taking cost-saving measures this year to help cover the full cost of the payment, according to a spokesperson for the mayor.

For Handy’s mother, Kimberly Handy-Jones, “no matter how much money the city pays, it never brings back somebody’s child,” said attorney Paul Bosman, who represented her with attorney Kevin O’Connor.

It was a legal victory, “but it’s always a little hollow because you can’t pay for the loss of Cordale,” he added Monday.

St. Paul City Attorney Lyndsey Olson said the judge’s rulings surprised the city because they differed from the “earlier, well-reasoned decisions” of the original judge on the case.

“Recognizing the court’s broad discretion, both the city and the plaintiff have chosen to accept these rulings rather than prolong the matter with additional appeals,” she said in a statement.

1 of 2 officers found civilly liable

St. Paul Police officers Nathaniel Younce and Mikko Norman responded about 2:20 a.m. on March 15, 2017, to a 911 call about a female screaming in an apartment building in the 700 block of East Sixth Street in Dayton’s Bluff. Handy lived there with his girlfriend of 10 years.

Younce and Norman didn’t know before they shot Handy that he’d fired 16 gunshots at a couch in his apartment. He was seeing people who weren’t there and thought they were hiding in the apartment, his girlfriend testified during the first trial in the lawsuit.

A toxicology report showed Handy had a stimulant drug in his system known by the street name of “bath salts.” O’Connor, Handy-Jones’ attorney, told a jury in January that Handy had used marijuana or “Molly” and it was apparently laced with another drug, which caused him to not be “in his right state of mind.”

The officers encountered Handy outside the building. They reported they saw Handy fall down backward, lower his gun and raise it briefly toward Norman. The officers said Handy raised the gun toward Norman a second time, and the officers fired. The incident occurred out of view of security cameras, and the police department hadn’t yet rolled out body-worn cameras.

Handy’s girlfriend and a neighbor testified he did not point the gun.

The previous jury concluded Younce violated Handy’s constitutional rights and wrongfully caused his death. Norman fired just after Younce and jurors found him not civilly liable. An earlier investigation concluded they were not criminally responsible, and they were not charged.

2nd trial was over compensatory damages