PORTLAND (AP) – A federal magistrate judge recommended Thursday that a lawsuit against Scarborough police and Maine State Police be dismissed in connection with the fatal shooting of a deaf man.

Susan Vincent and Christina Cookson, the daughters of 60-year-old James Levier, filed the suit earlier this year, arguing that police should have used a sign language interpreter and a nonlethal weapon to subdue their father during a standoff in March 2001. Police shot Levier five times when he appeared to aim a hunting rifle at them.

Levier was among a group of former students of the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Falmouth who said they were physically and sexually abused by school staff.

He was armed with a rifle when he was killed in the Hannaford supermarket parking lot off of Route 1 in Scarborough.

His shirt and van were festooned with hand-scrawled messages about fighting for the rights of the deaf.

In his decision, U.S. Magistrate Judge David Cohen recommended that the defendants’ motion for summary judgment be granted. Summary judgment is when a party in a civil action files a motion for judgment in their favor without having a trial.

Cohen wrote that the officers’ actions did not show indifference to Levier’s rights or represent conduct that could be implied as malicious.

“While the defendants can be faulted for their handling of the events of March 16, 2001, one cannot but reasonably conclude from the totality of the cognizable evidence that they endeavored to resolve the Levier standoff peacefully while addressing the appreciable public-safety threat Levier’s conduct posed,” Cohen wrote.

Cohen’s recommendation will be forward to a federal judge. The judge will make a final decision on the case sometime in the weeks ahead.

AP-ES-11-20-03 2001EST



Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.