The New Mexico Justice Department said it will not criminally prosecute three police officers who went to the wrong house when responding to a call last year and fatally shot the armed homeowner as he opened the door.
Deputy Attorney General Greer E. Staley said in a letter dated Friday that an expert report had found the Farmington police officers’ use of deadly force was “lawful” in light of the threat they faced from Robert Dotson, 52, and then his wife, who were both armed. Department spokesperson Lauren Rodriguez said in a statement Wednesday that there was “no basis” for criminally prosecuting the officers “after a careful review of the facts.”
An attorney representing the Dotson family said in a statement to The Washington Post that the “devastated family” was not “particularly surprised by the decision.”
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“An already distraught family will now begin to process living in a town, and a state, that believes the actions of Officers Wasson, Estrada, and Goodluck were justified to end the life of Robert Dotson,” said Mark Curnutt, the family attorney. “The family feels justice in New Mexico is a different standard than in other states,” he added, referring to out-of-state cases in which officers faced charges.
In September, Dotson’s family sued the city of Farmington and the three officers involved in the incident: Daniel Estrada, Dylan Goodluck and Waylon Wasson. The lawsuit alleged that the officers “acted unreasonably” and “applied excessive, unnecessary force” in fatally shooting Dotson while knowing they may have been at the wrong residence.
Body-camera footage released just over a week after the shooting late on April 5 last year showed the officers talking about how they were not sure whether they were at the correct address while responding to a domestic violence call.
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According to a police statement issued the day after the shooting, when there was no answer to their knock on the door after they identified themselves as police officers, the officers asked the dispatcher to call the party that made the initial report to ask them to come to the front door. They then discussed whether they were at the right address.
When Dotson opened the screen door and began to raise his gun, police opened fire, body-cam footage showed. After Dotson was shot, his wife, Kimberly, opened fire on the officers, the police statement at the time said. Police then returned fire.
“Once she realized that the individuals outside the residence were officers, she put the gun down and complied with the officer’s commands,” the statement said, adding that Kimberly Dotson was not injured. Robert Dotson was struck by 12 bullets and pronounced dead the next day, the family’s lawsuit said.
In a letter addressed to the district attorney, Staley said that to “hold an officer accountable for the use of excessive force, the State would be required to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that a reasonable officer would have acted as the officer did under the totality of the circumstances.”
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A detailed report from Seth Stoughton — a former police officer, professor and an expert in the use of force by police officers for the New Mexico Justice Department — found that “both Mr. Dotson and Ms. Dotson presented imminent threats of death or great bodily harm to the officers at the time.”
Share this articleShareThe officers’ use of “deadly force” was therefore “proportional to the threat that Mr. Dotson and Ms. Dotson presented at the time,” Stoughton said in his report, which was attached to Staley’s letter.
The officers positioned themselves in front of the home while one knocked and announced the police presence, tactics that are “entirely consistent with generally accepted police practices when responding to calls of this type,” according to Stoughton.
He acknowledged that the officers went to the wrong house, which was “clearly an error.” But the “foreseeable consequences of responding to the wrong house are limited to the delay in locating and responding to the correct address,” he added. “From the perspective of police practices, it simply is not foreseeable that knocking on the wrong door and announcing the police presence will create a deadly force situation.”
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Staley, the deputy attorney general, wrote that, based on Stoughton’s report, “we have determined that no criminal charges can be sustained under these circumstances. As such, the New Mexico Department of Justice considers this matter closed.”
However, Staley noted that the review only addressed the officers’ criminal liability and not any disciplinary or civil liability issues.
Rodriguez, the New Mexico Justice Department spokesperson, said that department prosecutors met with Dotson’s family to explain the decision and review Stoughton’s report. Curnutt, the family’s attorney, confirmed Dotson’s relatives met with the state’s Justice Department but raised concerns about the validity of the information provided to the state attorney general from the New Mexico State Police, which initially referred to the Dotsons as suspects.
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The family’s lawsuit filed last year said that officers did not knock loudly and that the announcement identifying themselves as police “could not be heard and was not heard upstairs.”
When Dotson opened his front door, taking his gun for personal protection, he “was blinded by police flashlights,” the document said. “The police did not announce themselves, and Mr. Dotson had no idea who was in his yard shining bright lights at him.”
Kimberly Dotson came downstairs to find her husband “lying in his blood in the doorway” and, not knowing the identity of the people in her front yard, “fired outside at whoever had shot her husband,” the lawsuit alleged.
As the officers announced themselves after opening fire at her, she “told them that someone had shot her husband and requested their help,” it continued. “She did not realize even at that moment that the three police officers had killed her husband.”
Curnutt said the attorney general’s office did not complete an independent investigation or speak with the family before making its decision not to pursue the criminal charges.
“Nothing can return Robert to his family,” Curnutt said. “And it appears nothing will be done to hold these officers accountable.”
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