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Evidence in the death of a member of the Ute Indian Tribe has been spoiled or destroyed, making it difficult to determine how he died following a high-speed chase with state and local law officers, attorneys told a federal appeals court on Wednesday.
But lawyers for the officers argued before a panel of justices from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in session at the law school at Brigham Young University in Provo, that the FBI was in charge of the investigation of the death of 21-year-old Todd R. Murray in 2007 and concluded that Murray had committed suicide.
Murray had been the passenger of a car that Utah Highway Patrol Officer Dave Swenson attempted to stop on Highway 40 in Uintah County. After a high speed chase, Murray got out of the car and fled, was pursued by other officers who had arrived at the scene and died of a gunshot wound to his head,.
Murray's parents, Debra Jones and Arden C. Post, sued state and local officers in 2008 alleging that Vernal police officer Vance Norton had shot Murray in the back of his head, though evidence showed Norton had been 113 yards away when he had fired two rounds. Toxicology tests also showed Murray was highly intoxicated and had methamphetamine in his body at the time.
U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that evidence showed Murray had committed suicide.
But Frances Bassett, attorney for Murray's parents, told the three-judge appeals court panel that there had been "wholesale spoliation" of evidence in the case, making it difficult if not impossible to challenge the officers' accounts of the incident.
"There seems to be no dispute there was spoliation of evidence," Bassett said in asking the justices to enter a judgment in favor of her clients, or at least to exclude evidence and order a jury trial.
But Jesse Trentadue, the attorney for the Uintah County and Vernal officers, said that it was the FBI and not the local officers who conducted the investigation and held the evidence. And federal agents found no evidence to contradict the version of events told by the local law officers and saw no reason to preserve evidence, he said.
The FBI agent in charge of the investigation "saw nothing at the site to indicating it was not a suicide," he said.
The panel took the case under advisement.