Aaron Martinez Speaks to ABC 12 About Wrongful Death Case
SAGINAW, Mich. (WJRT) - A federal judge says lawsuits filed against the city of Saginaw and the police department can proceed, nearly seven years after their inaction was called into question. It will be seven years tomorrow that Saginaw Police officers came upon a vehicle stopped in the roadway. The four people who were with the car were allowed to drive off, and minutes later, two were dead.
The lawsuits were filed a little more than three years ago. The city's attorneys asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuits once and he ruled no. The city asked a second time, and this week, a second no, with some harsh wording from the judge.
"I saw the term incompetent used in the opinion,"says attorney Aaron Martinez. It was about four o'clock in the morning of June 24th, 2016, and five Saginaw police officers are speaking with Rodolfo Sanchez, who is shirtless outside a car that is stopped along Michigan Avenue. Sanchez's girlfriend, Lindsey Drake is holding their four-month-old daughter Amiliana. They said they were at a party, there was a fight, and they left. The officers questioned them for about eight minutes. "You are all cool together, right," a police officer asks the people. Police body camera video captured the interaction. After they said yes, the officer said, "alright, go ahead and go home."
"They said okay, I don't think this is something we want to get involved in and they ordered these individuals to go on their way, without even checking to see whether or not anybody in that vehicle was capable of operating it," says Martinez, who represents the estate of Lindsey Drake.
About seven minutes after they drove off, Rodolfo Sanchez crashed the car into a tree in Carrollton Township. Lindsey Drake and Amiliana died. Sanchez's blood alcohol level was at .20 and was sentenced to at least twelve years in prison. The estates of Drake and Amiliana filed lawsuits, claiming the officers should have done more investigating during that initial incident.
This week, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Ludington denied the city's request to dismiss the lawsuits, at one point writing, "If this case does not present a question of fact concerning whether an officer may be liable under the Due Process Clause for the "decision to permit someone he knows to have been drinking to continue driving without administering a breathalyzer, then, apart from police begging people to drive drunk, no case ever will."
"This is as far as a judge has gone in essentially saying this is what a jury should do," says attorney Mike Nichols, who also represents the Drake estate. Question now is, what will the city do? They could appeal this ruling the to U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Nichols partly blames the attorneys for the city for dragging this case out this long. "This is what the evidence shows, so it's on them for getting verbally spanked, the way they were with terms like incompetence and negligence, that's on them," says Nichols.
We emailed and called John Clark, the city's lead attorney on this case, but we did not hear back.