A former Pittsburgh police officer who transported a Homewood man to the hospital and then jail after his 2010 arrest on Monday contradicted testimony from both sides in a civil rights lawsuit against the three arresting officers.
Darren Fedorski, who is now on the police force in Scott, said the officers were handcuffing Jordan Miles when he and another officer pulled up in a police van. He confirmed that Pittsburgh police Officer Michael Saldutte looked as if he had been in a struggle.
“Mike was covered in snow,” he said. “Snow was on his head, melting. He was sweating.”
Miles, 22, claims that Saldutte, Pittsburgh police Officer David Sisak and then-Officer Richard Ewing, now a McCandless police officer, lacked probable cause and used excessive force during his Jan. 12, 2010, arrest on Tioga Street in Homewood.
The officers, who are white, contend that Miles, who is black, was acting suspiciously, fled when they questioned him and fought the officers when they arrested him.
Miles' lawyers rested their case, and lawyers for the three officers started calling witnesses, including Fedorski.
He contradicted Miles' testimony that the officers struck and choked him after he was in handcuffs and that he was lying in the snow without his coat, but he also contradicted the officers' testimony about what was said and done at the scene after Miles was handcuffed.
In particular, he didn't see Saldutte find a Mountain Dew bottle in Miles' coat pocket. Miles denies he was carrying a bottle, but the officers claim he was and that it could have been the hard object Saldutte mistook for a gun during the struggle.
U.S. District Judge David Cercone has issued a gag order that keeps lawyers on both sides from discussing the case with the media.
One legal expert said that jurors tend to give more weight to apparently neutral witnesses as long as they seem competent.
Because the officers' lawyers called Fedorski, they must have decided that how he contradicted Miles' version of events was more important than how he contradicts the officers' version, said Bruce Antkowiak, a St. Vincent College law professor.
“That's going to be the interesting thing to see,” he said. “Are they right about that? Did they make a correct calculation?”
In the defense's opening argument, Robert Leight, Ewing's lawyer, said the case is not about a gun, race, racial profiling or even unlawful arrests or excessive force.
“Quite frankly, it's not even about Jordan Miles,” he said. “It's about what a reasonably objective police officer would have done on the night ofJan. 12.”
Miles finished his testimony by telling the jury that Ryan Allen, a potential witness for the defense, purposely gave misleading information to the FBI.
“He told the FBI that I had a Mountain Dew bottle so that he could impeach himself because he didn't want to be part of this case,” Miles said.
Lying to the FBI is a federal crime.
After a long sidebar, Cercone motioned for Chris Eyster, who was in the courthouse on another matter, to come to the bench. Eyster said afterward that the judge appointed him to advise a witness about his Fifth Amendment right to avoid incriminating himself.
Miles spent much of the morning listening to lawyers argue.
During cross-examination by James Wymard, Sisak's lawyer, he barely got a word in between the often heated questions and the equally heated objections by Joel Sansone, one of Miles' lawyers.
“He's trying to put words in my client's mouth,” Sansone said.
“No, you're trying to put words in his mouth,” Wymard rebutted.
Testimony is scheduled to resume Tuesday, and lawyers for the officers plan to rest their case before the end of the week.
Brian Bowling is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-325-4301 or bbowling@tribweb.com.
