Mayor Explains Hard Decision on Rejecting $750,000 Settlement

Thursday night Mayor Lee Leffingwell and the Austin city council, in a 4-3 vote, rejected a settlement proposal for $750,000 with the family of a man slain by Austin police officer Leonardo Quintana.  The shooting, which happened in May 2009 outside of an east Austin apartment complex, killed Nathaniel Sanders and injured Sir Lawrence Smith.  Officer Quintana approached a vehicle occupied by Sanders and Smith, and it was believed Sanders was sleeping.  But as Quintana got closer to the vehicle, the officer believed Sanders to have woken and that he was reaching for a gun.  That's when Quintana fired the shots that killed Sanders.

The event sparked outrage and a continuing heated relationship between members of the community and the Austin Police Department.  Earlier this summer, a settlement proposal reached the desks of the Austin legal department.  The terms of the settlement would give the Sanders family money in exchange for the family to drop the city and Quintana from a lawsuit.  Thursday, Leffingwell expressed his opposition to the settlement, but acknowledged several city council members supported the settlement.

The council eventually rejected the proposal, but by a very narrow margin.  Friday, Leffingwell released a statement explaining his decision and why he wants the case to be decided by a Travis County jury.  Here is Leffingwell's response to the community (photo from Statesman.com).

Last night the Austin City Council voted 4-3 to allow the legal case surrounding the death of Nathaniel Sanders II to proceed to trial.  I joined the majority in voting against the proposed settlement.

This was perhaps the most difficult decision that this Council has faced over the past year, and it’s easy for me to see how reasonable people would disagree about the best path forward.   I don’t condemn anyone's point of view, or their vote.

This was a tragedy for the Sanders family, and a tragedy for Austin as a whole. Unfortunately, nothing that we do is going to change that.   That much is simple.

But the facts of the case are complex, as evidenced by the different conclusions that different people and groups have reached after reviewing the facts as we know them.

I think it was reasonable, from the taxpayer's perspective, for the city’s legal team to have recommended a settlement that they believed could be less than the possible cost to taxpayers to move forward with litigating the case.  I understood the business case.

I also understood the emotional appeal of settling.  Some have argued passionately that this settlement would have helped to heal the Sanders family, and I do not discount the importance of that.   My heart goes out to this family.  If there was something meaningful that I could do to make this situation better for them, I would do it.

But ultimately, after thinking and talking about it for many months, I believe that what's most important in all of this is to understand as best we can exactly what happened that night, so that we can then do everything possible to prevent it from happening again.

It would be a huge failure on our part not to learn from this tragedy.  That should begin with determining, as completely and as impartially as possible, exactly what happened.  I believe the most appropriate place to do that is in the courtroom, in front of a jury.

I’m fully aware that my decision was hurtful to some in the community, and I regret that.  I would like to have been able to make a decision last night that would have perhaps provided some immediate relief to people who I know are suffering. 

But I believe that our larger and longer-term responsibility – as difficult as it may be emotionally – is to make a full, fair and final determination about exactly what happened, so that we can then get on to the work of trying to keep it from happening again.