As the jurors left the courtroom to begin deliberations last week, Dudley Teel was confident his attorneys had made a compelling case against the sheriff’s deputy who fatally shot his wife, Susan, on a tragic July night in 2017.
“Even after the judge tied our hands with pretrial rulings,” the Vero Beach physician said, “I thought we had a good case and that the jury was given enough evidence for us to win.”
He was wrong.
After only one hour of deliberations at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, the six-person jury ruled in favor of Sheriff’s Deputy Jonathan Lozada, embracing the defendant’s argument that he was justified in shooting the petite, 62-year-old woman in a second-floor bedroom in her home.
The verdict in the civil-rights case stunned Teel, so much so that he needed a day to digest the outcome before offering any public comment, which began with the words: “We’re very disappointed.”
Teel went on to say the jury’s decision was “very difficult” for his family, and that “even our attorneys had a hard time accepting it.”
He said his Stuart-based attorneys brought up “issues” with some of U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks’ rulings and the conduct of the trial, and he plans to file another appeal with the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Remember: Middlebrooks initially dismissed the case, saying the shooting was justified, but Teel appealed to the 11th Circuit, where a three-judge panel issued a strongly worded, 22-page opinion reinstating the lawsuit and describing Lozada’s actions as “wholly unnecessary.”
This latest appeal will also attempt to reinstate the Sheriff’s Office as a defendant, Teel said, adding that he has 30 days to file.
“Sitting through the presentation of the case in court was a gut-wrenching experience,” Teel said. “My current wife and I spent the night talking about whether we should appeal. I also talked to my children about it.
“We’re going to do a little more research and talk to an appellate attorney, but we believe there were glaring errors made during the trial, and even during the pretrial motions,” he added.
“We’re not done.”
After years of waiting for his day in court, Teel said he was surprised by the speed with which the verdict was reached, saying the jury “came back way too fast,” which made it “obvious they didn’t consider any of the evidence we thought they’d consider.”
And there was plenty.
Teel’s attorneys made sure jurors knew that his distraught wife, who had attempted suicide by cutting slashing her wrists and was holding a knife, was 6 to 10 feet away and approaching slowly, giving Lozada an opportunity to retreat down the stairs and wait for backup, which arrived only seconds later.
Instead, the deputy shot her three times.
They argued that Lozada failed to follow the Sheriff’s Office’s general order for responding to persons who are mentally, emotionally or psychologically disturbed – practices that include trying to calm the situation by not cornering the subject, speaking in a reassuring voice and acting in a non-threatening manner.
Instead, Lozada, who had been a deputy for five years when he responded to the 911 call at the Teels’ home, confronted her with his pistol already raised and chose to engage rather than attempt to diffuse the situation.
They also introduced an autopsy report that showed one of Lozada’s gunshots struck Susan Teel’s left hand and left a 4-inch hole, making it seemingly impossible for her to have maintained her grip on the knife.
Though the autopsy was unable to determine the order in which the three gunshots struck her, the fact that a bullet pierced the same hand with which she was holding the knife raised the likelihood she was no longer armed when Lozada fired his final shot.
“It didn’t matter,” Dr. Teel said.
Nor did the fact that Lozada changed his story after he claimed in his initial report that Susan Teel lunged at him with the knife.
“I don’t know what the jury believed, but all extenuating circumstances were ignored,” Dr. Teel said. “It’s clear that it all came down to: Would you shoot someone coming at you with a knife?
“The jury saw it as suicide by cop.”
Dr. Teel said Judge Middlebrooks barred from the trial any mention of Lozada’s history of being disciplined by the Sheriff’s Office for violating agency policy – including the fact that, seven weeks before he shot Susan Teel, the deputy was involved in an arrest for which he was later suspended for using excessive force that resulted in a suspect’s concussion.
The suspension, however, wasn’t imposed until the Sheriff’s Office completed an in-house investigation three months after the highly publicized shooting at the Teels’ home.
Lozada had been suspended and disciplined multiple times, and received letters of reprimand and counseling.
The jury was never privy to any of that information.
“If we had been allowed to present that as evidence,” Dr. Teel said, “I think we’d have seen a different outcome.”
Summer Barranco, the Fort Lauderdale-based attorney who represented Lozada, did not return messages left at her office.
Lozada, meanwhile, remains a deputy and is training to become a chopper pilot in the agency’s Aviation Division.
In January 2018, a grand jury declined to indict him on criminal charges. Last week, a federal-court jury told him he did nothing wrong.
Dr. Teel said Lozada and the Sheriff’s Office offered a “miniscule amount of money” to settle the case before trial, but it wasn’t enough to be seriously considered. In fact, he said settlement discussions lasted a total of 20 minutes.
“They believed they were right,” he said, “even though he put himself in harm’s way and then shot a mentally ill woman.”
Dr. Teel said his motivation for appealing the case is to send a message that what happened that fateful and frightful night in his home was wrong.
“At some point, I would’ve appreciated some expression of sympathy from him,” Dr. Teel said, referring to Lozada. “But that wasn’t the prevailing sentiment.”