Former Tulsa Police Officer May Face Civil Trial for Shooting Terence Crutcher

TULSA, Okla. — Nearly 10 years after Terence Crutcher was shot and killed by Tulsa Police officer Betty Shelby, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that the Shelby may face trial in a civil suit brought by Crutcher’s estate.
The lawsuit against Shelby had been dismissed by the district court, which had claimed that “qualified immunity” protected the police officer from prosecution in the matter. The appeals court noted several errors in the lower court’s ruling, and remanded the case back to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma.
Terence Crutcher’s twin sister Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, their attorneys and clergy members gathered Tuesday at Morning Star Baptist Church to celebrate the appellate court ruling. Dr. Crutcher said the “moment did not come easy, it came after a decade of unimaginable loss.”
“Nearly 10 years ago, I stood in this very place and made a promise to my family, to my community, and to my twin brother, Terrence, that I would not accept a miscarriage of justice as the final word. Today, I stand here knowing that that promise was honored,” said Dr. Tiffany Crutcher. “Today, we honor a promise kept. Tomorrow we continue to fight forward, steadfast in our belief that our harvest is on the way, and that God, in the last words of Terrence Crutcher, God will get the glory out of all this.”
Crutcher, an unarmed Black man, was shot and killed during an encounter with Tulsa Police on Sept. 16, 2016. The encounter was captured on camera, both from a helicopter above and from the dashcam of a second officer who arrived on scene. Shelby, claiming that she believed Crutcher was reaching into his vehicle window for a gun, shot Crutcher, the bullet entering just below his right armpit. At the same time, a second officer on the scene discharged his taser. Crutcher, who did not have a weapon and was not reaching for one, died less than an hour later.
Shelby’s attorneys testified that Crutcher failed to comply with her commands. Shelby, who is white, was initially charged with manslaughter, but a jury acquitted her in 2017.
“What I want this community to understand is that Terence was so much more than that video we saw,” said attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons during Tuesday’s press conference. “He was a father. He was a son. He was a brother, a twin brother. He was a man who was trying to better himself because he was literally coming from school, Tulsa Community College, when this happened. So he was a victim twice: He was a victim of a shooting, and he was the victim of a smear campaign and a devious coverup by the city.”
The full story will come out in trial, said Solomon-Simmons.
“We believe with all our might and all our heart that if the jury sees what the 10th Circuit sees, we will get justice for this family,” Solomon-Simmons said.
After Shelby was acquitted, Crutcher’s estate followed up with a civil lawsuit against Shelby and the City of Tulsa, alleging that Shelby used excessive force and violated Crutcher’s rights to be “free from deprivation of life without due process.” In 2024, a district court dismissed that case, ruling that Shelby was protected by qualified immunity as the plaintiff had failed to show a clear violation of Crutcher’s constitutional rights.
On appeal, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday reversed the lower court’s order, allowing the case to proceed to trial.
“Because the district court failed to view the facts in a light most favorable to the Estate and erred in analyzing clearly established law by defining the right at issue too narrowly, we reverse its grant of summary judgment to Shelby,” reads the 10th Circuit Court’s ruling.
The court found discrepancies between the officer’s testimony and the evidence presented in the case.
“To begin, we consider whether Crutcher complied with police commands to show his hands: Shelby says he made ‘continuous hand movements to his pockets,’” reads the court’s ruling, “but the helicopter video — which captured the critical seconds leading up to the shooting as Crutcher approached the SUV — suggests otherwise…
“Based on the amount of blood on the outside of the driver’s window and the absence of blood inside the SUV, however, the Estate maintains that the window was at least “mostly rolled up, which would have prevented [Crutcher] from being able to reach” inside the SUV” as the police had claimed, the court continued. “Relatedly, the parties disputed the precise position of Crutcher’s arms at the moment Shelby shot him,” reads the ruling, finding that the helicopter video contradicts Shelby’s testimony.
Furthermore, “There was no reason for Shelby to think Crutcher had a weapon,” the court found, so “Shelby didn’t need to order Crutcher ‘to drop his weapon,’ and Crutcher didn’t need to ‘compl[y]’ with that directive, because he wasn’t holding anything dangerous (indeed, he raised his hands at Shelby’s request).”
The appeals court agreed to dismiss claims made by the Crutcher estate alleging “an overall culture and custom of excessive force, encouraged by deficient training in the use of force, flawed hiring practices, and inadequate officer-misconduct investigations and discipline,” as well as a “culture of intentional racially disparate enforcement” by the Tulsa Police Department. The appeals court found that those claims had been “inadequately pleaded.”