Attorneys for widow of man shot by SCSO officers speak

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Lawyers for a woman whose husband was shot to death by Sullivan County sheriff’s deputies a year ago say Karen Crowley’s case is about far more than trying to extract punitive damages from Sullivan County.

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“It’s just making sure that the checks and balances exist,” Christopher Rogers, whom Karen Crowley first approached about Casey Crowley’s death, told News Channel 11 from his Johnson City office Thursday.

“If you don’t advocate for these individuals, they don’t have a voice so therefore you can’t really make sure that there are balances to what transpires. It’s got an accountability prong, but it also just makes sure the system functions as it’s supposed to function.”

Along with Atlanta lawyer Eric Hertz and Greeneville attorney Corey Shipley, Rogers represents Crowley in a wrongful death suit alleging multiple civil rights violations. Casey Crowley was shot four times outside a Blountville Dollar General store on April 19, 2023 after three officers arrived to conduct a midday welfare check regarding a man slumped over in a pickup truck.

A Sullivan County grand jury reviewed a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) probe of the incident, which involved two of the officers discharging their weapons. Jurors determined officers followed policy and were justified in deploying their weapons.

Shipley, a former federal prosecutor, said the attorneys’ review of available evidence suggested the shooting deserved more scrutiny. The lawsuit notes that a gun Crowley supposedly brandished didn’t have his fingerprints on it and that many other questions remain unanswered — enough for the lawyers to put forward a 60-page civil complaint alleging rights violations.

“Grand jury proceedings are different because the prosecutor and the officer controls the narrative, and there is nobody there on the other side,” Shipley said. “So I think what we’re doing is just trying to make sure that those sides are told correctly.”

Hertz has taken part in numerous high-profile civil rights and other cases.

“One of the things that we always look at is the bias that can happen when a law enforcement agency investigates another law enforcement agency,” he said. “That’s some of the things when you do civil rights cases you have to look into and that’s just a natural bias that exists.”

Many questions

Hertz said he’s reached a point in his career (it spans three-and-a-half decades and tens of millions in verdicts) where he can pick and choose cases. He said Karen Crowley’s plight moved him in this one.

“When you realize your husband or wife or spouse was killed, you’re going to be very, very sad, grief stricken, but you also have unanswered questions,” Hertz said. “And this is a perfect forum to get these questions answered. As the complaint states, there’s a lot of unanswered questions, and we’re really looking forward to the answer.”

The defense in a civil case provides a paragraph by paragraph “answer” to the allegations by plaintiffs in one of the initial filings in such proceedings. The Crowley complaint has 203 paragraphs.

Shipley, who also handles civil rights violations, said his office looks at people’s stories on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, he said, other factors outweigh the simple fact a grand jury exonerated authorities.

“We’re asking for just some transparency here, and accountability,” Shipley said. “We saw something in this case that went kind of above and beyond some of the other cases that we’ve looked at in the past and as Eric said, the complaint kind of speaks for itself and our theory is of what happened.”

Rogers said after conferring with Karen Crowley, he reached out to Hertz, who has aided him in the past, due to “his reputation and character,” and called in Shipley because of his prosecutorial experience.

The trio said a 34-second bystander video provided by a witness is a plus for them. The proliferation of such evidence has “changed the dynamics of the law field,” Hertz said.

Shipley said video can mean the difference between him taking a case or not.

“When you have this presence of a third party video, especially when there’s a lack of video from law enforcement, lack of video from cruiser cams, lack of video from body cameras … a video kind of speaks for itself,” he said. “It’s very difficult to argue with what happens in the video.”

The ultimate origin of a gun that at least one officer said Crowley pulled is another major question. He was shot in the hand, and the gun had neither blood nor his fingerprints on it, according to the complaint.

Hertz said in past cases, he’s “always wanted to know what ATF (the federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) comes back with as to who owned the firearm.” The lawsuit claims it was not registered to Crowley and that his wife testified he had never owned or used guns.

Getting to the bottom of those types of questions is a key, Shipley said.

“Any attorney can put his or her subjective spin on it, but when there are certain objective facts on tracing, fingerprints, DNA, things like that that really are what they are, those are really important too in not only evaluating the case but also evaluating the strategy and how the attorneys handle it and how they want to proceed forward with the trial,” he said.

Hertz said Karen Crowley wants transparency – and something else for a man that authorities claimed was justifiably shot and killed by police.

“She wants people to know her husband as she saw him, as she has pictures of him … those pictures also say a thousand words.”

Like Rogers, he and Shipley said they want to contribute to systems being sufficiently accountable.

“I have a lot of friends from my background that are officers, a lot of great officers,” Shipley said. “But I think when it boils down to … (is) that no organization is beyond reproach and there’s no reason that any organization should never be held accountable if you make a mistake.”

He said the civil litigation process can create a greater level of transparency.

“Wanting the process to take its course from the answer to the discovery to the depositions to the motion practice to the eventual trial. I think that’s what really does a lot for me, when it comes to that, is just making sure that we can provide closure to people that that have questions that are oftentimes left unanswered.”

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