'Brutality is not in the scope of his duties': Embattled trooper's pension argued in Supreme Court
PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island State Police on Wednesday urged the state Supreme Court to uphold former Col. James Manni’s denial of a disability pension to an ex-trooper who admitted to assaulting a man in custody in 2014.
“We know there was an assault. We know that he admitted to it … Certainly brutality is not in the scope of his duties,” Vincent F. Ragosta, Jr. said as state police Col. Darnell S. Weaver looked on.
The Rhode Island State Police are fighting a 2023 finding by Superior Court Judge Kevin F. McHugh that Manni’s denial of a disability pension to embattled former Trooper Jamie Donnelly-Taylor was arbitrary and capricious.
Donnelly-Taylor, who pleaded no-contest to assaulting a Central Falls man, was fired by Col. James Manni after he took command in 2019, and after he denied Donnelly-Taylor’s request for a disability pension for PTSD he said he developed on the job.
Ragosta argued that Donnelly-Taylor had not shown that the major depressive disorder and PTSD he developed was caused by the actual performance of his duties. Instead, Ragosta said, it was caused by fallout from the assault.
Ragosta emphasized that Manni had broad discretion in assessing disability pension claims and faulted McHugh, as a reviewing court, for substituting his own judgment for that of Manni, who had conducted a hearing and allowed the admission of evidence.
“He should have been assessing whether Col. Manni was reasonable,” he said.
Ragosta referenced Derek Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.
“Brutalizing a subject under arrest, or anyone, is simply way outside the scope of a trooper’s duties,” he said.
What was the triggering event?
But Carly Iafrate argued for the Rhode Island Island Troopers Association that McHugh got it right, and Manni’s decision denying the pension lacked evidence.
Manni, she said, as a lay person, did not have the expertise to determine the cause of PTSD, particularly when the medical evidence linked Donnelly-Taylor’s mental-health issues to his work experiences.
“There was no competing medical opinion. It’s not up to the colonel to make it up on his own,” Iafrate said.
“I’m not sure the medical evidence says what you’d like us to think it says,” Justice Melissa Long said as Donnelly-Taylor observed from the gallery.
“Isn’t it true that he pled nolo to assaulting another human being?” Justice William Robinson asked.
Iafrate stressed that the simple-assault case against Donnelly-Taylor for assaulting Lionel Monsanto in the Lincoln Barracks in 2014 had been expunged.
Justice Erin Lynch-Prata observed that Donnelly-Taylor had discharged a weapon on duty shortly before Monsanto’s arrest and was experiencing marital difficulties.
“The triggering event is the filing of the lawsuit,” Lynch-Prata said in linking the diagnoses to the civil lawsuit Monsanto brought against Donnelly-Taylor and state police. Monsanto reached a $125,000 settlement with the state, but the case also resulted in cellblock video of the assault being publicly released.
A return to duty after the assault
Iafrate emphasized that Donnelly-Taylor had returned to duty after the Monsanto incident, but was found unfit for duty in February 2017 due to PTSD and referred to a psychiatrist who worked with the state police.
She asked: How could you rationalize that the department allowed him to remain on paid injured-on-duty status for three years with the denial of the pension?
Justice Maureen MacKenna Goldberg stated that injured-on-duty status and receiving a disability pension are not linked.
“There should not be a corollary,” McKenna Goldberg said. “The colonel found one fact: This was not in the performance of duties.”
More: Former RI State Police trooper alleges pattern of cover-ups in highest ranks of agency
legal saga
It is the latest in the long legal saga of Donnelly-Taylor, who has repeatedly claimed that he pleaded no contest to the simple-assault charge at the orders of former Col. Steven G. O’Donnell to prevent a release of the video that captured the alleged assault, and with the urging that he take one for the team.
O’Donnell has dismissed Donnelly-Taylor's account as ludicrous.
In the aftermath, the Attorney General’s Office refused to defend Donnelly-Taylor against Monsanto’s claims – a stance that the state Supreme Court upheld.
Donnelly-Taylor has sued Manni in state Superior Court. That case remains pending.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Former trooper who assaulted a man in custody fighting for pension in Supreme Court
