TACOMA — A discussion Tuesday outside the jury’s presence in the trial of three Tacoma police officers charged in the death of Manuel Ellis highlighted an alternative explanation to Ellis’ death: that another officer at the scene, and none of the three who are charged, could have been responsible.
Tacoma police officer Armando Farinas was another of the many law enforcement and rescue personnel who responded to the scene. Farinas placed a spit hood on Ellis, and while the Attorney General’s Office declined to charge Farinas, he promises to be a central figure in the officers’ trial, where he’ll be cast in the unusual dual roles of witness and alternative suspect.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers haggled over the spit hood and what witnesses can tell the jury about it, before Pierce County Superior Court Judge Bryan Chushcoff ruled that prosecutors cannot ask questions about the warnings on spit hoods. A spit hood placed on Ellis the night he died was noted in the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s findings as a key factor.
Special prosecutor Patty Eakes, working for the Washington Attorney General’s office, informed Chushcoff of her intention to call at least one witness who would testify that the spit hood’s instructions explicitly warn against using it on someone who is having trouble breathing. A spit hood is a nylon device that is sometimes placed on suspects’ heads to prevent them from spitting on officers.
Ellis, 33, died March 3, 2020, early in the pandemic, after repeatedly telling police he couldn’t breathe while they continued to apply force. The Pierce County Medical Examiner ruled Ellis’ death a homicide caused by oxygen deprivation from physical restraint. Lawyers for the officers contend that the high level of methamphetamine found in Ellis’ system, combined with a heart condition, killed Ellis.
Officers Matthew Collins, 40, Christopher “Shane” Burbank, 38, and Timothy Rankine, 34, are charged with first-degree manslaughter. Collins and Burbank, the first to encounter Ellis, face additional charges of second-degree murder. They each have pleaded not guilty to all charges, are free on bail and remain employed by the Tacoma Police Department on paid leave.
Collins and Burbank told detectives that Ellis initiated the aggression when they contacted him after seeing Ellis possibly trying to enter a car as it passed through an intersection. Four eyewitnesses have testified that the officers were the aggressors, and Ellis did nothing to provoke them.
Rankine arrived at the scene minutes after Collins and Burbank. He sat on Ellis who was already handcuffed and lying on his stomach. Rankine told detectives he continued to sit on Ellis after Ellis said he couldn’t breathe.
Lawyers for the three officers on trial argued that prosecution witnesses should not be able to spotlight the overt warning on spit hoods, which warns against using them on people having difficulty breathing, because none of the defendants is alleged to have played a role in placing the spit hood on Ellis.
Nonetheless, Assistant Attorney General Kent Liu argued that Collins, Burbank and Rankine had “a duty of custodial” care for Ellis. “These three defendants are aware Mr. Ellis said he couldn’t breathe,” Liu said. “We know that they were present when the spit hood was applied.”
“You’re saying they’re responsible for him, even in the care of other people?” Judge Chushcoff asked Liu. “You’re trying to make them responsible for other officers’ actions?”
Lawyers for each of the officers on trial denied that their clients were familiar with spit hoods, having never been issued any or trained on their use by the Tacoma Police Department, so the admonition on the spit hood’s package was unknown to them.
Even Judge Chushcoff, when he issued his ruling blocking the prosecution from asking its witnesses about the warning on the package, noted its utility to the officers’ defense.
“The defendants could say those other officers shouldn’t have used it, and that’s what caused his death,” he said.
Jurors on Tuesday heard the conclusion of testimony by a prosecution video expert and a medic from the Tacoma Fire Department who responded to the scene.
