Judge orders mediation in Youngstown woman's civil-rights suit

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A federal judge has ordered a mediation attempt in a lawsuit alleging civil-rights violations by city police.

U.S. District Court Judge Benita Y. Pearson referred the lawsuit filed by Desiree Johnson, 47, of Youngstown, to U.S. Magistrate William H. Baughman Jr. for a mediation conference at 10 a.m. April 4.

A jury trial is to begin April 21 if no settlement can be reached before then.

Johnson sued the city, former police Chief Jimmy F. Hughes, Lt. Kevin Mercer and Officers Patrick I. Mulligan and Malik Mostella in 2011.

In a Feb. 20 memorandum, Judge Pearson criticized the city “for a pattern of federal rights violations” by a police officer, “which appears to have been acquiesced to, or tolerated by,” the city.

Judge Pearson said Johnson had sufficiently shown that the police department’s internal-affairs division failed to properly investigate a series of complaints against Mercer.

Judge Pearson’s memorandum cleared the way for the case to go to trial, but she did not rule on the merits of the case, said city Law Director Martin Hume.

Mercer “engaged in a pattern of unlawfully seizing Youngstown residents in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights,” Judge Pearson wrote.

The judge also wrote that Mercer’s “intrusive search and seizure” in 2009 of Johnson’s then-12-year-old son “was a direct consequence of his belief that he could act with impunity in accordance with city custom.”