Prosecution and defense square off at the trial of a former Philly cop charged with murder

Giving opening statements that marked the first time in 38 years that a Philadelphia police officer has gone to trial on murder charges in an on-duty killing, prosecutors and the defense on Tuesday offered diametrically opposed narratives of the 2017 shooting death of Dennis Plowden Jr.

Prosecutors said the now-former officer, Eric Ruch Jr., shot and killed a suspect who posed no threat. But the defense said Ruch, 34, made a reasonable “split-second” decision to fire at a man who had caused “havoc and danger” and made a suspicious movement with his right hand instants before the final fatal encounter.

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Assistant District Attorney Vincent Corrigan told the 12 jurors that Plowden was unarmed, and was complying with police after he emerged from a crashed car following a chase. “He was surrendering,” Corrigan said.

“We will show you that the defendant’s actions were not justified, should not have happened, and [that he] committed murder,” Corrigan said.

While prosecutors emphasized that Ruch shot Plowden within seconds of the car crash, defense lawyer David Mischak urged the jurors to look at the case over a longer time frame. He said police had originally pursued the car because it figured in a homicide investigation from a murder the previous week, and that Ruch and other pursuing officers had been warned that its occupants should be considered “armed and dangerous.”

He said Plowden hit a police car as he sought to escape police, pushed his car up to 70 mph, and only came to a halt when he crashed into three parked cars.

Plowden’s relatives have said they were baffled by the assertion that the car Plowden was driving was tied to a killing in Kensington. On the day after he was shot, police said it was determined that Plowden was not a person of interest in the homicide.

A grand jury found that Ruch shot and killed Plowden, 25, after the car chase in December 2017. The panel said Plowden appeared “dazed and lost” after he crashed his Hyundai, then stumbled out and appeared to be trying to obey commands given by police as he sat on a sidewalk.

As Ruch fired his weapon, prosecutors said, his single shot cut through Plowden’s upraised left hand and tore into his head.

The four other officers at the scene had taken defensive positions around the Hyundai and two unmarked police cars, prosecutors said. They did not fire their guns.

Under Philadelphia police policy and guiding U.S. Supreme Court precedent, police may only fire their weapons when a suspect poses a threat to them or others.

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Mischak, the defense lawyer, focused on Plowden’s right hand. On Tuesday, he urged the jurors to heed testimony from a neighbor who told police right after the shooting that Plowden’s right hand had been behind his back before the shooting and that he had also made a sudden movement with it an instant before Ruch fired.

The neighbor, Santee Weddington, affirmed that when he took the stand Monday. But he also painted a portrait of Plowden as vulnerable right after the crash, dazed and lying on his back on the sidewalk.

Last year, the city agreed to pay $1.2 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Plowden’s widow. It did not admit wrongdoing.

Ruch joined the force in 2008 and spent his career in the busy 35th Police District, headquartered at Broad Street and Champlost Avenue in North Philadelphia. Earlier in 2017, he and other officers shot and wounded a suspect in Germantown who police said had pointed a gun at them. Internal Affairs found it to be a justified shooting.

Ruch is the third former city police officer charged with murder since Larry Krasner became district attorney. Shortly after being sworn into office in 2018, Krasner asked why scores of police shootings over the years had been deemed justified.

In May, Krasner’s office charged former police officer Edsaul Mendoza with first-degree and third-degree murder in the shooting death of 12-year-old Thomas “TJ” Siderio. The third former officer to be charged with a fatal shooting, Ryan Pownall, is awaiting trial on third-degree murder charges for killing a man in 2017.

» READ MORE: Former Philly police officer charged with murder in 2017 shooting of an unarmed Black man

Ruch, like Mendoza and Pownall, was fired after the shooting.

Before the Ruch case, the last time a Philadelphia police officer was charged with murder on the job was in 1999, and that case was thrown out ahead of trial. In that case, Officer Christopher DiPasquale shot and killed unarmed teenager Donta Dawson during an North Philadelphia traffic stop in 1998. The city paid Dawson’s mother $712,000 to settle her pending lawsuit.

And the previous time a Philadelphia police officer actually went to trial on murder charges in 1984 when an officer, John Ziegler, was charged with killing a 17-year-old, William H. Green. The officer was acquitted after his lawyer argued that his gun went off accidentally while he was hitting Green with it.