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According to attorneys for the family of an Iowa lady killed by her estranged husband, the woman would still be alive today if Bellevue police officers hadn’t purposefully refused to execute the law and arrest their friend.
In 2024, the family of the late Angela Prichard filed a lawsuit against the Bellevue city police, claiming that they had repeatedly failed to enforce a no-contact order against Christopher Prichard in the summer and fall of 2022, despite his well-established pattern of disobeying court orders and acting in a threatening manner.
On October 8, 2022, just before eight in the morning, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office received a 911 call from Angela Prichard’s place of employment, the Mississippi Ridge Kennels in Bellevue. Angela Prichard was discovered dead from a gunshot wound to the chest when the police arrived. Her age was fifty-five.
Christopher Prichard was found in a Jackson County home the next day, still in possession of the murder weapon and ammo. Later on, he was found guilty of first-degree murder.
According to the lawsuit, the Bellevue Police Department’s misconduct, carelessness, or deliberate actions produced a state-generated hazard that led to the murder. It claimed that Christopher Prichard was given preferential treatment by city police officers and that his cordial rapport with them encouraged and made it possible for him to kill his divorced wife.
C.J. Williams, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, rejected the family’s complaint in October, stating that he did not believe that the officers’ more aggressive behavior would have made a difference.
According to the judge, the plaintiffs’ stance appeared to be that Angela’s murder might have been avoided if the officers had detained Christopher more frequently. One could also hypothesize that Christopher killed Angela because he was so incensed by the authorities’ arrest of him for breaking the no-contact order.
Angela Prichard’s family’s Cedar Rapids lawyer, David O. Brien, has challenged that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
According to O Brien’s court documents, Christopher Prichard was spared a significant jail sentence because the defendants purposefully chose not to follow the law. Christopher Prichard would have been imprisoned and Angela would still be alive if the defendants had held him responsible for even a little portion of his illegal behavior, as they would have done with any other defendant.
Additionally, O Brien claims that the city’s persistent and deliberate violations of federal civil procedure and the Iowa Open Records Law include attempts to purposefully hide information regarding the case.
Plaintiffs point to inaction by city police
O Brien provides what he refers to as a list of crucial pled facts in a brief submitted to the appellate court. These facts, which the defendants on appeal completely disregarded, should make up for any shortcomings in the case that Judge Williams mentioned.
Those purported facts include:
Christopher Prichard was imprisoned at the time of his murder of Angela Prichard because he was out on bail for a felony offense and his bail might have been revoked at any time for illegal behavior.
Christopher Prichard put a monitoring device in Angela’s car, a major violation of his bail requirements that would have resulted in a lengthy pre-trial detention and a ten-year jail sentence if found guilty, but the police let him get away with another Class C felony.
The police disregarded at least four documented violations of the temporary restraining order, each of which may have resulted in the cancellation of bail or a jail sentence.
Christopher Prichard had until 2 p.m. the following day to go to jail, according to an email sent to the police by then-Jackson County Attorney Sara Davenport nine days prior to the murder. She wrote, “I will be requesting a warrant if he does not report.” I’m worried that he could try to do something tonight, so I wanted to let you all know. She informed the police the following day that a warrant had been issued because Prichard had failed to appear at the jail. O Brien claims that the police department’s total disdain for potential harm is demonstrated by their failure to execute that warrant.
O Brien continues in his appellate brief that although the police did not arrest Christopher Prichard in the week prior to the murder, they did manage to make six traffic stops, conduct funeral escorts, chaperone a high school dance, escort a large vehicle through town, and look into reports of a growling dog and a sick-looking raccoon.
O Brien contends that it is reasonable to conclude from those activities that city police officers purposefully chose not to arrest their friend Christopher Prichard and that there was no conflicting resource allocation issue that prevented them from doing so.
City: Not liable for murder committed by a third party
The city argued in its brief to the appellate court that the plaintiffs’ claim of due process violations is unfounded because, as other courts have held, the state’s failure to protect a person from violence committed by another person does not amount to a violation of that person’s right to due process.
According to current law, the Constitution only mandates that the government defend a private citizen in two situations: either the person is in government custody or the government has created a state-generated danger by its acts.
The city’s attorneys point out that although Judge Williams acknowledged claims of police delay, there was no proof that the police had taken any concrete steps to put Angela Prichard in danger.
The city’s attorneys also contend that even if Christopher Prichard had been taken into custody by the police prior to the murder, the tragic result of this case would not have been any different, pointing out that judges or prosecutors could have simply released Prichard from custody or dismissed any case the officers started.
In their brief to the appellate court, the city’s attorneys claim that the plaintiffs want this court to hold the defendants accountable for a third-party deliberate homicide. This demand implies that the accused will be held accountable for circumstances that were completely beyond their control. The district court’s decision ought to be upheld by this court.
According to court documents, oral arguments in the case have not yet been scheduled by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
The Iowa Capital Dispatch was the first to publish this article.
