Schieber suit comes to halt in city appeal

The case against two Philadelphia police officers filed by the family of murder victim and former Penn student Shannon Schieber was dismissed yesterday by an appeals court before going in front of a jury. Schieber, then a first-year Wharton doctoral student, was found dead in her Center City apartment in 1998. Last summer, authorities arrested Center City rapist Troy Graves in connection with the crime. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed a Philadelphia District Court ruling by a vote of 2-1 yesterday and granted the defendants', Philadelphia police officers Steven Woods and Raymond Scherff, motion for summary judgment. Schieber family attorney David Rudovsky, a Penn Law School professor, expressed frustration with the ruling. "They basically say that the police may have been negligent, but [evidence] has to 'shock the conscience,' which is a very high burden of proof for three people to decide," Rudovsky said. "They determined that it's not even for a jury to decide." A motion for summary judgment is a document filed by the defendants that argues that, even if everything the plaintiff says is true, the case is not strong enough to warrant arguing in front of a jury. If the motion is granted and sustained upon appeal, a lawsuit will never go to jury trial. The suit against both the city of Philadelphia and the police officers stems from a claim that the officers were negligent in their handling of a call early one morning in May 1998. Schieber was strangled to death in the early hours in her Center City home. Earlier that night, Schieber's neighbor Parmatma Greeley reportedly heard Schieber yell for help and utter a "choking-like sound," according to court documents. He then reportedly knocked on her door and shouted her name, to which he received no response. Following this, he called 911, and the police arrived approximately five minutes later. The officers and Schieber's neighbors then approached her apartment and knocked on the door, again receiving no response. The officers then interviewed the neighbors, apparently looking for a reason to break down the door. Finding none, and with Greeley not quite positive that what he heard had come from inside the apartment, the officers searched the area around the perimeter of the building and her apartment and found no sign of forced entry, according to court documents. The officers left, advising the neighbors to call 911 again if they heard anything. They remained on duty until 7 a.m. and heard nothing further. The following day when Schieber did not show up for work or lunch with her brother from out of town, he went to her apartment to try to locate her. Working with Greeley to open a sliding door on her second-floor balcony, he entered and found his sister undressed and lifeless on her bed. An autopsy later concluded that she had been "manually strangled" to death. For four years, the case remained unsolved until last June when Troy Graves, known as the Center City rapist, confessed to Schieber's murder and signed a guilty plea in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. In 1998, the Schieber family sued the city and the police department, alleging that the police officers failed to do enough to protect Schieber's life, saying that she could have been alive while the police were there. In 2001, a Philadelphia District Court judge agreed that the plaintiffs had enough evidence to proceed to a jury trial and denied the defendants' motion for summary judgment. The city appealed the District Court ruling and the Third Circuit Court agreed yesterday. Now that the motion has been granted by the Third Circuit, the plaintiffs have two main options. The Schieber family can petition either the full U.S. Court of Appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court to re-examine the case. Either court then has the option to accept or deny the petition. At these courts, cases are more frequently denied than accepted, Rudovsky said. The second option, he added, is to return to District Court with a case against the city, not the individual officers. The family, Rudovsky said, expressed "strong disappointment" with the ruling and is now waiting to decide the next step. "Nobody's had a chance to study the opinion yet," Rudovsky added. "We have to, as the lawyers, sit down, and then sit down with the family and make a decision within the next few days." The city attorney's office was unavailable for comment last night.