Chinese woman awarded $461K over run-in with US border agent

The case provoked anger in China after pictures of Zhao, her face swollen from pepper spray and her eyes and forehead bruised, were widely published.

Rhodes initially was fired and criminally charged with violating Zhao’s civil rights. He was acquitted at a 2005 trial and eventually reinstated to his job.

Rhodes’ attorney, Steven Cohen, said Zhao’s civil case could have been avoided had Rhodes’ employer backed him instead of charging him amid pressure from China. Zhao’s lawyers in the civil case, he said, used the government’s treatment of Rhodes in their favour.

“It makes me angry to see a frivolous lawsuit rewarded with a verdict,” Cohen said.

Zhao, a business owner and piano teacher, had been in the United States on a business visa to study the market for wood in Pennsylvania, court documents show. She was sightseeing at Niagara Falls when the confrontation occurred.

In charging Rhodes, government prosecutors claimed he used excessive force when he used pepper spray on Zhao, put his knee on her back and drove her head into the pavement. But during the 2015 civil trial, U.S. authorities said Zhao’s injuries were her fault because she ran from the officer and then kicked, punched and scratched him before two other officers arrived and helped restrain her on the ground.

The then-38-year-old Zhao and two other women had run from the inspection station, instead of obeying officers’ orders to come inside after they detained a drug suspect they thought may have been with the women. Zhao said she ran because the officers frightened her.

Acting U.S. Attorney James P. Kennedy Jr. said the judge’s decision delivered the justice the government has sought all along, even as it took the seemingly contradictory positions of prosecuting Rhodes criminally and then defending him in the civil case. The burdens of proof for excessive force differ in criminal and civil contexts, he said.

Kennedy said his office wanted to hold the officer accountable but not allow Zhao to be “unjustly compensated for injuries which, according to Judge Wolford, did ‘not even approach the magnitude she (claimed).’”

Zhao, in her lawsuit and accompanying court documents, said the confrontation humiliated her and the mental and physical trauma she suffered left her unable to work and afraid of uniformed police.

“This incident harmed almost all aspects of my life,” she said in a court filing.

Zhao’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Carolyn Thompson, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Chinese woman awarded $461K over run-in with US border agent

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