Mayor, city council react to Sanders investigation fallout

By: Jenna Hiller

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Reports

• View the complete unredacted KeyPoint report.

• View the redacted version of the report.

The fallout continues over the release of the independent investigation into the Nathanial Sanders shooting.

Wednesday the City of Austin attorney, David Smith, announced his retirement following criticism for releasing only a heavily-redacted version of the report.

Now, the mayor and at least one council member want some answers.

Click to view former city attorney David Smith's retirement notice.

"The city was not upfront. It did not release information it had available to it, and we'll have to play our way out of a hole here," council member Bill Spellman said.

The city commissioned the independent report after public outcry over the Austin Police Department's criminal and internal investigation into the shooting death of Sanders on May 11, 2009 by former Austin police officer Leonardo Quintana.

Quintana and fellow officers were out on patrol, looking for suspects in an unrelated robbery and were investigating the vehicle Sanders was in as being 'suspicious.'

A grand jury decided not to indict Quintana. He was, however, fired recently over a drunken driving charge he received in January in Leander.

More Documents

• To read Dunn's letter of appeal in full, click the link.

• Read the statement from the Travis County District Attorney, regarding the grand jury's verdict.

• Read statements from the driver of the Mercedes, Michael Franklin, and officers called to the scene, Mohammad Siddiqui and John Hitzelberg.
• View diagrams of the incident, including how the cars were positioned, and from which points bullets were fired.

• Read Sanders' toxicology report.

• View the independent review of APD's internal and criminal investigation.

• Watch footage from the one dashboard camera activated during the incident.

In Oct. 2009, a heavily-redacted version of the independent report was released to the public. Then, just this month, information about the redacted portions of the report was leaked to the media, and, under pressure, the City of Austin explored the legality of the situation and released the full report.

Council member Spellman said Smith's retirement doesn't provide the answers he needs about why so much information was redacted from the copy of the KeyPoint report he received.

He's not the only one questioning why so much of the report was left out.

Mayor Lee Leffingwell sent a memo to City Manager Marc Ott requesting "that he lay out the information on a piece of paper, the sequence of events, the legal opinions and how they evolved, and also to describe his role in commissioning the report, the third-party report and the review of it."

Leffingwell wants to know more about the conversations that led the former city attorney to conclude the city would not release the full report.

"The whole idea is to be really transparent about how, and I think the public is entitled to a discussion of how this process evolved just as we are," he said.

Spellman is questioning the reason the information was withheld.

"The advice they were giving us was based not on the law by itself, but on circumstances and what they thought was going to be best for the city in a very narrow sort of way. That's not the kind of legal advice we really need," he said.

Both Spellman and the mayor said they are looking beyond this case for ways to be more transparent.