A former Birmingham police officer fired five years ago for punching a female inmate who had hit him should not have been terminated, a Jefferson County three-judge panel has ruled.
Stephon Green, now 30, was fired in 2019 and criminally charged-with second-degree assault. He joined the department in 2016.
The felony charge was dismissed in 2022 by Jefferson County Circuit Judge Alaric May following a Stand Your Ground hearing.
The judge said not only did Green have a right to protect himself, but he also had a duty to do so and regain control of the inmate.
Green appealed his firing, which was upheld by the Jefferson County Personnel Board, to Jefferson County Circuit Court.
On Wednesday, Judges Marshell Jacks, Kechia Davis, and Adrienne Moffett Powell unanimously reversed the personnel board’s decision to uphold Green’s firing and overturned the City of Birmingham’s firing of the officer under former police Chief Patrick Smith.
The ruling came after a hearing held last month and the judges’ order states Green’s firing was not supported by “substantial and legal evidence.”
“Stephon Green has been vindicated,’’ said Scott Morro, the officer’s attorney. “He is due to return to the job he loves and was wrongfully terminated from.”
“He is due back pay and benefits,” Morro said. “However, nothing can replace the emotional, reputational, familial, and economic damage he has suffered.”
“Someone owes him a damn apology,” Morro said. “This fight for Officer Green’s job has been long and hard, but worth every second.”
Asked for a comment on the judges’ reinstatement of Green, Birmingham police referred questions to the Mayor’s Office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Green was a 25-year-old South Precinct officer when, on Aug. 2019, he was instructed to transport a female inmate to UAB Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
The 110-pound woman was restrained with handcuffs and leg irons. Once she was put on a hospital gurney, Green handcuffed her to that gurney and the leg irons remained in place.
During the psychiatric evaluation, according to court records and previous testimony, the nurse asked the officer to release one of the woman’s hands so that she could have better access for an IV. Green complied.
The inmate then began to complain that her leg irons were too tight, so Green loosened and adjusted them.
While he was loosening the leg irons, testimony showed, the woman kicked him, and he told her to relax. Instead, she threw a sandal at him and “hit him with such for in the face that it knocked his hat off his head.”
A patient care technician testified that the inmate hit Green, and that Green hit her back, striking her in the eye.
Birmingham police Officer Stephon Green was arrested and fired after authorities say he struck a female prisoner in the eye.
Chief Smith said at the time that Green punched the female inmate twice in the face and one in the chest after she threw footwear at him. The chief also released a photo of the inmate’s injured eye.
After the 2022 Stand Your Ground hearing, Judge May ruled that the “statue and case law is very clear that (a) person has the right to use reasonable force to protect or defend themselves from unlawful physical force or what they reasonably believe to be the imminent use of physical force by another person.”
“The court finds nowhere in Alabama law that a person loses their ability to reasonably defend nor protect themselves from someone’s use of unlawful physical force simply because of their employment status with any particular entity,’’ May wrote in 2022.
“Thus, the fact that (Green) was employed as a Birmingham police officer did not strip him of his statutory rights to defend himself.”
May said in dismissing the criminal charges, he believed he had a duty to do so.
“It was this officer’s duty to immediately regain control of the prisoner/inmate in the middle of a public medical facility,’’ May wrote, “who was suspected of having a mental illness and perhaps undergoing a psychotic incident.”
