Thurman v. City of Torrington

Tracy Thurman v. City of Torrington
Court United States District Court for the District of Connecticut
Full case name Tracy Thurman v. City of Torrington, et al
Decided June 25 1985
Citation(s) 595 F.Supp. 1521 (C.D.1 1984)
Holding
Local police of the City of Torrington ignored domestic violence reports pertaining to the husband of Tracey Thurman and further failed to enforce a court ordered restraining order. The court further finds that the City of Torrington did not maintain a standard policy of legal discrimination against all women.
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting Senior District Judge Blumenfeld
Laws applied
Connecticut Family Violence Prevention and Response Act of 1986

Thurman v. City of Torrington, DC, 595 F.Supp. 1521 (1985) was a court decision concerning Tracey Thurman, a Connecticut homemaker who sued the city police department in Torrington, Connecticut, claiming a failure of equal protection under the law against her abusive husband Charles "Buck" Thurman, Sr.

Case

After Tracey Thurman was attacked, stabbed, and nearly killed by her husband on June 10, 1983, a subsequent civil lawsuit judged that the local police had ignored growing signs of domestic violence and had casually dismissed restraining orders and other legal bars to keep Charles "Buck" Thurman, Sr. away from his wife.[1] With this lawsuit, filed in 1984, Thurman was the first woman in America to sue a town and its police department for violating her civil rights, claiming the police had ignored the violence because she was married to the perpetrator.[2] She was awarded $2.3 million.[3]

Legacy

The Thurman lawsuit brought about sweeping national reform of domestic violence laws, including the "Thurman Law" (aka the Family Violence Prevention and Response Act) instituted in Connecticut in 1986, making domestic violence an automatically arrestable offense, even if the victim does not wish to press charges.[4]

Tracy Thurman's story was later made into a 1989 television movie, entitled A Cry for Help: The Tracey Thurman Story, starring Nancy McKeon as Tracey, Dale Midkiff as Buck, Bruce Weitz as Tracy's lawyer Burton Weinstein, and Philip Baker Hall as presiding Judge Blumenfeld.

References

  1. ↑ CHRIS PARKERRepublican-American (2011-07-22). "No nonsense, no bitterness, better policing The Republican-American". Rep-am.com. Retrieved 2011-09-04.
  2. ↑ http://articles.courant.com/1992-03-15/news/0000204455_1_domestic-violence-domestic-abuse-family-violence-prevention
  3. ↑ http://articles.courant.com/1992-03-15/news/0000204455_1_domestic-violence-domestic-abuse-family-violence-prevention
  4. ↑ "Thurman v. City of Torrington". harvard.edu. Retrieved 2011-09-04.
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