Court tosses lawsuit against Phoenix police over 'Baseline Killer'

The plaintiffs argued the Police Department and its laboratory services bureau were grossly negligent by not immediately performing a complete series of tests on DNA evidence they had from an early sexual assault victim. Had those tests been done, their lawyers argued, the evidence would have led to the arrest of Mark Goudeau before he committed other crimes.

But Judge Randall Howe, writing for the unanimous court, said it appears police followed procedures because, at the time the first sample was obtained, there was no evidence of a serial killer or rapist.

Howe also noted that one of the tests specifically requires there be a sample from a suspect for comparison. The judge said once police did have a suspect, that comparison was made and Goudeau was arrested.

The judge said, though, the real legal flaw in the lawsuit is that the Legislature has provided qualified immunity for police.

He said it would be one thing if police knew and had made a special effort to protect the specific individuals who later were killed or raped. But absent that “special relationship,” Howe said police owed them no specific duty to identify Goudeau, a necessary legal precursor to overcoming the immunity.

“The duty owed (by police) is not to protect each citizen within its geographical boundaries from all harms,” Howe wrote. “Merely establishing a police department does not make a city a general insurer of safety or liable for absolutely all harms to its citizens.”

Goudeau was arrested and found guilty of 13 murders, rapes and robberies that occurred between August 2005 and June 2006. He was dubbed the Baseline Killer because the crimes started along the Baseline Road corridor in Phoenix, though they later spread.

It took the statements of a survivor of one attack to provide a description of her assailant and link the murders and sexual assaults together.