Appeals court agrees Boston school system not legally liable for the way an English High counselor shot a student in the back of the head

A federal appeals court yesterday upheld a judge's ruling that Boston Public Schools owe nothing to an English High School student left for dead in a snowbank by an angry English High counselor turned gang leader with a gun.

At the same time, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit also told Harrison that no, the court system will not hire a lawyer for him to try to overturn a $10-million judgment awarded the Luis Rodriguez, whom Harrison shot point blank in the back of the head, leaving him to die on Magazine Street in Newmarket Square on March 5, 2015.

Harrison is currently serving a 21-year state sentence for shooting Rodriguez, leaving him with permanent injuries. Under a guilty plea in federal court, he is serving a concurrent sentence on RICO charges for his role as a local leader of a Latin Kings gang.

Rodriguez sued both Harrison and BPS for the shooting, arguing that BPS was to blame because they failed to pick up on Harrison's issues as they moved him around the system, ultimately sticking him at English High as a counselor kids called "Rev" - where he quickly built up a marijuana distribution ring using students at the school as salesmen.

In 2022, a judge in Boston federal court dismissed Rodriguez's claims against BPS, saying that while the shooting was, of course, horrible, Rodriguez's attorneys had failed to meet the federal requirement of proving BPS had done specific things or shown ""deliberate indifference" that led to the then 17-year-old's shooting. Rodriguez did ultimately win a $10 million civil suit against Harrison.

In its ruling yesterday, the appeals court agreed in general and specifically in relation to the way Harrison was shifted from one BPS school to another without administrators looking at his possible disciplinary issues, which included throwing a roll of tape at one student:

The absence of a standard process for passing along a BPS employee's disciplinary record when he sought a position at a different in-district school does not suffice to establish deliberate indifference in this context, especially given that the record does not show that this procedural deficiency led to the hiring of other employees who went on to commit constitutional violations.

In a separate ruling, the court rejected Harrison's request to appoint him a lawyer with whom to appeal the $10-million civil judgment - and further dismissed his appeal of that ruling:

At minimum, Harrison offered no factual or legal basis to suggest that he had a plausible argument for extricating himself from the default judgment entered against him, nor did he show that any such argument was sufficiently complex that it would warrant appointment of counsel.