$20 Million Settlement for Family of William Green, Shot Six Times While Handcuffed in a Police Cruiser

On January 27, 2020, William Howard Green, a 43-year-old bus company dispatcher and father of two from Washington, D.C., was detained during a traffic stop in Temple Hills, Maryland. He was handcuffed and placed in the front passenger seat of a patrol car driven by Corporal Michael Owen Jr. Within minutes, Owen shot Green six times. Green was unarmed. Investigators found no evidence of a struggle.

Owen was arrested within 24 hours and charged with second-degree murder, voluntary and involuntary manslaughter, first-degree assault, and a firearms offense. Then-Police Chief Hank Stawinski publicly rejected Owen's claim that Green had tried to grab his weapon. Subsequent reporting revealed that Owen had been involved in two prior shooting incidents that the department's early warning system had failed to flag, and that he had sought workers' compensation for psychological issues before the killing.

Green's death drew comparatively little national attention in the months before George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, even though the circumstances were stark. William H. 'Billy' Murphy Jr., who had previously represented the family of Freddie Gray and secured a $6.4 million settlement in that case, took on the Green family's civil claim against the county.

On September 28, 2020, Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks announced a $20 million settlement with Green's family. Murphy described it as 'the largest settlement ever between a Maryland local government and relatives of someone killed by police in their jurisdiction.' National reporting placed the figure among the largest one-time police-killing settlements in U.S. history at that time, exceeding the settlements paid in the Breonna Taylor ($12 million), Eric Garner ($5.9 million), and Michael Brown ($1.5 million) cases.

Green's relatives said the money could not substitute for justice and that criminal proceedings against Owen remained pending. The case drew renewed attention to how police departments handle internal misconduct flags before an officer's behavior escalates to a fatal incident.