Eric James Cooks, a 35-year-old resident of Palm Coast’s P Section and a supervisor at SMA Healthcare’s crisis-stabilization unit, where Baker Acts are triaged, lost a Stand Your Ground motion in circuit court Monday, clearing the way for his prosecution on a felony count of battering a man older than 65. Had he won, the case would have been dismissed.
The case touches on several elements that blur the line between good samaritanship and road rage, between the meanings of self-defense and provocation, and with an overlay of race and age disparities.
The case is the result of a strange confrontation between Peter Poznerowicz, 66 at the time, and Cooks outside the Amoco gas station on State Road 100, just before I-95, on Oct. 26, 2023. Cooks doesn’t dispute that he punched Poznerowicz. But he says he did so in self-defense, as Poznerowicz had been aggressive toward him and appeared to be reaching for a weapon.
Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols did not buy it after a nearly two-and-a-half hour hearing Monday. In a Stand your Ground motion, the burden is on the prosecution to show that self-defense was not a factor. In Nichols’s ruling, Assistant State Attorney Tara Libby did so, and the third-degree felony charge against Cooks remains. If he goes to trial and loses, he could be sentenced to up to five years in prison, be adjudicated a felon, and lose his job.
Nichols does not want to see that happen. She did not agree that stand-your-ground applies. But she did not think Poznerowicz as entirely innocent as he is made to seem in the sheriff’s report of Cooks’s arrest, or Cooks as guilty of a wanton assault on an older man. There were also numerous contradictions between the sheriff’s report of the incident and testimonies on the stand. “It appears to me, it was a stupid judgment call, tempers on both sides, then it became violent,” the judge said. “I’m hoping that there’s a way to resolve it.”
Nichols all but aid out a roadmap for the two sides: probation, anger management, and safeguarding Cooks’s job, which implies no adjudication. It would not be unusual. In fact, it would be common: an individual pleading to a third-degree felony typically will get probation, not jail time (let alone prison time), and in most cases, the judge will withhold adjudication, sparing the individual the lifetime designation of a felon.
Libby was not interested. She was offering nine months in jail and adjudication. That leaves Cooks with two choices: risking a jury trial and the optics of a young Black man getting out of his car and punching an older white man who was on his bike–a young Black man who did not come off too well during his testimony Monday, his statements sounding overly self-justifying than caring. Or he could tender a open plea, which would leave it entirely to the judge to impose a sentence. (A negotiated plea would be with the prosecution, which appears to be a no-go for Cooks.) Cooks, who is represented by attorney Josh Davis, may be leaning toward an open plea.
Peter Poznerowicz was an avid cyclist, riding 35 to 45 miles a day several times a week, sometimes 200 to 250 miles a week. That morning he left his E Section house as usual, in his biker’s gear. As he was riding south Belle Terre Parkway, choosing to ride along the white stripe on the right side of the road rather than on the bike path (he boasted in court of being able to ride on the white stripe without wavering), he testified he was nearly run off the road by a car. He couldn’t tell who it was. He rode on.
He headed toward the beach on 100, as he usually does, again riding on the road, in that segment because there was no bike path at the time (it was built last year, months after the incident). As he was approaching the Amoco station, he saw Cooks’s burgundy Ford Fusion veer into the Amoco station from the entrance closest to the Interstate then loop around rapidly and emerge right in front of him, as he was approaching the other entrance. The vehicle stopped so abruptly in front of him that he had no way to turn to avoid it, though his bike did not strike the car.
“The guy jumped from the car and punched me in the face,” Poznerowicz said. Cooks punched him once. He’s not disputing that. “When I wake up, I saw two people, and I saw a few seconds later police officer and a medic was there.”
Cooks tells a somewhat different account. He was on his way to work. He would have followed the same route as Poznerowicz–Belle Terre to 100. Along the way he noticed cars blowing their horns at a biker, who turned out to be Poznerowicz. He kept going. He pulled in to RaceTrac, got gas, pulled back out, then noticed Poznerowicz again, this time gesticulating. “It’s not strange for me to see people having episodes on a daily basis,” Cooks testified, drawing on his experience at SMA. “He looked like he was having some type of episode.”
Did you think he was in some sort of trouble? Davis asked him.
“At first, yes,” Cooks said. Cooks said he pulled into the Amoco station to check on the man, figuring the Amoco parking area would be a safe place to do so, though he actually rode his car almost back to the road, getting in Poznerowicz’s way. “He was obviously frustrated and it seemed like he was confrontational. At that point he kept riding toward me,” Cooks said.
The gas station attendant, who was outside when Cooks veered through the lot, described his driving as aggressive. She did not use the word provocation. But Poznerowicz, in a somewhat broken but expressive English (a Polish interpreter was standing by, but was never used) had seen the car’s surge in front of him as a form of provocation:
Once Cooks opened his car door, he said Poznerowicz’s bicycle hit the door. If Cooks is trained in de-escalation, as he would or should be in a crisis unit at SMA, the words he used to describe what he told the gesticulating stranger who may be having an medical episode did not sound like de-escalation: “I stated to him, I don’t know what your problem is and what the situation is today,” Cooks said. No sooner had he begun to say that than Poznerowicz pushes him, then allegedly reaches back for something. Cooks thought it was a gun. (In the arrest report, Poznerowicz had told a deputy that he sometimes carries a gun, but wasn’t carrying one that day. None was found at the scene. On the stand, Poznerowicz said he “never” carried a gun while biking.)
Cooks punched Poznerowicz. Had Poznerowicz said anything to him? “Never got a chance,” Poznerowicz testified.
Cooks said: “When he was approaching me in the angry manner, and once he actually made physical contact with me, from my understanding in the field I’m in, that is a direct threat.”
Cooks then got back in his car and drove off. He said he didn’t want to be late for work, and he didn’t want to risk being seen as “the bad guy”–an understandable fear that Blacks routinely experience, and that whites far less so, where help may be interpreted as aggression, though whether that was the case at the Amoco station is unclear. What is clear is that a man who’d been talking to the station attendant from his car closer to the store portion of the lot immediately got out of his car and walked toward the two men.
Surveillance video captured a portion of the confrontation–Poznerowicz shoving or pushing Cooks, but not Cooks punching Poznerowicz, as they had moved just enough that the camera’s field of vision was blocked by a gas aisle. The sheriff’s deputy who investigated the incident concurred in his report and on the stand that Poznerowicz had first made physical contact, though without diminishing Cooks’s aggressive driving and exit from his car, toward Poznerowicz.
It didn’t play in Cooks’s favor that, before starting his testimony, he explained to the judge that he’d recently been diagnosed with a form of Tourette’s Syndrome, which Davis told the judge might explain his involuntary expressions or at times compulsive eye-twitching. Judge Nichols was skeptical. She asked for documentation. There was none. She asked when he’d been so diagnosed. He said only recently. She later said she was unconvinced that the eye-twitching was related to a neurological condition of any sort. And in any case, nothing about Tourette’s will be allowed into evidence before the jury absent documentation.
Testimony over, Davis declined to make any arguments to the judge. Libby had barely started to do so when the judge ruled: motion to dismiss denied.
Cooks and Davis might have seen that as a loss. It wasn’t, considering what Nichols said next, and repeated: “I don’t know if y’all can come up with something that either puts them on probation, some supervision, anger-management class, but also permits him to be able to keep his employment. It’d be a good way to resolve the case, if possible.” That’s when she called it a stupid judgment call. The judge was concerned about “several” prior battery charges, according to Libby, though all dropped.
Poznerowicz had sat through the hearing in its entirety, sitting in a front pew.
“I did not get a sense of the victim in this case being in any way vindictive, in any way, shape or form,” Nichols said. “He went through something very traumatic.” he video, she said, shows the anger. “There does need to be sanctions, and there does need to be something done for what happened here, for what allegedly happened. Again, the video is blurry, and I don’t know what a jury is going to do with this. A jury may not find that it meets the burden. So I’m hoping, with that information, y’all can resolve it. If not, it’ll be up to a jury.”
Laurel says
Mediate.