Randall Kallinen

The Hostage at the Window

Ulises Valladares was blindfolded, bound, and waiting to be rescued when an FBI agent fired through a bedroom window. Randall Kallinen carried the family’s case from a constitutional appeal to a Federal Tort Claims Act trial and a nearly $2 million judgment.

A Silhouette through Two Panes

Kidnappers entered Ulises Valladares’s Conroe home on January 24, 2018. They bound him and his twelve-year-old son, carried Valladares away, and demanded ransom. His son escaped and alerted a neighbor. Law enforcement traced a call to an Elbert Street house in Houston, where an FBI team planned a predawn rescue.

Agents Gavin Lappe and Jeffrey Hawkins took positions outside the bedroom. Hawkins was assigned to break the window as a diversion while Lappe covered him. The first strike sent Hawkins’s tool through one pane. Valladares, still blindfolded and with his wrists bound, rose from a couch beneath the window. Lappe fired two rounds through the opening.

The shooting account turned on physical distance and position. Lappe said someone reached through the window and grabbed his rifle. At the 2024 trial, scene measurements, photographs, ballistics, autopsy evidence, tactical assignments, witness testimony, and the condition of the glass showed that Valladares was inside the room below the window and could not have reached the rifle as Lappe described.

The Federal Tort Route

Kallinen and U.A. Lewis initially pursued an individual constitutional claim against the agent and a negligence claim against the United States. The Fifth Circuit held in 2021 that the pleaded shooting was accidental in the constitutional sense: the agent intended to rescue the hostage rather than seize him. That ruling ended the Fourth Amendment claim against Lappe.

The Federal Tort Claims Act supplied a different route. Under it, courts determine whether the United States would bear liability under the governing state tort law for the conduct of a federal employee acting within the scope of employment. Intentional constitutional seizure and negligent tactical conduct are separate inquiries. Losing the first theory therefore did not end the family’s case.

Because the FTCA negligence claim survived after the constitutional claim ended, Kallinen could continue against the United States. He developed the forensic record and carried the case to a bench trial more than six years after Valladares’s death.

Three Days of Trial

Judge Kenneth Hoyt heard evidence over three days in October 2024. His March 3, 2025 findings rejected the agents’ account that Valladares leaned through the window, reached for the rifle, or threatened them. The court found that Lappe fired at a silhouette without identifying the person, issued no warning, and acted negligently and grossly negligently. It assigned sole causation to the shot.

The damages reflected two family relationships. Valladares’s mother, Justina Garcia, received $103,500 for lost financial support, $500,000 for pecuniary loss and mental anguish, and $7,500 for funeral and travel expenses. His son, Ulysses Valladares Jr., received $654,000 for lost support, $150,000 for lost inheritance, and $500,000 for parental services, care, consortium, and mental anguish.

The total compensatory award was $1,915,000. The court separately approved $475,000 in attorney fees under the Federal Tort Claims Act’s statutory limit. The judgment found that Lappe fired without warning or identifying the person behind the window and that the shot caused Valladares’s death.

The Federal Judgment

The United States appealed in May 2025. Fifth Circuit No. 25-20180 challenges the negligence finding and the government’s liability for the award. Kallinen appears as lead counsel for Garcia and Valladares Jr.

The appellate record was assembled and briefing began in 2025. The district court’s detailed findings remain the operative judgment as the Fifth Circuit considers the government’s challenge.

The 2021 Fifth Circuit ruling defined the limits of a constitutional seizure. In the current appeal, the Fifth Circuit must decide whether the trial court properly imposed tort liability on the United States after hearing the physical and testimonial evidence.

Eight Days of Body-Camera Trial

Jose Gomez’s case began with a March 2017 Houston traffic stop. Officers Jacob Simmerman and Christopher Heaven arrested him, and body cameras recorded the encounter. Prosecutors later dismissed the resisting-arrest charge. Gomez filed a civil action alleging excessive force and assault.

Before trial, the court narrowed the case to the claims that could be decided against the two officers. Kallinen, Alexander Johnson, and Mike DeGeurin Sr. then tried those claims for eight days. The recordings fixed the timing of commands, movement, resistance, force, and control. Jurors still had to decide what each movement meant under the Fourth Amendment and Texas assault law.

In July 2021, the jury assigned sixty-five percent responsibility to Simmerman and thirty-five percent to Heaven. It awarded $537,500 for the constitutional violation and $537,500 for assault, producing a $1.075 million verdict.

Appellate Mediation and Resolution

The officers appealed the judgment, while Gomez challenged earlier dismissals in the same Fifth Circuit proceeding.

Appellate mediation produced a $450,000 settlement approved by Houston City Council in November 2022. The agreement resolved the verdict and the competing appeal in Fifth Circuit No. 21-20415.

The jury verdict fixed responsibility and damages after trial. The later settlement resolved the competing appellate claims and the risk of further review.

Failure to Intervene at the Jail

Akrem Azzam was handcuffed inside a Houston city-jail cell in 2015 when civilian jailer Lasswon Shannon struck him. Surveillance video captured the assault and showed another jailer, Sheila Ross, nearby. Shannon later pleaded guilty to assault.

The civil jury had to decide whether Ross had a realistic opportunity and constitutional duty to intervene. Failure-to-intervene liability does not arise from mere presence. The evidence must show awareness of the force, time and ability to act, and a failure to take reasonable steps.

A federal jury found that Ross failed to stop the beating and awarded $105,000 in February 2019. Houston later approved a $100,000 settlement resolving the incident-related claims. The footage separated the person applying force from the official who stood close enough to prevent its continuation.

Ninety-Eight Pounds in the Wrong Cell

Fred Harris entered the Harris County jail in October 2021 at nineteen years old. He weighed ninety-eight pounds, lived with an intellectual disability, and had no prior conviction. Michael Ownby weighed approximately 240 pounds and had attacked another detainee that day.

Jail personnel had identified Harris for separate housing. The federal complaint alleged that staffing shortages and convenience overrode that classification, placing him in a holding cell with Ownby without adequate supervision. Ownby attacked Harris, who died on November 2. Ownby later pleaded guilty to murder and received a fifty-year sentence.

Harris’s mother, Dallas Garcia, pursued claims through Kallinen alleging failure to protect, failure to accommodate his disability, deficient monitoring, and chronic understaffing at the jail. The county maintained that Ownby alone caused the death and contested constitutional responsibility.

How Cell Assignments Affect Safety

Jail classification translates information into physical separation. Size, disability, behavior, prior violence, threats, charges, mental health, and staffing determine who shares a cell and who receives closer observation. A classification entry has little protective value unless personnel implement it.

Harris County approved a $1.25 million settlement in November 2025, and the agreement became public in February 2026. It contained no admission of responsibility. Kallinen’s statement focused on the system that made the placement possible: “This jail wasn’t given enough money for the very basics of care that inmates should have.”

The complaint alleged that inadequate funding, staffing, cell assignments, and supervision contributed to the death; the settlement contained no admission of responsibility.

The Pledge Opt-Out Case

Mari Oliver declined to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance at Klein Oak High School. She objected to “under God” on religious grounds and believed the promise of liberty and justice did not reflect the treatment of Black Americans. Her mother, LaShan Arceneaux, asked the school to excuse her under Texas law.

The dispute continued through several school years. The surviving free-speech claim concerned sociology teacher Benjie Arnold, who assigned students to transcribe the Pledge after school officials had discussed Oliver’s exemption. The district court found factual disputes over whether the assignment served a genuine instructional purpose or compelled a statement of patriotic belief.

The Fifth Circuit dismissed Arnold’s interlocutory appeal in 2021 because those factual disputes belonged at trial. Kallinen and American Atheists counsel preserved the claim, and the matter later settled for $90,000. The claim treated Oliver’s decision to remain seated and the compulsory transcription assignment as separate First Amendment issues.

Texas Education Code section 25.082 permits a parent to excuse a student from reciting the Pledge. That statutory option worked alongside the constitutional rule against compelled patriotic speech. Oliver’s claim therefore addressed more than permission to remain seated. The court had to decide whether a teacher could use grades, assignments, or classroom authority to impose the message after a valid parental opt-out.

The Red-Light-Camera Study

Kallinen’s Texas Public Information Act case began with a request for records concerning a City of Houston red-light-camera study. The City released many documents, withheld others, and sought an Attorney General ruling. Kallinen filed a mandamus action before that administrative review concluded.

The Texas Supreme Court held in 2015 that a requester need not await the Attorney General before asking a court to compel disclosure. The Attorney General process constrains the governmental body; it is not an administrative remedy that the requester controls or must exhaust. Courts retain jurisdiction to decide whether withheld information is public.

On remand, the First Court of Appeals affirmed the disclosure judgment and the $92,176 attorney-fee award. Kallinen had substantially prevailed under the Texas Public Information Act. The rulings confirmed that a requester may go directly to court when a governmental body withholds records that state law makes public.

The ruling also assigned distinct roles to the Attorney General and the courts. A governmental body may request an Attorney General decision about withholding information, but that process cannot suspend a requester’s statutory right to seek mandamus. Judicial review remains available to test the claimed exception, order disclosure, and award fees when the requester substantially prevails.

Texas Civil-Rights and Public-Records Practice

Kallinen has practiced in Texas since 1994 through criminal defense, civil-rights litigation, federal tort claims, Texas Public Information Act disputes, and constitutional appeals. His current admissions include the federal district courts in Texas, the Fifth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.

Kallinen’s reported matters include the Valladares FTCA judgment, the Gomez excessive-force verdict and appellate settlement, failure-to-intervene and failure-to-protect claims in Azzam and Harris, Oliver’s First Amendment case, and the red-light-camera mandamus action.

Those cases relied on forensic reconstruction, body-camera and surveillance footage, jail-classification and staffing records, and the administrative record supporting mandamus.