When Damien Cameron’s physique arrived on the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office in August 2021, it bore all of the indicators of a police brutality case.
Mr. Cameron’s face was bloody and swollen nearly past recognition from his battle with Rankin County sheriff’s deputies the week earlier than.
Signs of inner bleeding within the neck of Mr. Cameron, a 29-year-old Black man, instructed a deputy may need pinned him to the bottom with a knee — a harmful restraint method condemned by the Justice Department and banned in lots of cities.
But when the state’s chief health worker, Dr. Staci Turner, accomplished her post-mortem, she dominated the reason for Mr. Cameron’s demise “undetermined.” A grand jury later declined to indict the deputies concerned.
Now, three famend pathologists, who examined Mr. Cameron’s post-mortem report on the request of The New York Times and Mississippi Today, say his demise ought to have been dominated a murder.
After independently reviewing post-mortem photographs, sheriff’s stories, hospital information, and eyewitness statements saying two deputies knelt on Mr. Cameron’s neck for 10 minutes or extra, the specialists concluded the deputies most definitely killed him.
His demise was “a homicide, absolutely,” stated Dr. Michael Baden, a former New York City chief health worker who testified within the OJ Simpson trial and carried out an impartial post-mortem of George Floyd. “This person died of asphyxia because of neck compression.”
“There’s really nothing to be undetermined about,” stated Dr. Zhongxue Hua, chief of the forensic pathology division at Rutgers University.
The opinions of those forensic specialists give new ammunition to Mr. Cameron’s household, who’ve struggled to convey consideration to his demise for greater than two years. Despite native media protection and two articles by the news website Insider, Mr. Cameron’s demise by no means surfaced nationally just like the circumstances of George Floyd or Eric Garner.
Mr. Cameron’s mom, Monica Lee, described her son as an outgoing younger man who may shortly flip strangers into associates along with his smile. Ms. Lee has all the time maintained that the deputies killed her son by violently subduing him and ignoring his cries that he couldn’t breathe. She predicted the investigation into his demise “was going to be a bunch of lies.”
Ms. Lee sued the division in 2022.
Her lawyer, Malik Shabazz, stated the conclusions of the impartial pathologists may change the result of Ms. Lee’s case. “There’s serious questions about the competency and the accuracy of the autopsy findings,” he stated.
Mr. Cameron is one in all no less than 9 males who’ve died throughout episodes involving Rankin deputies since 2014, in response to division information and Mississippi Bureau of Investigation stories.
Rankin County, a rural, majority-white neighborhood outdoors Jackson, has been rocked by nationwide controversy this yr after 5 sheriff’s deputies and an area police officer broke into the house of two Black males, tortured them for 2 hours, sexually assaulted them with a intercourse toy after which shot one in all them within the mouth. All of the officers have pleaded responsible to federal and state costs.
On Aug. 3, Deputy Hunter Elward admitted to sticking his gun in 32-year-old Michael Jenkins’s mouth and firing it. He and the opposite officers, who’re all white, hid their crimes by planting a gun and medicines on their victims, disposing of safety digital camera footage and falsifying sheriff’s stories, in response to an investigation by the Justice Department.
“Obviously these officers can’t be trusted,” stated Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety. “There’s probably going to be a lot of reviews of every case that they’ve ever worked on.”
Mr. Elward was one of many two deputies accused of kneeling on Mr. Cameron the day he died.
A violent arrest
The solely witnesses to Mr. Cameron’s arrest on July 26, 2021, have been the deputies, Ms. Lee and her mother and father.
That afternoon, a neighbor known as the police to report a housebreaking he believed Mr. Cameron had dedicated at his house in a quiet, rural neighborhood close to Braxton, Miss., courtroom information present.
When Deputy Elward arrived to analyze, Mr. Cameron, who had been identified with bipolar dysfunction and schizophrenia, swung at him and ran away, in response to the sheriff’s report.
Deputy Elward fired his Taser and tackled Mr. Cameron, he claimed in his sheriff’s report, punching him thrice within the face earlier than Deputy Luke Stickman arrived to assist subdue and arrest the person.
Mr. Cameron continued to withstand the deputies as they led him outdoors and shoved him in a patrol automobile, Deputy Elward contended in his report.
Shortly after, he discovered Mr. Cameron unresponsive. Paramedics took him to University of Mississippi Medical Center, the place he was pronounced useless.
Mr. Cameron’s household stated they witnessed a drastically completely different encounter.
In interviews with reporters, Ms. Lee stated her son by no means tried to hit the deputy.
Hours after the incident, Mr. Cameron’s grandfather advised Mississippi Bureau of Investigation brokers that he had witnessed a deputy putting his knee on his grandson’s neck as he lay on the bottom. The deputies didn’t point out kneeling on Mr. Cameron of their stories.
Ms. Lee advised reporters that Deputies Elward and Stickman knelt on Mr. Cameron’s neck and again for no less than 10 minutes.
“He was telling me he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe,” she stated.
Mr. Cameron’s mom advised reporters that he struggled to stroll because the deputies took him to the patrol automobile and that he fell facedown within the mud in entrance of it
There is not any video footage of the incident.
In a written assertion, Sheriff Bryan Bailey stated the division had but to deploy body-worn cameras when Mr. Cameron was arrested. Mississippi doesn’t require legislation enforcement businesses to make use of them.
Without footage to show her claims, Ms. Lee hoped her son’s post-mortem would lastly reveal the reality about his demise.
But after the health worker’s report got here again “undetermined,” a grand jury declined to cost the deputies.
“It was heartbreaking,” Ms. Lee stated. “This is what you do every day, and you could not determine his cause of death? Why?”
District Attorney John Bramlett, often called Bubba, who introduced the case to the grand jury, didn’t return calls looking for remark concerning the case.
Medical examiners’ findings function the authorized basis for prosecutors to file costs in opposition to officers concerned in deadly incidents, authorized specialists stated.
“The only person in a homicide case who can testify to the ultimate issue — that the manner of death was homicide — is a medical examiner,” stated Aramis Ayala, a former Florida state lawyer and a professor at Florida A&M University School of Law.
Prosecutors not often pursue murder costs in opposition to cops. Without an official reason for demise, specialists stated the probabilities of persuading a grand jury to indict an officer have been slim.
A demise unexplained
Dr. Turner declined to debate the small print of Mr. Cameron’s post-mortem, however stated there was nothing uncommon about her choice to not cite a reason for demise.
In circumstances the place her workplace is lacking data or can’t definitively cite a trigger, “we err on the side of ‘undetermined’ because we don’t want to make a mistake,” she stated.
Dr. Turner wouldn’t touch upon what police paperwork and witness statements she had entry to when she carried out the post-mortem. But in her report she wrote, “Due to lack of access to information involving the circumstance of this death, the cause and manner of death are best classified as undetermined.”
All three impartial forensic pathologists stated the health worker ought to have tracked down the data she wanted to make a dedication. The hemorrhaging in Mr. Cameron’s neck made it clear he died of asphyxiation, they stated.
“They should not have signed it on as undetermined and let it go,” stated Dr. Cyril Wecht, former president of the American College of Legal Medicine and the American Academy of Forensic Science. “That was up to them to get more information from the cops.”
A toxicology report discovered methamphetamine in Mr. Cameron’s blood, however the pathologists agreed that the drug didn’t trigger his demise.
Representatives of the health worker’s workplace stated the company would assessment the case once more if requested by the Mississippi lawyer common or the native district lawyer’s workplace.
“It was undetermined,” stated Mr. Tindell, the general public security division commissioner. “That doesn’t mean it can’t be determined later.”
A consultant of the lawyer common’s workplace referred reporters to District Attorney Bramlett, who didn’t reply to requests for remark.
In a written response to The Times, Sheriff Bailey stated his division cooperated with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation’s inquiry, noting that the bureau discovered no wrongdoing.
“If requested, we will fully cooperate with any future investigation into this incident by any investigative agency,” Sheriff Bailey wrote.
Mr. Shabazz stated he deliberate to seek the advice of with the pathologists and replace Ms. Lee’s lawsuit to incorporate their findings. He hopes the brand new data will immediate state officers to assessment the case once more.
Ms. Lee stated she simply needed the world to know the reality.
“This is what they did to my child,” she stated. “You can’t tell me it was undetermined.”
Nate Rosenfield and Brian Howey are reporters for the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today, a non-profit newsroom protecting the state.
Source: www.nytimes.com