Deputy back on job after fatal shooting

A White County sheriff’s deputy has returned to work after a prosecutor tentatively cleared him of wrongdoing in a fatal shooting in Rose Bud, pending an investigative report from the Arkansas State Police.

Sgt. Scott Seiders is back on duty, Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Phillip Miller said Thursday.

Prosecuting Attorney Rebecca Reed McCoy said the sheriff’s office wanted to get Seiders back to work. She said she agreed to write a letter saying that her investigation, which included a review of two officers’ body cameras, found that the deputy had used reasonable and justified deadly force.

McCoy said her finding is pending a report from the Arkansas State Police but that she doesn’t expect anything to change.

Seiders went on routine administrative leave after the Dec. 9 shooting death of James Newman, 69, in Rose Bud. Newman lived in that area.

Miller has said previously that a second county officer was at the scene but was not involved in the shooting. Newman had some previous run-ins with the law, but nothing as serious as this encounter, Miller said.

Arkansas Annotated Code 5-2-610 details when an officer is justified in using deadly physical force.

Justification exists if the officer “reasonably believes” that such force is necessary to make an arrest or “to prevent the escape from custody of an arrested person whom the law enforcement officer reasonably believes has committed or attempted to commit a felony and is presently armed or dangerous.”

Such force also is justified, the statute says, when an officer reasonably believes that deadly force is necessary to “defend himself or herself or a third person from what the law enforcement officer reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force.”