9 DEPUTIES INDICTED IN FATAL JAIL BEATING
Nine sheriff ’s deputies in Memphis, Tenn., have been indicted in the death of a man with mental health problems who died in custody last fall after being stomped, punched and pinned down.
It is the latest case to draw attention to how law enforcement responds to people in mental distress.
The indictments against the Shelby County deputies were announced by Sheriff Floyd Bonner at a news conference where he disputed that his deputies had caused the death of Gershun Freeman, 33.
Freeman was being held at the Shelby County Jail last fall and, according to his family’s lawyer, kept in a section reserved for suicidal inmates before being beaten after he yelled throughout the day in his cell.
Bonner, by holding a news conference, was able to announce the indictments himself, preempting the district attorney.
Bonner is running for mayor of Memphis, the seat of Shelby County. The district attorney there, Steve Mulroy, recused himself from the case against the deputies because he had already endorsed Bonner’s mayoral opponent, Van Turner, a former president of the Memphis branch of the NAACP.
The district attorney in Nashville, Glenn Funk, is instead prosecuting the case. “We are not commenting at all on a pending case, or the comments made by Sheriff Bonner,” Steve Hayslip, the director of communications from Funk’s office, said Thursday. “All of our public comments will come in open court.”
Two of the deputies, Stevon D. Jones and Courtney J. Parham, were charged with second-degree murder, and seven more were charged with aggravated assault, according to the indictment. Six of those deputies were Anthony D. Howell, Chelsea B. Duckett, Ebonee N. Davis, Damian S. Cooper Jr., Lareko Donwel Elliot and Jeffrey A. Gibson. A seventh deputy was redacted from the indictment because he or she had not turned themselves in yet, the Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk’s Office said.
Jake Brown, a lawyer for Freeman’s family, said in an interview that he had spoken about the indictments Wednesday morning with the district attorney’s office in Nashville. Freeman’s family is also pursuing a lawsuit against Shelby County.
Bonner said that “the way the case was being handled is political, and it’s only grown worse” and that Funk should not have released footage in March of the episode.
“I believe if I were not running for another office these indictments never would have happened,” Bonner said, “and I find that despicable.”
An autopsy found that Freeman had a heart condition that was worsened by the beating, The Commercial Appeal of Memphis reported.