Circuit court must consider whether deputies were to blame in man’s death, appeals court says

The Mississippi Court of Appeals has reversed a judge’s ruling that Rankin County deputies bore no blame for the 2021 death of Damien Cameron after witnesses said one deputy sat on Cameron’s back while another kneeled on his neck.

In a ruling Tuesday, the appeals court revived the civil lawsuit and sent it back to Rankin County Circuit Court.

“We find there are genuine issues of material fact whether the deputies’ actions were objectively reasonable and entitled them to qualified immunity,” Appeals Court Judge Donna Barnes wrote.

She concluded that “there is clearly established law that applying pressure or body-weight force to a prone suspect could constitute excessive force under certain circumstances.”

In 2022, State Medical Examiner Dr. Staci Turner ruled Cameron’s death “undetermined,” but three pathologists who examined records in the case told Mississippi Today and The New York Times that his death should have been ruled a homicide.

Cameron was one of at least nine men who have died during episodes involving Rankin County deputies since 2014, according to sheriff’s department records and Mississippi Bureau of Investigation reports.

Five deputies and a local police officer are now in prison for their 2023 torture of two Black men, Eddie Parker and Michael Jenkins, that culminated with Deputy Hunter Elward jamming his pistol into Jenkins’ mouth and firing it. The blast lacerated his tongue, shattered his jaw and missed his spine.

Elward and the other officers, who are all white, concealed their crimes by planting a gun and drugs on their victims, disposing of security camera footage and falsifying sheriff’s reports, according to an investigation by the Justice Department. All of the officers in the so-called “Goon Squad” case are now serving between 10 and 40 years in prison.

Elward, who is serving 20 years, also pleaded guilty in connection with deputies beating a handcuffed suspect.

Reported vandalism turns deadly

On July 26, 2021, after a report of someone breaking into a Braxton house and ripping holes in the wall, Deputy Elward told Mississippi Bureau of Investigation agents that the owner identified the culprit as Cameron.

Elward headed for Cameron’s home, and when he arrived, he spoke with Cameron’s mother, Monica Lee. She said she told Elward that her son would run because he was paranoid, suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She quoted herself as telling the deputy, “Don’t hurt my son.”

Cameron ran after he saw Elward. The deputy fired his Taser and tackled Cameron.

Elward said Cameron then picked him up on his back and took him inside the house, where the two battled. Elward said he eventually sat on Cameron’s back.

“He started swinging at me again, and all I was doing was just basically blocking it,” Elward said. After this, he punched Cameron three times in the face, according to his sheriff’s report.

Elward continued to sit on Cameron’s back until Deputy Luke Stickman arrived and helped handcuff Cameron.

Cameron’s grandmother, Betty Cameron, told Mississippi Today that one deputy was on Cameron’s neck and another deputy was on his back. “He kept saying he couldn’t breathe,” she said.

Cameron’s grandfather, James Cameron, told MBI investigators that a deputy knelt on his grandson’s neck. “I was so shook up,” he said.

He quoted his grandson as saying, “I can’t breathe, sir, let me up. I can’t breathe. Please let me up.”

Damien Cameron’s mother, Lee, said her son asked for water. “He kept telling them he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe.”

Elward acknowledged that Cameron said he couldn’t breathe, but he thought he was simply out of breath, like he was.

The deputies handcuffed Cameron and took him to the car. Both Elward and Stickman told MBI that Cameron was walking until they got outside.

After they opened the front door, “he collapsed to the ground,” Elward told investigators. “He wouldn’t move on his own accord. We had to move him ourselves.”

Lee told Mississippi Today that her son “fell face down in the mud. They left him there awhile.”

Deputies tried a half dozen times to get Cameron in the back seat, Elward said, “but from the rain and the mud, and his strong resistance, he would wiggle his way back to the ground.”

They were finally able to get Cameron in the patrol vehicle, he said. “He’s laid completely across the backseat of the vehicle. I tried to get him to physically bend his legs to get his knee to bend to where I could shut the door.”

Every time he tried, Elward said, Cameron would “start kicking the window. He wouldn’t let the door shut.”

Photographs taken inside Elward’s patrol vehicle show a muddy footprint on the arm rest, but no muddy marks appear above that.

Elward said because Cameron continued to resist, he used Stickman’s Taser on Cameron. Logs reflect that the Taser was used three times. “He pulled his legs in, allowing me to shut the door,” Elward wrote.

After the deputies went inside, they talked for some time with Lee about having her son committed for mental help. When they returned to the patrol car, they said, they found Cameron unresponsive. They began CPR until the ambulance arrived.

At the hospital, he was declared dead. His face was bloody and swollen almost beyond recognition from his struggle with deputies.

The state medical examiner found meth in Cameron’s system and concluded he had suffered “multiple subcutaneous and soft tissue hemorrhages.” She ruled the cause and manner of death “undetermined.”

“It’s heartbreaking because I’ve been dealing with this for five years,” Lee said. “It’s heavy on me because there’s no justice.”

Judges hear about Cameron’s death

In 2022, Cameron’s family sued, and a Rankin County circuit judge dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that the deputies had sovereign immunity.

The family appealed, and the appeals court heard arguments in the case Nov. 12.

The lawyer for Cameron’s family, Trent Walker of Jackson, told the judges that hemorrhaging found in Cameron’s neck was consistent with Stickman “putting a knee on his neck in such a way to choke him.” That, he said, violates the sheriff’s written policy, which bars anything that restricts a person’s breathing.

Cameron was unarmed and wasn’t trying to harm deputies, Walker said. “The penalty for noncompliance shouldn’t be the death penalty.”

Ridgeland lawyer Jason Dare, who represents the sheriff’s department, told the judges that Cameron’s death appears to be an overdose.

Walker said Tuesday, “We’re happy we’re able to get Ms. Lee her day in court so that she can get justice for her son. Material facts need to be heard, and we’re looking forward to the fight.”

Dare could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

In a dissent in the appeals court ruling, Judge Amy Lassitter St. Pé wrote that the Rankin County judge’s decision should be affirmed. The record, she wrote, “does not support a finding that Deputies Elward or Stickman used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

Tuesday’s ruling may not mean the end of litigation. The sheriff’s department can request a rehearing in the case, and if that is denied, the department can appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

After learning of the decision, Lee said she was smiling. “I feel a little bit better that maybe we can get justice for my son.”

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This story was originally published by Mississippi Today and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.