It was a ruling few saw coming. Attorneys from both sides were preparing for a murder trial last month when Judge H. Gibbs Flanders granted immunity to three former Washington County sheriff’s deputies.
The judge based the decision on Georgia’s Stand Your Ground law, which says a person with reasonable fear for his or her safety has no duty to retreat before using force. Flanders’ ruling said the deputies were legally protected when they tased 58-year-old Eurie Martin even though he exhibited “no overt physical aggression.”
Martin, who was black, died. The deputies are white. A spokesman for local chapters of the Southern Leadership Conference and NAACP finds racism at the heart of the matter.
“You just don’t think (racism) is there, you know it’s there because you deal with it on a daily basis,” said Milledgeville native Quentin Howell.
‘Hunting season for the young black man’
The trial of former deputies Henry Lee Copeland, Rhett Scott and Michael Howell, who were fired following their December 2017 indictments, was to be the third this year involving law enforcement officers in Georgia charged with murder or manslaughter. Most years, there aren’t any. It would’ve been the first such trial held in Washington County, located halfway between Atlanta and Savannah.
In 2005, Philip Stinson, a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, started compiling a database of law enforcement officers charged with killing civilians. Since then, of the 106 officers who have been arrested for murder or manslaughter in such cases, four have been found guilty of those most serious charges. Two were former East Point police officers: Marcus Eberhart and Howard Weems, convicted in 2016. They are African-American, as was the victim, Gregory Towns, killed after he was tased 14 times in 30 minutes.
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This year, former DeKalb County Police Officer Chip Olsen was found not guilty of murdering unarmed Afghanistan War veteran Anthony Hill, who was shot to death in the midst of a mental health crisis. Jurors found Olsen guilty of lesser charges, including aggravated assault, and he was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Olsen is white. Hill was black. The trial overlapped another former officer’s trial in rural Kingsland, a coastal town near the Georgia-Florida state line. Zechariah Presley, who is white, shot Tony Green, who was African-American, in the back as he fled arrest. A grand jury did not indict for murder, opting for manslaughter instead.
That decision sparked protests among the black community, which makes up a quarter of Kingsland’s population, including candlelight vigils and boycotts of Kingsland businesses. Presley was acquitted on all charges except violation of oath of office. After he was sentenced to one year in prison, the minimum, protesters briefly blocked Highway 40 in Camden County.
Pastor Mack Knight, whose church Green attended, denounced the acquittals outside the courthouse.
“To me, it’s hunting season for the young black man and we’re being gunned down in the streets,” Knight said. “There’s no repercussions, there’s no consequences for these officers.”
‘Justice is not instant’
Howell, the NAACP spokesman, said he believes public pressure led to the prosecution of the three Washington County deputies. African-American residents make up 52 percent of county’s population of 21,187, and Howell said no event in his lifetime has galvanized them like this one.
“We had over 500 people in one meeting (after immunity was granted) upset about what happened,” he said. “The community has never been more engaged. We’ll be at the Supreme Court hearing en masse.”
Middle Judicial Circuit District Attorney Hayward Altman said he is “very confident” the state’s highest court will overturn Flanders’ ruling. If so, the murder charges against the deputies would be reinstated.
Registered nurse Tabitha Johnson-Green, of Sandersville, isn’t so sure.
“For some reason I thought justice would be done in this small town,” said Johnson-Green, who is running for the 10th District congressional seat in 2020. “I really thought this case would be different.”
GBI investigators found Martin had committed no crimes in the minutes leading to the deadly confrontation in July 2017. He had merely asked for water from a homeowner who ran him off and then called 911, telling the operator police should “check (Martin) out.”
Martin was nearly a mile away when Michael Howell first encountered him. He refused to answer the deputy’s questions as he continued walking to visit his family in Sandersville — a 25-mile walk from the group home in Milledgeville where he lived. Martin, a schizophrenic, say relatives, was coming to celebrate his birthday.
Eventually, Howell, Copeland and Scott surrounded Martin, according to court documents. Lawyers for the defense argued Martin resisted arrest and tried to punch the deputies. Witnesses disputed that in interviews with reporters and cell phone video of the incident reviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution doesn’t show Martin trying to punch anyone.
Lawyers for the three deputies didn’t respond to a request for comment. In sworn statements, the lawmen testified that they feared for their safety, although Flanders said in his ruling that Martin was “not physically aggressive.”
“The trial judge must evaluate the evidence from the perspective of an officer at the time and under the circumstances existing at the time in question,” Flanders wrote.
The ruling has had a profound impact on black citizens in Washington County and surrounding areas, Johnson-Green said.
“I think many people in the black community don’t feel safe calling the police anymore,” she said.
But Quentin Howell said he believes there will be accountability for the officers — eventually.
“Down here we realize justice is not instant,” he said. “It’s a process. And we have all expectations that justice will be served.”
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