The state’s highest court on Thursday began hearing arguments on a controversial ruling by a lower court judge granting immunity to three white Washington County deputies charged with murder in the 2017 death of a mentally ill Black man.
Prosecutors in Washington County – located about halfway between Atlanta and Savannah – petitioned the Georgia Supreme Court to reinstate the charges against Henry Lee Copeland, Michael Howell and Rhett Scott, who repeatedly shot Eurie Lee Martin with stun guns on a hot July afternoon.
The deputies, all of whom were subsequently fired, were responding to a suspicious person call from a resident of the tiny town of Deepstep, where Martin, 58, had stopped to ask for water. He was making a 25-mile walk from Milledgeville to his sister’s home in Sandersville.
It’s not clear whether Martin violated any Georgia laws after he was confronted by officers Copeland and Howell roughly one mile away from Deerstep.
Martin ignored the officers and had every right to do so, argued prosecutor Kelly Weathers.
Attorney Shawn Merzlak, representing the deputies, said Martin triggered the stop when he threw a Coke can on the road. But ultimately, his clients viewed Martin as a suspicious person and wanted to know more, Merzlak said.
“Officers cannot have kind of generalized suspicion that ‘I don’t know that there’s any crime’ … I mean, they can go talk to a person, but they cannot do any kind of stop or command to stop until it’s a reasonable suspicion of some crime,” Presiding Justice David Nahmias said.
The two officers blocked Martin, diagnosed with schizophrenia, with their patrol cars. Though he continued to try to get past them, even the judge who granted the immunity said in his ruling Martin “exhibited no overt physical aggression.”
Judge H. Gibbs Flanders wrote that he based his 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.
Justices on Thursday questioned whether the deputies had any reason to fear for their well-being. According to the GBI investigation, Martin adopted a fighting posture, balling his fists. Their attorney, Shawn Merzlak, said the lawmen were justified in defending themselves.
Justice Charles Bethel noted that Scott was the last of the three deputies to arrive at the scene. When he got there, Martin was agitated after being hit once with the stun gun, Bethel suggested, perhaps better justifying Scott’s response.
“Essentially, were these men under attack?” Weathers asked. “And the state submits that no interpretation of the footage of the last 11 minutes of Martin’s life support that finding.”
Martin went into respiratory arrest during the fight with the officers and died of an apparent heart attack, authorities say.
His death has sparked outrage among Middle Georgia’s Black residents, who have turned out in high numbers, along with a number of white citizens, for a series of protests drawing attention to the case.
“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. spokesman for local chapters of the Southern Leadership Conference and NAACP.
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