JACKSON — A Mississippi appeals court has revived a wrongful death lawsuit against two Rankin County sheriff’s deputies and the county itself, ruling Monday that disputed facts about how deputies restrained Damien Cameron before his July 2021 death must be decided by a jury.
The Mississippi Court of Appeals voted 7-3 to reverse the summary judgment in favor of Deputies Hunter Elward and Luke Stickman, finding factual disputes about whether their use of force was excessive and whether they were entitled to qualified immunity. The court also reversed summary judgment for Rankin County on state law claims. The decision was issued May 5.
Cameron, who was known as “Toot,” died after deputies arrested him at his home on Foote Drive in Braxton following a vandalism complaint at a neighbor’s house. A toxicology report later found methamphetamine in his system. The state medical examiner listed the cause and manner of death as “undetermined.”
Cameron’s mother, Monica Lee, sued Rankin County, Elward and Stickman, alleging the deputies used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment and state law under the Mississippi Tort Claims Act.
At the center of the dispute is what happened after Stickman arrived to help Elward handcuff Cameron. Lee and her parents told Mississippi Bureau of Investigation agents that Stickman knelt on Cameron’s neck as he lay prone on the floor, and that Cameron repeatedly said he could not breathe. Stickman said in his report that he knelt beside Cameron with minimal pressure on his back.
The plaintiffs’ expert, Dr. Shandelle Norford, concluded to a reasonable degree of medical probability that Cameron died of cardiopulmonary arrest caused by neck and back compression from both officers during restraint, which she termed “restraint associated asphyxia” with methamphetamine as a contributing factor.
Writing for the majority, Chief Judge Virginia Carlton Barnes said those conflicting accounts created questions of fact that a circuit court cannot resolve at summary judgment.
“Taking into account the consistent testimony by Lee and her parents that Damien repeatedly told the deputies that ‘he couldn’t breathe’ after both deputies subdued him by using their body weight to kneel on his back and neck, we find there was a genuine issue of fact whether these actions constituted a prohibited ‘choke hold’ under the County’s policies and procedures and were excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment,” Barnes wrote.
The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department’s own use-of-force policy expressly prohibits choke holds, defined to include applying pressure to a person’s neck. Sheriff Bryan Bailey acknowledged in a deposition that if a deputy applied force to Cameron’s neck with a knee, it would have violated that policy.
The majority also pointed to Elward’s subsequent criminal conviction for falsifying incident reports as a factor bearing on his credibility, and cited a Fifth Circuit ruling that it is a question of fact for a jury to determine whether a person who appeared to be resisting was “merely trying to get into a position where he could breathe.”
The court additionally found a factual dispute over a third use of a Taser, this time in drive-stun mode on Cameron’s thigh after he had already been handcuffed and placed partially in a patrol car, noting Cameron had been tased twice before and had been asserting that he could not breathe.
In a partial dissent joined by Judge John Emfinger and in part by Presiding Judge Jack Wilson, Judge Lassitter St. Pé argued the circuit court reached the right result and should have been affirmed. She wrote that the undisputed evidence showed Cameron actively resisted throughout the encounter and that the deputies ceased using force once he was restrained.
“By reversing that decision, the majority substitutes speculation for evidence and weakens the protections afforded by both qualified immunity and the summary judgment framework,” Lassitter St. Pé wrote.
The appeals court unanimously upheld the circuit court’s denial of Lee’s motion to file a second amended complaint, which sought to add Monell claims and supervisory liability allegations against Rankin County. The court found the motion was filed three weeks past the scheduling order’s deadline and would have caused undue prejudice to the defendants.
The case now returns to Rankin County Circuit Court. The excessive force claim against the individual deputies will be decided by a jury; the state law claim against Rankin County under the Mississippi Tort Claims Act will be decided by the trial judge.
