Third Homicide Ruling Against Force Since ’99
by Jamie Stockwell and Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post
Maryland’s chief medical examiner yesterday ruled that a Fairmount Heights man who died while in the custody of Prince George’s County police in March was a homicide victim, finding that officers who arrested him were directly responsible for his death.
Jason D. Smith, 20, died of asphyxiation minutes after he was restrained by officers March 11, police said yesterday. They said that the medical examiner concluded that Smith was under the influence of PCP and ephedrine, a white crystalline alkaloid used chiefly to treat asthma, hay fever and colds.
Smith is the sixth person to die while in the custody of Prince George’s police since April 1999. The state medical examiner has ruled that three of those cases were homicides.
Acting Chief Gerald M. Wilson said the autopsy indicated that Smith, who police said was involved in a hit-and-run accident minutes before his arrest, died because the force used by police was enough to “deprive him of enough oxygen to breathe.”
Wilson defended the officers, identified as rookie John O’Donnell, Larry Lawson, Jeremy Bull, Fu Cheung, Raymond Kane and Cpl. Raymond Gordon Jr., a 12-year veteran assigned to the Landover district. They were placed on paid administrative leave shortly after the incident and have had no contact with the community, Wilson said.
“The question we have to ask ourselves now is whether the level of force that was used was appropriate,” Wilson said. “Given the situation, that he was under the influence of PCP and ephedrine, and given his conduct, that at some point in time he was choking an officer in the throat and he was reportedly not compliant with the officers’ demands. . . . He had no broken bones and was not beaten to death.”
Wilson said the autopsy report and the department’s criminal investigation will be sent to the county’s state’s attorney’s office.
Jack B. Johnson, Prince George’s state’s attorney, said that a grand jury will examine the case to determine whether officers acted properly or if a criminal indictment is warranted. A review is conducted whenever someone dies at the hands of police.
“Now that it’s been ruled a homicide, we’ll look at it even more carefully,” he said. “A homicide ruling is far more problematic, because it’s saying the officers were the cause of the death.”
Police said that at 7 a.m. March 11, a sport-utility vehicle Smith was driving on Sheriff Road broadsided a car driven by an off-duty D.C. police officer. Smith then ran toward his mother’s house, about a mile away, police said.
Smith’s mother called authorities minutes later and begged for someone to hurry to her home. Her son was screaming, acting erratically and banging on her doors, she told them.
O’Donnell and a Seat Pleasant officer - whose name Seat Pleasant Police Chief Ronald Forrest has refused to release - arrived minutes later and tried to calm Smith.
Smith threatened and harassed the officers and ran from his mother’s home, police said. After a foot chase, O’Donnell caught Smith and another altercation began.
Smith, whose mother had reported that he was high on PCP, lost consciousness as officers tried to subdue him and place him in a device similar to a straitjacket.
O’Donnell suffered bruises and abrasions to his neck and fractured several fingers when Smith choked and assaulted him, police said.
Lawson was injured in the back and a knee and shoulder, and Kane suffered abrasions to his hands, police said, apparently while trying to place Smith in the restraint device.
Smith, who had lived in the 3200 block of Walters Lane, died just after 8 a.m. at Prince George’s Hospital Center.
Police restraints also played a role in the death of a mentally ill man in March 2001 after his arrest by Mount Rainier officers.
In that case, the medical examiner ruled that Harrison Boodoo, 34, died of asphyxiation caused by the restraints after he struggled with police. No Prince George’s officers were involved in the arrest.
The medical examiner did not classify Boodoo’s death a homicide, finding instead that too many factors played a role to blame police. A county grand jury later decided not to indict any officers.
Johnson said his efforts to scrutinize other in-custody deaths have been hampered by a lack of cooperation from police officers. In 2000, he blamed a “blue wall of silence” for his inability to win indictments in the death of Elmer Clayton Newman Jr.
County police broke two of Newman’s ribs and two bones in his neck, according to the autopsy, but the five officers involved in his arrest all denied inflicting the injuries.
The medical examiner ruled Newman’s death a homicide, listing the cause as cocaine intoxication and “multiple neck and chest injuries related to restraint during police custody.”
Prince George’s County reached an out-of-court settlement with Newman’s family, but no officers were disciplined. Excessive-force lawsuits are pending against the county in two other police-custody deaths that have occurred since 1999.
Johnson, who hasn’t obtained indictments in any of the in-custody deaths that have been classified as homicides, called the number of homicides committed by officers troubling, and he has criticized the police department for using too much force.
“It has been a fundamental problem,” he said. “We had hoped we were out of the woods with this issue, but apparently not.”