Latest Development in Black Man's 'Medieval Torture' Death by Police Will Make You SMH
The officers seen on video dogpiling on top of Irvo Otieno, a Black man who died during intake at a psychiatric facility, are now free of legal consequences.
Let me put it this way: the same prosecutor’s office who asked to charge the cops and in doing so - described Otieno’s death like that of medieval torture - just dropped the charges against them.
In 2023, Otieno’s mother called the Henrico, Va. police to get him help for a mental crisis. After mistaking him for a robber they were already on the hunt for, the mental evaluation turned into a high-risk arrest. Only after spending a few days in Henrico County jail was Otieno transferred to a psychiatric hospital.
The department alleged while being registered at the facility that Otieno assaulted one of the police officers leading to a scuffle. Seven officers were seen on surveillance restraining Otieno by his arms and legs, pressing him into the floor with the weight of their bodies and armor.
The medical examiner’s office ruled his death a homicide by positional and mechanical asphyxia. Now, after having the vigor to charge all ten deputies who were present, Dinwiddie County Commonwealth prosecutors are declining to charge them at all.
Read more from NBC News:
A judge on Sunday granted Dinwiddie County Commonwealth Attorney Amanda Mann’s motions to withdraw charges against the deputies in the March 6, 2023, death of Irvo Otieno, 28.
Ten people, including seven sheriff’s deputies and three hospital workers, were initially charged with second-degree murder in Otieno’s death, but charges were later dropped against two of the hospital employees. Charges now remain against just two deputies and one hospital employee.
Mann said in a statement Monday that her office had filed motions on Friday to dismiss the charges against deputies Randy Joseph Boyer, Dwayne Alan Bramble, Jermaine Lavar Branch, Bradley Thomas Disse and Tabitha Renee Levere.
They were to be tried separately this year. In her motion, Mann wrote that the order of their trials was of “strategic importance” and that the dates set by her predecessor were not “sound and competent prosecutorial decision making.”
Before this decision, county prosecutor Ann Cabell Baskervill requested all the officers involved be tried together and stressed the ten-minute period Otieno was pressed into the ground. She described it as a tortuous medieval execution method and, of course, compared the nature of his death to that of George Floyd, who also died of asphyxia.
Otieno’s mother, Caroline Ouko, was outraged at the decision, slamming it as reckless, the report says. She also reached out to the Department of Justice for further investigation into the incident.
