Settlement reached in handcuffed Black man’s death
26th March 2018 · 0 Comments
A settlement agreement has resolved a federal lawsuit against Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal over the 2014 shooting of Victor White III who was fatally shot while he was handcuffed and sitting in the back of a police car, the victim’s family said March. 16.
The amount of the settlement or any other terms cannot be disclosed by the family’s lawyers, the attorney, Robert Cox, said in an email to The Associated Press. Court records indicate a magistrate judge dismissed the case after attorneys met March 15 to discuss a settlement of the suit that relatives of Victor White III filed against Sheriff Louis Ackal and a deputy.
The Iberia Parish coroner ruled that White shot himself in the chest after his drug-related arrest in March 2014. The 22-year-old’s hands were cuffed behind his back when he died in the rear of an Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office patrol car.
The case was one of several Louisiana incidents that garnered national headlines after a rash of deadly, officer-involved killings of unarmed Black and Brown people over the last five years.
The U.S. Department of Justice and state prosecutors ruled out any criminal charges in White’s death. A forensic charges in White’s death. A forensic pathologist concluded it was possible for the gunshot to be self-inflicted even though White’s hands were handcuffed behind his back, according to the local district attorney’s office.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Patrick Hanna, however, ruled in October that a jury for the civil case must decide whether White’s death was a suicide, accident or “at the hand of a sheriff’s deputy.” Hanna said the manner of White’s death hasn’t been “conclusively established.”
The March 15 court filings don’t explicitly say a settlement agreement was reached, but Hanna’s order dismissing the case says it can be revived if “the termination process” isn’t completed within 60 days. Hanna also ordered the attorneys to submit a “joint stipulation of dismissal” within 60 days.
The court sealed a written summary of the March 15 “settlement conference,” which was held in Lafayette before a different magistrate judge, Carol Whitehurst.
The Associated Press reported that a lawyer for the sheriff and his deputy, Justin Ortis, didn’t respond to several emails or telephone messages on March 5 and 16.
A trial for the family’s lawsuit had been scheduled to start Feb. 5, but Hanna agreed to postpone it amid new allegations that Ackal used racial slurs and instructed deputies how to cover up “illegal actions” against arrested suspects.
In a court filing in January, lawyers for White’s family said two former employees of the sheriff’s office had recently contacted them with “highly critical and important information” about Ackal. Hanna delayed the trial to give Ackal’s lawyer time to question the witnesses. The magistrate said their anticipated testimony is important and could unfairly undermine the family’s case if jurors don’t hear it.
Laurie Segura, who worked as Ackal’s administrative assistant, told the family’s attorneys that she heard the sheriff give coded instructions for writing reports to justify beatings of detainees. Segura also said Ackal referred to black people as “gorillas” and another racial slur, the lawyers said.
The other new witness, former sheriff’s Deputy Candace Rayburn, contacted White’s father on Jan. 24 and said she “knew of the practice of beating up detainees before they were brought in for booking,” the family’s attorneys wrote.
“She further stated she had heard officers talking about the Victor White III incident,” they added, without elaborating.
Ackal, who didn’t immediately respond March 16 to a phone message left with his office, was acquitted in November 2016 of federal civil rights charges that accused him of ordering the beatings of parish jail prisoners and orchestrating a brazen cover-up. Ten deputies pleaded guilty in the case. Neither Segura nor Rayburn testified at Ackal’s trial.
Shandell Marie Bradley, the mother of White’s daughter, sued the sheriff and Ortis in 2015. Ortis had patted down White and found marijuana in a pants pocket but didn’t confiscate a gun before he handcuffed him.
This article originally published in the March 26, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
