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Three Former Deputies Given Immunity, Heading Off Murder Trial
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Three former Washington County sheriff’s deputies will not go on trial for murder next month as planned. That’s because the officers won immunity for killing a man under Georgia’s stand your ground law.
The three white deputies, Henry Copeland, Michael Howell and Rhett Scott had been facing murder charges for Tasing to death 58-year-old Eurie Lee Martin, a black man, on a sweltering day in July 2017, an act caught on cell phone video.
The decision to grant the men immunity from prosecution came after weeks of hearings in which the judge ruled the state’s stand your ground law protected the officers from prosecution. District Attorney for Georgia’s Middle District Hayward Altman says he plans to argue the law originally intended to allow violence in the protection of life and private property is being misapplied.
“That particular code section is more or less a self defense statute,” Altman said.
Eurie Martin was unarmed at the time of his death. District Attorney Altman says he plans on filing an appeal to the ruling with the Georgia Supreme Court before Thanksgiving.
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