Closing arguments have been made in the murder trial of three white former Washington County sheriff’s deputies connected to the death of Eurie Martin, a Black man, in 2017.
Throughout the trial, arguments from the state and the defense have pivoted on one question: Did the deputies have a legitimate belief that the 58-year-old Martin had committed a crime that would give them the right to detain him as he walked down a rural, two-lane road?
In her closing statement, prosecutor Kelly Weathers argued the defense's position that Martin broke state pedestrian safety law by walking in Deepstep Road amounted to “backfill,” or a search for a reason a bad stop could be seen as good.
“He’s walking down the roadway, like so many of us do,” Weathers said. Weathers went on to argue Martin walked in the safest place he could find on a rural road with little shoulder and no sidewalk.
“Unfortunately, he was out of place,” she said.
Martin was a 6’3” Black man in a state of untreated schizophrenia when Cyrus Harris, a white man, called 911, alarmed by Martin’s appearance. The deputies were then responding to a suspicious person call.
In their closing, the defense hewed to their position that Martin broke the law by walking in the road and that he had a responsibility to stop for officers.
“A law was broken, however small,” defense attorney Shawn Merzlak said.
And for the defense, that broken law meant Martin was fair game for an arrest, no matter how violent.
“People don’t always want to go with the police,” defense attorney Mark Shaefer said in his portion of the closing. “That does not make every arrest an assault.”
The prosecution continued to cast doubt on expert testimony that insisted stun guns are never lethal weapons given by experts, one of whom, Mark Kroll, made over $100 million in 2020 by selling shares of Axon, the company that makes the Taser brand of the weapon.
Martin died after all three deputies, Rhett Scott, Henry Lee Copeland and Michael Howell, stun gunned him in turn. The medical examiner called Martin’s resulting death a homicide.
“I submit to you that what they did to him was torture,” Weathers said.
Scott, Copeland and Howell are charged with felony murder, involuntary manslaughter, false imprisonment, aggravated assault and an array of other charges in the July 2017 killing. If convicted, each could face life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Court resumes with jury deliberation at 9 a.m. Friday.
