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Screenshot from the only body camera footage available from the Camden County Sheriff's deputies' botched raid that led to the death of Latoya James. (GBI)
Credit: Georgia Bureau of Investigation
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Fight over police experts in Camden’s LaToya James death lawsuit
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Jake Shore, The Current
In contentious court cases, the most important decisions often occur before a jury is even selected. Lawyers quarrel with one another over what evidence or experts they are allowed to show a jury to prove their case, while the judge referees.
Attorneys for the family of LaToya James, who sued Camden County Sheriff’s deputies over a botched 2021 drug raid and mistaken shooting death of James, and lawyers for the deputies are calling into question each others’ expert witnesses, according to filings on Monday.
Expert witnesses on behalf of law enforcement and prosecution in court have come under scrutiny in recent years, with complaints of junk science, the use of bunk forensic tests and confusing clinical terms, like “excited delirium.”
Harry Daniels, the Atlanta attorney for James’ mother, requested a hearing in order to exclude the testimony of a witness for the Camden County Sheriff’s Office, John Jack Ryan. Ryan, whose bio says he is a Rhode Island attorney, police procedure expert, and former officer, testifies in “lots and lots” of cases for his expertise on law enforcement use of force, as well as other policies, according to his deposition.
Leaning on his credentials, Ryan wrote in a report that the deputies acted reasonably, when waiting for a little over two seconds on a drug search warrant before bursting into the house of James’ cousin, Varshan Brown. During the 5 a.m. raid on May 4, 2021, Brown shot at the officers who burst in, thinking his house was being invaded. The officers shot back, killing James inadvertently.
On Sept. 14, 2023, a Camden County jury acquitted Brown of felony murder in James’ death but convicted him for shooting at the police and possession of cocaine. A judge sentenced him to life in prison.
In the civil case, wherein James’ family seeks $25 million in damages, Daniels contends that Ryan’s testimony, after reviewing the James case, would mislead a jury because he makes legal claims not based upon facts, contrary to Georgia law and beyond his expertise.
“If allowed to testify, Mr. Ryan will … contort the facts just to support his opinion,” Daniels wrote. “Mr. Ryan’s testimony (would be) dangerous and misleading.”
A search by The Current found judge’s orders in five federal cases between 2015 and 2023 excluding Ryan’s testimony for similar reasons. A reporter for The Current left messages for Ryan and Steven Grunberg, one of the Camden County deputies’ attorneys, on Wednesday.
In a 2021 order, U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks of the Western District of Arkansas ruled to exclude Ryan as a witness in an excessive force civil case against a Springdale, Ark., detective, Cody Ross, who put his gun to an unarmed man’s face and threatened to shoot him, in what would turn out to be a mistaken identity arrest. The judge found issue with how expert Ryan, empaneled by the detective’s attorneys, explained the detective’s actions were reasonable and within police procedure because of the imminent threat of the arrested man, Johnnie Rochell Jr.
“The problem here is that Mr. Ryan’s ultimate opinions are not based on the objective facts that he spent ten pages detailing in his report,” Brooks wrote.
“It is both telling and disingenuous that the opinion section of Mr. Ryan’s report is devoid of any reference to Detective Ross’s placement of his Glock against Mr. Rochell’s head and Mr. Rochell’s unabated claim that Detective Ross said, ‘I’ll blow your f-ing brains out if you ever approach me like that again. Don’t you ever approach me like that again.’”
A jury found the detective liable in 2021.
Brook’s order is the most critical. In the four other instances found by The Current, judges excluded Ryan’s testimony only when they said he went beyond the bounds of best police practices and ventured into his own legal opinions. They found his police practices expertise to be permissible evidence in those cases.
At issue, according to Daniels, is that expert Ryan claimed in his deposition that sheriff’s deputies would not be subject to a Georgia law, which mandates that officers give “verbal notice or an attempt in good faith to give verbal notice” before executing a search warrant.
That the Camden deputies improperly executed their search warrant, when a magistrate specifically denied them a “no-knock” warrant and only approved a “knock-and-announce” warrant, is at the heart of Daniels’ case.
The deputies contended, however, they believed that Brown knew they were coming to execute the search warrant and had security cameras, which heightened the risk and necessitated they break the door down.
“(Deputy Downy) Casey indicated that he heard running inside the house,” Ryan wrote. “This is the type (of) circumstance during the execution of a search warrant coupled with the prior information known to the officers about guns and violence to include an assault on an officer, that would make an unannounced entry consistent with generally accepted policy, practices, training and industry standards.”
Credibility questioned
Attorneys for the Camden County Sheriff’s deputies, Casey and Michael Blaquiere, also took issue with the credibility of a witness.
They claim that Charles Stephenson, the law enforcement expert hired by James’ family’s attorneys, used police best practices developed after the 2021 drug raid and applied it to the officers retroactively.
They also take issue with him citing an article from CNN he found on Google in his report.
“This article is not authoritative in any sense — it is not peer reviewed and Mr. Stephenson does not know whether the author is qualified to speak on the issues discussed in the article,” Granberg wrote. “In any event, it too post-dates the incident, as it was published on February 12, 2022.”
Granberg also states that Stephenson’s law enforcement credentials are minimal: “Mr. Stephenson simply does not have the qualifications necessary to mark him as an expert in the fields of use of force or serving warrants.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Benjamin Cheesbro must set a date for a hearing to decide on both Ryan’s and Stephenson’s credibility as witnesses.
This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with The Current.
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