A former police officer who may have tazed a man as many as 28 times has been acquitted by a federal jury to the surprise of many who have followed the case of former Oglala Sioux Tribe police officer Rebecca Sotherland. Sutherland, 33, is shown below tazing Jefferson Eagle Bull, 32, who had reportedly drunk of gallon of vodka and passed out in Manderson, South Dakota. Manderson is on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southern South Dakota. Sotherland faced three criminal charges including “deprivation of constitutional rights, assault with a dangerous weapon and obstruction of a federal investigation by filing a false report.
The video was shot on August 15, 2014 when Sotherland found Eagle Bull lying on the ground too drunk to stand. Four hours after drinking the vodka, Eagle still had a blood alcohol level of 0.319. She was fired after the videotape was posted.
Sotherland was fired shortly after the incident, according to KOTA-TV. Indian Country Today Media Network reported “she is not a tribal member and grew up in Hot Springs,” two hours north of Manderson, which is on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southern South Dakota.
The trial took three days. The defense insisted that Eagle Bull was “playing possum” and not really unresponsive. The defense insisted that Sotherland ordered Eagle Bull to get up or get in the car more than 280 times. Sutherland also testified that she had encountered Eagle Bull before and that he would pretend to be unresponsive. She said that he recognized her as she approached and closed his eyes. However, his blood alcohol level supported the prosecution’s view that he was passed out. This was a response to a simple “welfare call.” More importantly, even if he was responsive, it is unclear why hitting someone dozens of times with a taser is the appropriate response.
In the 26 minutes of the video, the prosecution counted 28 Taser jolts, 18 of them drive stuns. A “drive stun” involved placing the taser against the body for the stun.
At one point, she got him to his feet but he returned to the hole. She then used pepper spray.
During the examination, the prosecutor asked why she did not try to see if he was in need of medical assistance:
Koliner: “You didn’t know, maybe he was dead”
Sutherland: “Sometimes, they are.”
Kaoline: “You didn’t even go check on him. Is that reasonable to you?”
Sotherland: “I don’t know what to say.”
Kaoline: “Jefferson Eagle Bull didn’t present a threat to you that day.”
Sotherland went on to testify that she did not help him because he was a threat because there were “weapons lying all over” the area in the form of sticks, boards and metal pipes. Yet she continued to taze him after he was handcuffed and took 18 minutes to call for backup.
Motherland’s conduct seems to me clearly excessive and captures the long concern that officer treat the tazer as a tool of first resort instead of weapon to be used solely for their own protection in extreme situations.
What do you think?
The prosecution in this case put up a lame effort. The video does not convey in the slightest what a Taser does to a person. So it’s very important for an effective prosecution to provide a demonstration to the jury so jurors understand exactly what tazing actually involves. An appropriate demonstration would be to bring a homeless person into the courtroom and offer the person $500 for being tazed three times. Three members of the jury would be selected at random to administer the tazing to the homeless person. After that demonstration, the prosecution should then offer jury members the opportunity to taze other jury members. After these exercises, jury members would be sufficiently informed about the impact and effects of tazing on the human body. Without such exercise, juries may assume that tazing is merely a step up from dosing someone with a water gun.
Ralph Adamo – you need to get the homeless person to agree to drinking a gallon of vodka before being tazed. Same with the jury members.
Firewater and electricity apparently do mix.
Don’t tase me Bro!
One taser can deliver 28 times? So much for being non lethal force.
Did anyone interview the jury afterwards to understand how they came to this conclusion? Did they overcharge? Problem with the evidence? Whenever I disagree with a verdict, I wonder how it happened.
I heard an ER doctor on the radio describing “Christmas Heart.” He said that excessive drinking damages the heart, and the holidays can be so depressing for those who are lonely that they see a lot of alcohol-induced heart damage around this time of year. They even dubbed it “Christmas Heart” in his ER.
I wonder what demons this man is suffering from to do this to himself, regardless of the abusive actions of the police officer. Did his loneliness feed his alcoholism, or did alcoholism alienate others? He seems determined to drown himself in alcohol to end his misery. Addiction is a terrible disease, even though it’s self inflicted.
steveg:
“Karen, if pepper spray can be deadly to an asthmatic, I can’t imagine what 28 Taser strikes to a fellow with a 1/3 of his blood content taken up by alcohol can do to already highly-compromised ventricular function.” No kidding. I’m surprised he’s alive from either aspect – the alcohol or the tasers, let alone their synergistic effects. Does anyone know what the long term damage can be from excessive Taser strikes? I would assume it’s electrocution damage.
What would be interesting is a summary from an in court observer of how the jury was selected and whether any members on the overall panel before selection were of Indian lineage and whether any made it to the panel which heard the case. If any were from another tribe would also be a matter of interest.
The defendant had her day in court. So did the dead person. Did the taser get it’s day in court? I read in the article here that she was charged in part with assault with a deadly weapon. Someone else asked if that meant the taser? Until tasers are outlawed only outlaws will have tasers. That is according to a fellow with whom I drink with in the bar in New Orleans.
Issachbasonkavichi, I’m curious as to what you think the judge in the case should have done that he didn’t, or did do that he shouldn’t. The only information I have is that the officer was acquitted by a jury when the facts as I understand them suggest a conviction was warranted. Was the judge supposed to have somehow interfered with the jury’s deliberations, or detained the defendant unlawfully after the acquittal or what?
Richard
Judge, jury, WTF, they all belong in jail. There’s justice and then there is this sort of depravity. Then there are bushwhackers that wait for spelling mistakes.
I can’t see the video, but I’m surprised and disappointed in the verdict. The evidence seems indefensible. I hope she never becomes a law enforcement officer anywhere else, and am glad, for the public’s sake, she was fired.
Also, as an asthmatic, I am concerned about the use of pepper spray by law enforcement officers in any but the most extreme circumstances. It can be a death sentence, or cause severe respiratory distress and possibly scarring, in those with respiratory issues such as asthma and COPD.
I also did not know it was possible to consume a gallon of vodka without passing out (or dying) first. She might as well have asked him to do a hand stand while repeating the Chinese character alphabet, backwards. How is he still alive? I cannot imagine the state of his liver, poor thing. He must have a terrible alcohol addiction.
Karen, if pepper spray can be deadly to an asthmatic, I can’t imagine what 28 Taser strikes to a fellow with a 1/3 of his blood content taken up by alcohol can do to already highly-compromised ventricular function.
stevegroen – there is no evidence that his BAC was that high when she tazed him. His BAC could likely have been at .10 or lower when she first made contact and raised to .30+ by the time the test was taken.
Paul writes, “stevegroen – there is no evidence that his BAC was that high when she tazed him. His BAC could likely have been at .10 or lower when she first made contact and raised to .30+ by the time the test was taken.”
Paul, I disagree that it would have been plus or minus 10% BAC change (which would mean about 1.6 liters of alcohol of the five liters of his blood would have had to have been metabolized) over an hour or two or three (assuming he was tested in that time frame), when the rate of metabolism is consistently slow, even slower as the BAC increases, and does not begin until at least about the first hour after consumption for high blood-alcohol content. I’d guess that a deviation of even five-percent metabolism would be generous.
See the chart here: http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa35.htm
For the lower levels of blood-alcohol content, there is a depression or reverse camber, if you will, in the declining graphs when metabolism begins. The higher the level of alcohol, the flatter the decline becomes, the slower the metabolic rate, and the longer the alcohol remains in the blood. And this graph reflects up to only .085% BAC, roughly a third of what was of the .32 in this fellow’s blood at the time of testing.
The point? When blood alcohol is nearly 32% when tested, plus or minus a few degrees doesn’t really mean a whole lot when he was zapped. In fact, if he were tested soon after he consumed, his BAC could have been even higher than the result reflected. Objectively, she could easily have killed this fellow by tasing him once, let alone dozens of times.
stevegroen – given the amount of alcohol the man consumed, she probably saved his life by constantly tazing him. Shock therapy. Or electro-shock therapy.
Paul,
I think we should partner up as physicians. ::ahem:: We’d make a killing. 🙂
Happy holidays.
I’m sure she just wanted to know what it was like smokin Big Injun.