By Salvador Rizzo
From – https://www.phillytrib.com/
Reprinted – by Texas Metro News
The Virginia prosecutor investigating the death of Irvo Otieno is seeking to withdraw charges against five law enforcement officers who were indicted on murder counts last year, curtailing the scope of what was once a sprawling case to just three defendants.
Otieno, a 28-year-old Black man whose family said he was in mental distress when he arrived at Central State Hospital for treatment, died there of asphyxia as Henrico County sheriff’s deputies and hospital workers restrained him for 11 minutes, according to surveillance video and the medical examiner.
Authorities in Virginia’s Dinwiddie County initially charged 10 people in Otieno’s death. Seven were sheriff’s deputies and three were hospital workers inside the admissions room where Otieno died March 6, 2023. His death sparked international headlines, becoming a rallying cry against police use of force targeted at unarmed Black men. Otieno’s family said he was an aspiring musician who was off his medication at the time.
The group of deputies and hospital workers struggled to restrain Otieno, who was bound at the hands and legs, but not all 10 defendants were piling on top of him or exerting the same level of force, defense attorneys argued for months in private talks with the prosecutor’s office in Dinwiddie, where Central State Hospital is located.
Ann Cabell Baskervill, who sought the initial charges as Dinwiddie’s top prosecutor in 2023, agreed to drop the cases against two hospital workers last year before resigning to enroll in a French graduate school.
Amanda Mann, who is now the county’s top prosecutor, filed court papers Friday seeking to dismiss the indictments against Henrico County sheriff’s deputies Jermaine Branch, Dwayne Bramble, Randy Boyer, Bradley Disse and Tabitha Levere, according to online court records.
Mann did not respond to a request for comment Sunday about the decision. A judge must approve the prosecutor’s request before the charges can be withdrawn.
Russell Stone, the defense attorney for Bramble, said video of Otieno’s final moments did not show Bramble acting with malice, a key element required to prove second-degree murder.
“I have seen that video two dozen times, and I defy anyone to point to anything that Dwayne Bramble did that wasn’t in keeping with his training,” Stone said. “The original prosecutor overreached; charged before doing a thorough investigation.”
Attorneys for the other four deputies whose charges may be dropped did not respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Two sheriff’s deputies, Brandon Rodgers and Kaiyell Sanders, and hospital worker Wavie Jones still face second-degree murder charges. Jones’s trial is scheduled to start late September; Rodgers’s in October and Sanders’s in December. Their attorneys did not respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Police initially encountered Otieno while responding to a report of a burglary on March 3, 2023, and he was put on an emergency mental health hold and sent to Parham Doctors’ Hospital for an evaluation and help, authorities have said.
He was accused of assault at that facility and taken to the Henrico County jail. Jail surveillance video shows Sanders, one of the sheriff’s deputies still under indictment, punching at Otieno before he was removed from his cell and taken to Central State Hospital on March 6, 2023, for mental health treatment, officials have said.
In a court filing last year, Baskervill had argued that all 10 original defendants should face trial at the same time because each participated in restraining Otieno, although she added that “the most culpable persons as first-degree principals would be those on his torso.”
“It is not irrelevant that if one person here had acted differently, then Otieno may very well have been able to survive,” Baskervill wrote at the time.
Otieno’s family and their attorneys said they plan to hold a news conference in Richmond on Monday to address Mann’s move to drop the five defendants from the case.
