Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Chief Medical Examiner May Have Mislabeled Black Man’s Cause of Death, Experts Say

Transcript

Chief Medical Examiner May Have Mislabeled Black Man’s Cause of Death, Experts Say · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Usually when we talk about medical diagnosis, there's this expectation
0:03
of precision, right, like it feels like engineering, right, very
0:06
black and well exactly. You know, you break your arm,
0:09
the X ray shows that jagged white line, and the
0:11
doctor just points and says, there it is broken.
0:14
Speaker 2: Yeah.
0:14
Speaker 1: But then you step into the world of forensic pathology,
0:17
especially when it intersects with law enforcement and trauma, and
0:22
suddenly that X ray machine is just completely shattered. We're
0:25
looking at a diagnostic landscape that is well, it's incredibly murky.
0:30
Speaker 2: It is the absolute definition of diagnostic muddy waters. And
0:35
you know when those waters get muddy in the realm
0:38
of forensics, the consequences aren't just medical, right, they are
0:42
profoundly legal. I mean you are looking at a system
0:44
that is essentially designed to freeze.
0:46
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, well, welcome to today's deep dive. Today is Thursday,
0:50
July sixteenth, twenty twenty six, and you know we are
0:52
opening a stack of just intensely reported files.
0:55
Speaker 2: Today, really heavy stuff.
0:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, collectively titled the undeterm death of Damian Cameron. We're
1:02
drawing from investigative reporting by Mississippi Today, the New York Times,
1:07
the Mississippi Free press and actual court records.
1:10
Speaker 2: There's a mountain of documentation.
1:12
Speaker 1: Here, there really is. And the mission for our deep
1:15
dive today is to understand how a single word on
1:19
a medical document, I mean literally, just one word can
1:22
completely halt the American justice system.
1:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's staggering when you really look at the mechanics
1:27
of it.
1:27
Speaker 1: It is. We are going to look at how a
1:29
family's five year fight for answers in a small Mississippi
1:32
town ended up exposing this national crisis at the intersection
1:37
of policing, mental health, and forensic science exactly. So if
1:41
you've ever wondered how accountability actually operates, or you know
1:44
how it fails to operate behind closed doors, this case
1:47
is the ultimate master class.
1:48
Speaker 2: It really is, because what we are examining is not
1:51
just a localized, tragic event. You know, we are essentially
1:55
reverse engineering the mechanics of a justice system. We have
1:58
to look at how information is gathered at a crime scene,
2:02
how it is categorized in a laboratory, and ultimately who
2:06
holds the institutional power to decide what a piece of
2:09
physical evidence actually means.
2:10
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. I want to jump straight into
2:13
the catalyst because we have two completely conflicting realities of
2:17
how twenty nine year old Damien Cameron spent his final conscious.
2:20
Speaker 2: Moments, two very different stories completely.
2:23
Speaker 1: So in July twenty twenty one, Damien was a black
2:26
man living in the rural community of Braxton down in
2:29
Rankin County, Mississippi, and he lived with his mother, Monica Lee,
2:32
and his grandparents. Okay, the reporting gives us a very
2:35
clear picture of his background. He had been diagnosed with
2:38
bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
2:40
Speaker 2: Which is key context.
2:41
Speaker 1: Exactly his family members described him to reporters as you know,
2:45
outgoing and quick to smile when he was stable, but
2:48
they also noted that paranoia and episodes of severe agitation
2:52
were a documented reality of his life, which, like.
2:55
Speaker 2: You said, is a critical baseline to establish right away.
2:58
We are evaluating a young man actly managing severe, complex
3:02
neurological conditions. That context dictates how his brain is processing
3:08
external stimuli, you know, especially perceived threats.
3:11
Speaker 1: So let's look at the afternoon of July twenty six,
3:14
twenty twenty one. A neighbor's sister calls nine one one.
3:18
She reports that Damien is punching holes in the wall
3:20
of a nearby house with a pipe okay, and the
3:23
response to that call is routed directly to the rankin
3:25
County Sheriff's Department, Deputy Hunter Lward is dispatched to the scene.
3:30
Speaker 2: Let's pause on the dispatch itself for a second, because
3:32
it highlights a systemic pattern that's been documented extensively in
3:35
sociological research.
3:37
Speaker 1: Oh about mental health responses.
3:38
Speaker 2: Exactly, a person is experiencing a mental health crisis exhibiting
3:43
erratic destructive behavior. A civilian calls nine to one to one,
3:47
and the response defaults to armed law enforcement rather than
3:51
a specialized psychiatric crisis.
3:52
Speaker 1: Team, right, which changes the whole dynamic completely.
3:55
Speaker 2: The entire architecture of the encounter is immediately framed around
3:59
law enforcement compliance rather than medical de escalation.
4:03
Speaker 1: Okay, let me try to visualize this based on the
4:04
official sheriff's report. According to the documents, Deputy Lward locates
4:09
Damien at his family's home, and according to the reports,
4:12
Damien's mother, Monica Lee, tries to intervene verbally. Right at
4:17
the start, she explicitly warns the deputy that her son
4:20
is paranoid. She tells him Damien will likely.
4:23
Speaker 2: Run, so she's trying to de escalate.
4:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she pleads with the deputy literally saying, quote,
4:28
don't hurt my son. So the deputy has a media
4:32
on sene context about Damien's mental state from his own mother.
4:35
Speaker 2: He knows what he's walking into.
4:37
Speaker 1: Supposedly, but Elward's account states that Damien swung at him
4:41
and fled, So Elward fires his taser, tackles Damien, and
4:45
the two of them wrestle. The struggle moves inside the house.
4:48
Speaker 2: And this is the official police narrative.
4:50
Speaker 1: Right, yes, exactly. Elward's official report states that he punched
4:54
Damien three times in the face while sitting on his back,
4:56
and then another deputy, Luke Stickman, arrives to assist handcuffing him.
5:01
That is the police narrative.
5:02
Speaker 2: Now contrast that with the accounts from the family and
5:05
the civilian witnesses who were standing right there, A starkly different,
5:10
far more violent picture emerges. Damian's grandmother, Betty Cameron, told
5:15
investigators and the media that she saw one deputy positioned
5:18
on her grandson's neck while another was on his back.
5:21
Speaker 1: Ah his neck wow.
5:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, And his grandfather, James Cameron, specifically reported seeing a
5:26
deputy kneel directly on Damien's.
5:29
Speaker 1: Neck, and the sources highlight a detail that just I mean,
5:32
it stops you cold. Multiple family members reported that Damien
5:35
was repeatedly crying out during this restraint.
5:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, the vocalizations.
5:39
Speaker 1: He was saying, quote, I can't breathe, sir, let me up.
5:42
I can't breathe, please let me up. He was also
5:44
asking for water.
5:46
Speaker 2: It's incredibly hard to hear, it really is.
5:49
Speaker 1: So what does protocols say an officer is supposed to
5:51
do on a suspect under restraint verbalizes that they cannot breathe.
5:56
Speaker 2: Well, in modern policing, stating I cannot breathe while under
6:00
prone restraint is recognized as a profound critical physiological distress signal.
6:05
Speaker 1: It's a massive red flag.
6:07
Speaker 2: Huge. It is supposed to trigger an immediate reassessment of
6:10
the restraint tactic, supposed to get them off their stomach.
6:13
But what is striking in the documents is that Deputy
6:16
Lward later acknowledged to investigators that he actually heard those
6:20
exact statements.
6:21
Speaker 1: He admitted he heard him say I can't breathe.
6:24
Speaker 2: He did. However, he claimed he believed Damien was simply
6:27
out of breath from the physical struggle, so he effectively
6:30
dismissed the distress signal entirely.
6:33
Speaker 1: Let me push back on the mechanics of this from
6:35
a psychological perspective, because if we use an analogy responding
6:38
to a mental health crisis with immediate physical aggression, it
6:42
feels a bit like throwing a bucket of gasoline onto
6:45
a house fire.
6:46
Speaker 2: That's exactly what it is.
6:47
Speaker 1: If a mother explicitly warns a deputy about her son's paranoia,
6:51
how does standard protocol allow for an immediate escalation to tasers, tackles,
6:56
and closed fist punches to the face.
6:58
Speaker 2: This gets to the fundamental friction between standard police training
7:02
and abnormal psychology. When a suspect is in a state
7:05
of severe paranoia or acute psychiatric distress, immediate rational compliance
7:11
is often neurologically impossible.
7:13
Speaker 1: They literally can't process the commands.
7:15
Speaker 2: Right their prefrontal cortex, the logical part of the brain,
7:18
is essentially offline. It's hijacked by the amigdala's fight or
7:21
flight response. Okay, but standard use of force models in
7:24
policing often interpret that neurological inability to comply as active
7:29
willful resistance, and they are trained to counteractive resistance with
7:34
escalating physical.
7:35
Speaker 1: Force, So it's a vicious cycle exactly.
7:38
Speaker 2: The sources point out that this escalation, by failing to
7:42
account for his mental state, rapidly converted a psychiatric crisis
7:46
into a fatal physical confrontation.
7:48
Speaker 1: And the aftermath of that confrontation is just grim. After
7:52
being handcuffed, Damien, who witnesses say is barely conscious at
7:56
this point, is dragged or pushed outside into the rain
7:58
and the mud. Yeah, the family reported he collapsed face
8:02
down and was just left there before being forced into
8:04
the patrol car, and the department logs actually show the
8:07
taser was deployed additional times during the sequence.
8:09
Speaker 2: Well, he was already subdued.
8:11
Speaker 1: Yes. Once he's placed in the cruiser, he is found unresponsive.
8:15
CPR is initiated, but it fails. He is pronounced dead
8:18
later that night at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
8:20
Speaker 2: And this right here is exactly where we hit the
8:24
investigative black box. What do you mean, because there is
8:27
no objective visual record of any of this, no body
8:31
worn camera footage whatsoever.
8:33
Speaker 1: Wait, none, in twenty twenty.
8:35
Speaker 2: One, none. The sources explicitly state that rankin County deputies
8:39
were not required by department policy to activate cameras at
8:42
that time.
8:42
Speaker 1: That's unbelievable.
8:44
Speaker 2: It gets worse. Furthermore, any dashcan video from the cruiser
8:47
that might have captured the transport or the moments he
8:49
was placed inside that was later reported by the department
8:52
as quote lost or unavailable.
8:54
Speaker 1: Lost or unavailable. Wow. So we have a fatality, completely
8:58
conflicting witness statements, and the police department's own video evidence
9:02
is just gone vanished. So the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation
9:06
the MBI steps in to investigate, but by September of
9:09
twenty twenty one, just a couple of months later, they
9:12
close the case.
9:12
Speaker 2: Right.
9:13
Speaker 1: They state no further activity is warranted and a grand
9:16
jury declines to indict either Deputy Lword or Deputy Stickman.
9:20
I mean, how does the NBI justify closing a fatality
9:23
case with missing evidence and conflicting civilian testimony.
9:26
Speaker 2: Well, because the NBI, like most state investigative bureaus, relies
9:31
heavily on the scientific conclusions of the state medical examiner.
9:35
Speaker 1: Okay, the autopsy.
9:36
Speaker 2: Exactly if the police effectively seal the narrative by losing
9:40
the video, the only objective witness. Left is Damien Cameron's
9:44
own body. Right. The body is essentially a biological hard
9:48
drive that records every impact, every lack of oxygen, every
9:52
chemical in the bloodstream.
9:53
Speaker 1: That's a powerful way to look at it.
9:55
Speaker 2: But it requires a translator. And the official translation of
9:58
that physical evidence by the State Medical Examiner is what
10:01
gave the MBI the justification to shut the legal case
10:04
down entirely.
10:05
Speaker 1: Okay, let's dig into that biological hard drive. When Damian
10:08
Cameron's body arrived at the Mississippi State Medical Examiner's office,
10:12
the autopsy revealed significant.
10:14
Speaker 2: Trauma, Yes, very significant.
10:16
Speaker 1: His face was swollen and bloody. He had multiple subcutaneous
10:20
and soft tissue hemorrhages, which crucially included signs of internal
10:23
bleeding on the side of his neck. The toxicolity screen
10:26
also detected methamphetamine in his system.
10:29
Speaker 2: I stopped there.
10:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to understand the pathology here. When the
10:32
report says subcutaneous and soft tissue hemorrhages in the neck,
10:38
what does that actually look like and what causes it mechanically?
10:42
Speaker 2: So for you trying to visualize this at home, a
10:44
subcutaneous hemorrhage is bleeding, right, under the skin what we
10:48
commonly call a bruise.
10:49
Speaker 1: Okay, pretty common, right, But.
10:51
Speaker 2: Soft tissue hemorrhaging deep within the musculature of the neck
10:54
is entirely different. That indicates intense, sustained and targeted physical compress.
11:00
Speaker 1: So not just a scrape or a bump.
11:02
Speaker 2: No, absolutely not. It is not the kind of injury
11:05
you sustain from simply wrestling on the surface of the
11:07
ground or being tackled. It requires significant external pressure applied
11:11
directly to the vascular structures of the neck, compressing the
11:14
tissue against the spine.
11:16
Speaker 1: So the data on the hard drive shows deep internal
11:18
trauma to the neck, concurrent with witness reports of an
11:21
officer kneeling on him, and concurrent with the suspect crying
11:24
out that he can't breathe.
11:26
Speaker 2: Exactly the physical evidence matches the civilian testimony.
11:29
Speaker 1: Yet doctor Stacy Turner, Mississippi's chief medical examiner, looks at
11:33
this evidence and she rules the cause and manner of
11:36
death as undetermined.
11:38
Speaker 2: Undetermined It's a clinical, seemingly neutral word, but structurally its
11:44
impact is absolute.
11:45
Speaker 1: Her justification in the official report reads quote, due to
11:49
lack of access to information involving the circumstance of this death,
11:53
the cause and manner of death are best classified as undetermined.
11:57
She later told reporters that her office airs on the
12:00
undetermined because they don't want to make a mistake when
12:02
investigative information is incomplete.
12:05
Speaker 2: This right here highlights the immense, almost unchecked gatekeeping power
12:10
of the medical examiner in the American justice system. To
12:13
really grasp this, you have to understand the five manners
12:16
of death utilized in forensic pathology, which are natural accidents, suicide, homicide,
12:22
and undetermined.
12:23
Speaker 1: And those are just medical classifications. Are they like they
12:25
have real world weights?
12:26
Speaker 2: Not at all. They're legal triggers in police involve deaths.
12:30
That single classification dictates whether the justice system moves forward
12:33
or stops dead in its tracks. As aramis Ayala, a
12:36
former Floria's state attorney, noted in the source material, prosecutors
12:41
in grand juries almost never ever pursue criminal charges without
12:45
a medical examiner explicitly stating the manner of death is
12:48
a homicide, which by the way, simply means death at
12:51
the hands of another.
12:52
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean murder necessarily exactly.
12:55
Speaker 2: It's just a mechanical statement of fact. But the medical
12:57
examiner is usually the only expert witness who can testify
13:01
to that foundational legal requirement.
13:03
Speaker 1: Let me play Devil's advocate here regarding doctor Turner's logic
13:06
just for a second. If she doesn't have all the
13:08
police reports or the video is missing, isn't it scientifically
13:13
responsible to say I don't have enough data, therefore it's undetermined.
13:17
Speaker 2: In a vacuum. Yes. In standard forensic practice, undetermined is
13:21
a legitimate category when biological evidence is genuinely inconclusive. Okay,
13:26
But the scholars and independent experts cited in the text
13:29
offer a very sharp critique of how it was applied here.
13:32
They argue that in custody deaths, especially those involving physical
13:35
restraint by the state, pathologists have a heightened professional and ethical.
13:39
Speaker 1: Duty because the state is investigating itself.
13:42
Speaker 2: Precisely if the police information is incomplete or missing. The
13:47
argument is that the medical examiner must aggressively demand additional
13:50
scene investigation, subpoena records, or rely more heavily on the
13:55
clear physical trauma on the body, defaulting to undetermined when
14:00
there is profound deep tissue neck trauma. That isn't a
14:04
neutral act of scientific caution.
14:06
Speaker 1: It's an active choice. Think of the medical Examiner. Like
14:09
a referee in a crucial, high stakes game. A player
14:13
gets tackled violently and they are lying on the field injured,
14:16
right if the referee refuses to blow the whistle on
14:19
a clear foul and their excuses, well, you know, i
14:22
didn't have a perfect angle on the play, so I'm
14:23
not calling anything. They are actually being neutral got at all.
14:27
By refusing to make the call, They are letting the
14:29
foul stand. They are actively deciding the outcome of the game.
14:32
Speaker 2: That is exactly the dynamic at play. By choosing not
14:34
to classify it as a homicide despite the physical evidence,
14:38
the medical examiner effectively granted those deputies' immunity from criminal prosecution.
14:43
Speaker 1: Which is why the grand jury returned no indictment.
14:45
Speaker 2: Exactly the MBI closed its file. The system functioned exactly
14:50
as it was designed to. When encountering ambiguity, it froze.
14:54
Speaker 1: But the Cameron family refused to let undetermined be the
14:57
period at the end of Damien's story t twenty three,
15:00
The family's legal team put this exact same medical evidence
15:04
in front of some of the most respected forensic minds
15:06
in the country, and their consensus completely shattered the local,
15:11
Mississippi narrative.
15:12
Speaker 2: This is really the pivot point in the investigation. The
15:15
sources introduced three highly esteemed independent experts who reviewed the
15:19
identical materials in twenty twenty three, the autopsy photos, hospital records,
15:23
sheriff's reports, and witness statements. We were talking about the
15:27
absolute heavyweights of pathology.
15:29
Speaker 1: Let's list them because their credentials really matter here. First,
15:32
doctor Michael Baden, the former New York City Chief Medical Examiner,
15:36
very well known. Yeah, this is the pathologist who performed
15:38
independent autopsies on George Floyd and testified in the O. J.
15:42
Simpson trial. Second doctor Zongzuhua, the chief of forensic Pathology
15:47
at Rutgers University. And third doctor cyrril Weckt, the former
15:51
president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.
15:54
Speaker 2: And their conclusion, analyzing the exact same biological data as
15:58
doctor Turner, was completely unanimous.
16:01
Speaker 1: What did they find?
16:02
Speaker 2: They concluded that Damien Cameron's death was a homicide caused
16:05
by mechanical asphyxia from net compression.
16:08
Speaker 1: The quotes from these experts in the text are just
16:10
staggering in their directness. Doctor Fuass said, quote, there's really
16:14
nothing to be undetermined about. Doctor Baden said this person
16:18
died of asphyxia because of net compression, a homicide. Absolutely wow.
16:22
And doctor Weckt heavily criticized the state Medical Examiner's methodology,
16:27
stating she quote should not have signed it on as
16:30
undetermined and let it go. Let's break down the science
16:33
of why they were so certain. How did these independent
16:36
pathologists systematically dismantle the two main shields used to justify
16:40
the undetermined ruling, namely the methamphetamine and the restraint.
16:44
Speaker 2: Okay, let's take the mafaf fetamine first. The presence of
16:46
illicit drugs is historically used as a convenient alternative explanation
16:51
in custody debts, but all three independent experts categorically rejected
16:55
the meth concentration in Cameron's blood as being lethal.
16:58
Speaker 1: Why How do they know it wasn't?
17:00
Speaker 2: The met to understand why? Think of the human body
17:03
like a car engine. Methamphetamine is a stimulant, right, it
17:07
speeds the engine up. If a person dies purely of
17:10
a methamphetamine overdose, the engine essentially overheats. You see specific
17:14
chemical markers cardiac hypertrophy or a catastrophic cardiac event.
17:18
Speaker 1: But I imagine if you are wrestling with police, you know
17:21
your heart rate is already through the roof. Couldn't a
17:23
medical examiner legitimately argue the meth combined with the exertion
17:27
just causes heart to give out.
17:28
Speaker 2: They can try, and they often do, But the independent
17:31
pathologists argue the physical evidence pointed to an entirely different
17:35
mechanism of death. To go back to your engine analogy,
17:38
mechanical asphyxia isn't the engine overheating, It is physically crushing
17:42
the intake valve, so the engine is starved of oxygen.
17:45
Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
17:46
Speaker 2: The experts pointed to the deep tissue hemorrhages in the neck,
17:49
paired with the prolonged prone restraint and the specific vocalizations
17:52
of I can't breathe. Doctor Baden emphasized that the pattern
17:56
of hemorrhaging made the asphyxiation pathway mechanically clear. You just
18:00
don't get deep neck hemorrhages from a meth overdose.
18:03
Speaker 1: This disparity is mind boggling to me. How does this
18:07
happen structurally? How can a state official look at a
18:10
crushed intake valve and call it undetermined? While three world
18:14
renowned scientists look at the exact same valve and definitively
18:19
say this was crushed by external force.
18:21
Speaker 2: It's hard to accept.
18:22
Speaker 1: It really strains credulity to write this off as just
18:25
a polite difference of medical opinion.
18:28
Speaker 2: You know it does, and to really understand that disparity.
18:31
The sources force us to pull the lens back. We
18:34
have to look beyond the sterile environment of the autopsy
18:38
room and examine the sociological realities of the police department involved.
18:42
Because Damian Cameron's death did not occur in a vacuum.
18:45
It occurred within a specific departmental culture.
18:48
Speaker 1: And the context provided by the reporting is chilling. According
18:51
to department records and NBI files cited in the text,
18:54
between twenty fourteen and the early twenty twenties, at least
18:57
nine men died during encounters with rankin county deputy. Nine men.
19:01
Speaker 2: That is a massive statistical anomaly for a county of
19:04
that size, and that underlying pattern of violence burst into
19:07
national view with a horrific scandal in twenty twenty three.
19:11
The sources detail the events of January twenty twenty three,
19:14
involving a rogue unit of officers who literally styled themselves
19:18
as the goon squad. A goon squad, yes, This comprised
19:22
five Rankin County deputies and one Richland Police officer.
19:26
Speaker 1: I want to be clear with you, the listener, that
19:29
the details from the sources here are incredibly graphic, but
19:32
they are absolutely essential to understanding the systemic rot within
19:36
this specific department reportn warning, these officers, operating without a warrant,
19:41
kicked in a door and tortured two black men, Michael
19:44
Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker for nearly two hours.
19:47
The deputies beat them, sexually, assaulted them with objects, forced
19:50
them to consume liquids, and repeatedly tase them thanks horrific.
19:54
The torture culminated when one of the deputies placed a
19:57
gun in mister Jenkins's mouth for a quote mock execution.
20:01
The gun discharge, shattering Jenkins's jaw and severing his tongue, and.
20:05
Speaker 2: The immediate aftermath is a textbook study in police cover ups.
20:09
The unit immediately set about planning evidence drugs and a weapon,
20:13
destroying surveillance camera footage, and falsifying their official reports to
20:17
justify the shooting.
20:18
Speaker 1: But here is the connection that links this entire deep
20:21
dive together. The deputy who fired that weapon into Michael
20:25
Corey Jenkins's mouth, it was Hunter Lward. Wow, the exact
20:29
same deputy who tackled, restrained, punched, and tased Damien Cameron
20:34
two years earlier.
20:35
Speaker 2: It's just devastating. All six of those officers eventually preaded
20:39
guilty to federal civil rights violations and state charges. Hunter
20:42
Elward is currently serving a twenty year federal sentence in
20:44
addition to state time.
20:46
Speaker 1: Let's synthesize this timeline because the implications are terrifying. While
20:50
the Cameron family was spending twenty twenty one and twenty
20:52
twenty two fighting in civil court trying to prove that
20:55
Deputy Lward used lethal excessive force on Damien that very
20:59
same death, was operating as part of a rogue torture unit.
21:02
Speaker 2: If we look at the sociology of police subcultures, the
21:06
blue wall of silence thrives when there is a systemic
21:09
lack of external oversight. The undetermined ruling in twenty twenty
21:12
one didn't just deny closure to the Cameron family by
21:15
shutting down the criminal investigation. That single medical word kept
21:20
a violently escalating deputy on active duty. It directly enabled
21:24
the barbaric torture of two other black men two years later.
21:28
The system's failure to aggressively investigate a custody death allowed
21:32
a subculture of impunity to metastasize into a literal torture squad.
21:36
Speaker 1: It raises a terrifying structural question about rural jurisdictions. What
21:41
happens when a system lacks an independent mechanism to police itself.
21:45
Speaker 2: It collapses.
21:46
Speaker 1: If the state medical examiner defers to incomplete police reports
21:49
and the local police are actively falsifying those reports and
21:52
destroying video evidence, as we know definitively they did in
21:55
the Gooon Squad case, there is no safety net.
21:58
Speaker 2: There's just a void, which is exactly why the Cameron
22:00
family's fight had to shift entirely to the civil court system.
22:04
With a criminal door welded shut by the autopsy and
22:07
the Goon Squad convictions exposing the staggering depth of the
22:10
department's corruption, civil litigation was the only remaining avenue to
22:14
compel discovery and force testimony.
22:16
Speaker 1: Let's track that legal resurrection, because fast forwarding to May
22:19
of twenty twenty six, there is a massive appellate breakthrough.
22:23
Monica Lee along with her attorneys, Malik Chabaz and Trent Walker,
22:28
filed a civil suit for excessive force.
22:30
Speaker 2: Okay.
22:31
Speaker 1: They pointed to the prolonged kneeling that restricted Damien's breathing,
22:35
arguing it violated department policy and clearly established constitutional law.
22:40
But in twenty twenty two, a Rankin County Circuit judge
22:43
dismissed the lawsuit entirely based on the doctrines of sovereign
22:46
immunity and qualified immunity. Break down. Qualified immunity for us,
22:51
why is it such an impenetrable fortress for plaintiffs?
22:54
Speaker 2: Qualified immunity is a deeply controversial, judicially created legal doctrine
23:00
protects government officials, including police officers, from being held personally
23:03
liable in civil suits for constitutional violations like excessive force
23:07
unless the official violated a clearly established, statutory or constitutional right.
23:11
Speaker 1: But what does clearly established actually mean in a court room?
23:15
Because you know, to a layperson kneeling on a handcuffed
23:17
man's neck until he is sixty, it seems clearly unconstitutional.
23:21
Speaker 2: You would definitely think so. But in practice, particularly in
23:24
conservative appellate circuits, the courts have historically interpreted clearly established
23:29
to an absurdly narrow degree. How narrow, courts will often say, yes,
23:33
the officer used excessive force by doing action X, But
23:36
because the Supreme Court or this specific appellate court only
23:40
ruled previously on an officer doing action Y, it wasn't
23:43
clearly established to this specific officer that action X was illegal.
23:47
Speaker 1: Are you kidding?
23:48
Speaker 2: No? It essentially requires plaintiffs to find a past case
23:51
with nearly identical twin facts to hold an officer accountable. Today,
23:56
it acts as a massive preemptive shield, allowing judges to
23:59
disc miss cases before a jury ever hears a single witness.
24:03
Speaker 1: So when the Mississippi Court of Appeals reverse that dismissal
24:06
on May five, twenty twenty six, piercing that shield, it
24:09
was a monumental shift. Judge Donna Bonds wrote the majority opinion.
24:13
Her analysis focus on the fact that there are quote
24:15
genuine issues of material fact regarding whether the deputy's actions
24:19
were objectively reasonable.
24:20
Speaker 2: Meaning the appellate court looked at the conflicting evidence the
24:24
family sworn testimony versus the deputies reports, the National Pathologists
24:29
findings versus the State Medical Examiner, and said this is
24:32
too contested for a judge to just dismiss a jury
24:37
needs to evaluate the credibility of these radically different narratives.
24:41
Speaker 1: And crucially, the court affirmed the legal precedent that applying
24:45
pressure or body weight force to a prone, restrained suspect
24:49
can constitute excessive force under established law.
24:52
Speaker 2: Exactly now, in the interest of reporting the full legal text, impartially,
24:57
we must note that the ruling was not unanimous. A
24:59
dissenting judge argued that the record as it stood did
25:02
not support a finding of excessive force, suggesting the officer's
25:05
actions were protected under the immunity doctrines.
25:08
Speaker 1: Right, but the majority ruled in favor of the family,
25:10
officially remanding the case for trial. Yes, Monica Lee reacted
25:14
to this ruling by telling reporters, quote, I feel a
25:16
little bit better that maybe we can get justice from
25:18
my son. It's heavy on me because there's no justice.
25:21
After five agonizing years of grief and stonewalling, the family
25:25
finally forced a path into open court.
25:27
Speaker 2: It's incredible, persistent, it is.
25:29
Speaker 1: It's a venue where those world renowned pathologists can finally
25:32
present the physical evidence under oath, subject to cross examination, and.
25:37
Speaker 2: As we analyze the entirety of this narrative. The sources
25:40
draw an explicit, glaring, historical parallel that we have to examine.
25:45
It illuminates the systemic nature of these forensic battles.
25:48
Speaker 1: You're talking about the parallel to George Floyd. Yes, Damien
25:52
Cameron died in July twenty twenty one, just over a
25:55
year after George Floyd was murdered. The physical and circumstantial
25:59
similarities are deeply unsettling. Both were black men experiencing a
26:03
form of distress. Both were restrained in a prone position
26:07
by white officers. Both were subjected to prolonged physical compression
26:12
of the neck and upper back, and, most chillingly, both
26:15
men explicitly pleaded with the officers, stating clearly that they
26:19
could not breathe.
26:20
Speaker 2: The differences, however, dictate exactly why one case sparked a
26:23
global reckoning and the other was nearly erased by the
26:26
bureaucracy exactly. George Floyd's death was captured in high definition
26:31
on a civilian cell phone for the entire world to
26:34
witness in real time. Because of that undeniable visual evidence,
26:39
it was immediately ruled a homicide by the medical examiner,
26:43
forcing the criminal justice system to act.
26:45
Speaker 1: Damien Cameron's death, by contrast, was completely unrecorded. The police
26:49
dashcam video was conveniently lost and shielded by that lack
26:53
of visual evidence, his death was ruled undetermined and buried
26:57
in a rural Mississippi county. The scholars in the text
27:00
argue that the difference isn't just the existence of video,
27:03
It is the willingness of forensic authorities to accurately name
27:07
what the physical evidence reveals when the police control the narrative.
27:10
Speaker 2: This brings us to a profound sociological concept discussed in
27:13
the reporting, the weaponization of ambiguity. Historically, forensic terms like
27:18
undetermined or pseudoscientific labels like excited delirium or focusing heavily
27:23
on trace amounts of drugs have been disproportionately applied in
27:26
cases involving black men dying in police custody.
27:29
Speaker 1: Let's unpack excited delirium for a second, because it comes
27:32
up constantly in these cases. It's not recognized by the
27:35
American Medical Association or the American Psychiatric Association right correct.
27:39
Speaker 2: It is widely rejected by major medical organizations. It's a
27:42
term historically championed by law enforcement and taser manufacturers to
27:46
describe a state of agitation, hyperthermia, and supposed superhuman strength,
27:52
usually leading to sudden cardiac death.
27:54
Speaker 1: So it's basically a loophole.
27:55
Speaker 2: In practice, it provides a highly convenient forensic out. It
27:59
obscures the lethal role of police force. If a man
28:02
has drugs in his system or a mental health history,
28:05
the system can point to excited delirium or an undetermined
28:09
drug event, rather than acknowledging the mechanical reality of a
28:12
knee on a neck.
28:14
Speaker 1: And the sources point out that Mississippi's medical examiner system
28:16
specifically has faced immense criticism for structural vulnerabilities that exacerbate
28:21
this exact problem. We are talking about chronic underfunding, staggering
28:26
case loads, and a fundamental lack of independence from law enforcement.
28:30
Speaker 2: When a state medical examiner's office relies heavily on local
28:33
police departments to provide the seeing context and the narrative,
28:37
and those same police departments are the ones under investigation
28:39
for a custody death, the conflict of interest is structurally
28:43
baked into the process.
28:44
Speaker 1: Right the referee is relying on the team that committed
28:47
the foul to explain the rules.
28:48
Speaker 2: That's exactly it.
28:49
Speaker 1: So where does this leave us As we sit here
28:52
in mid twenty twenty six, there are massive structural questions
28:57
that remain completely unanswered.
28:59
Speaker 2: The upcoming civil tree is the next major battleground. Will
29:02
the power of civil discovery force the release of hidden evidence?
29:06
Will that lost dash cam video suddenly be recovered from
29:09
a server? Will internal communications regarding the Goon Squad's cover
29:13
up tactics finally see the light of day?
29:15
Speaker 1: And what about the criminal side? Will the Mississippi Attorney
29:18
General or the local district attorney finally request a formal
29:21
re examination of Damian Cameron's autopsy? You'd hope so, especially
29:25
now given the federal convictions of Hunter Lward and the
29:29
unanimous on the record consensus of three of the nation's
29:32
top forensic pathologists. Can Doctor Turner's office continue to stand
29:37
by that undetermined ruling without ever publicly addressing the glaring
29:41
scientific discrepancy.
29:43
Speaker 2: Furthermore, this raises urgent questions about institutional reform in ranking
29:47
County itself. Dismantling the Goon Squad was a personnel change
29:52
forced by the Department of Justice, right, but will the
29:55
county fundamentally alter its architecture? Will they implement mandatory failsafe
29:59
body care cameras. Will they mandate specialized psychiatric crisis intervention.
30:04
Speaker 1: Teams so it doesn't happen again.
30:05
Speaker 2: Will the state establish truly independent investigative protocols for custody deaths,
30:10
removing the NBI's reliance on compromised local narratives.
30:14
Speaker 1: Those questions are hanging over everything. But if there is
30:17
a corese synthesis to draw from these incredible investigative sources,
30:21
it is this. The undetermined label was fundamentally designed by
30:25
the system to be a period at the end of
30:27
Damian Cameron's story. It was designed to close the book quietly,
30:31
but it didn't. No. Instead, thanks to a mother's absolute,
30:36
unyielding persistence and the intervention of objective scientific review, that
30:41
period became a comma. The narrative was forced open.
30:45
Speaker 2: Damian Cameron's name and the growing scientific consensus that his
30:49
death was a mechanical homicide have refused to be erased
30:52
by a single bureaucratic word.
30:54
Speaker 1: I want to leave you with a final thought, something
30:55
to really mull over as you digest the sheer scale
30:58
of this case. Imagine you are sitting on a jury
31:01
trying to weigh the truth. We started this deep dive
31:04
talking about the comforting clarity of an X ray versus
31:08
the murky, politically charged waters of forensic justice. Yeah, think
31:12
about the astronomical amount of energy it took to finally
31:14
get some clarity here. It took the intervention of three
31:17
world renowned pathologists. It took a completely separate, horrific torture
31:20
scandal that made international news and brought down the FBI.
31:24
And it took five years of relentless, exhausting, expensive legal
31:28
appeals just to get Damian Cameron's family a chance at
31:31
a civil trial.
31:32
Speaker 2: It's a staggering burden to place on a grieving family.
31:35
Speaker 1: It is. If that monumental, nearly impossible effort is what
31:39
it takes to piece together the biological truth and pierce
31:42
the armor of a single undetermined ruling, you have to
31:46
ask yourself how many thousands of undetermined files are currently
31:50
sitting in basement archives in medical examiner offices across the
31:54
country right now? Too many files holding the exact same
31:57
internal neck trauma, the exact same missing videos, the exact
32:00
same truth about people who simply didn't have a mother
32:03
willing to fight for five years to uncover it. Thank
32:06
you for joining us on this deep dive