A year after SC inmate’s death, family still seeking charges

By MICHELLE LIU
Associated Press/Report for America

The family of a mentally ill Black man who died after South Carolina jail employees repeatedly stunned him and then kneeled on his back until he stopped breathing is still seeking criminal charges one year later. Relatives for Jamal Sutherland want South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson to prosecute the Charleston County guards who restrained the 31-year-old shortly before his death. Sutherland’s family was joined Thursday in Charleston by prominent civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump and the relatives of several Black men whose killers were later prosecuted in high-profile trials. Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson had said last year that she couldn’t prove the guards intended to kill Sutherland.