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WASHINGTON — A US jury has cleared three police officers of all criminal charges in the death of an unarmed black man who died in police custody in 2020.
Prosecutors accused the officers of using deadly force on Manuel Ellis during his arrest in Washington state.
Ellis, 33, was beaten and restrained face down on the pavement in Tacoma. Video footage shows him pleading for help, saying he could not breathe.
Defence attorneys argued he died from drugs and an existing heart condition.
His death came just months before George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, sparking protests and a new movement to highlight racial injustice.
Two of the officers in the Ellis case, Matthew Collins, 40, and Christopher Burbank, 38, were acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter.
The third, Timothy Rankine, 34, was acquitted of manslaughter. They had all pleaded not guilty.
Ellis, a father of two, was walking home with doughnuts from a 7-Eleven late in the evening of 3 March 2020.
Officers Collins and Burbank, sitting in their patrol car, said they saw him try to open the door of a passing car.
He became aggressive when confronted about it, they said. This was contradicted by three witnesses who testified at trial that after a brief conversation with Ellis, Officer Burbank threw open the car’s passenger door, knocking Ellis to the ground.
A nearby doorbell surveillance camera captured part of the interaction, and shows Mr Ellis with his hands held up as Officer Burbank shot a Taser at his chest, and Officer Collins held his neck from behind.
In the video, Ellis can be heard addressing the officers as “sir” and telling them he was struggling to breathe. One officer responds, telling him to “shut up”, using an expletive.
According to prosecutors, an officer then put a spit hood — used to stop detainees from spitting or biting — on Ellis’ head, while another officer kept him restrained on the pavement for six to nine minutes, until the Fire Department arrived. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The local medical examiner ruled Ellis’ death a homicide, caused by oxygen starvation, with both a heart condition and methamphetamine in his system contributing factors.
In court, lawyers for the defence argued it was a lethal combination of drugs and a heart problem that had killed Ellis. They said they believed he was a good man when he was sober but the meth “caused him to be violent, unpredictable and paranoid”.
Wayne Fricke, representing Officer Burbank, told the court: “This is a situation where (Ellis) created his own death. It was his behaviour that forced the officers to use force against him.” — BBC
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