INDIANAPOLIS — (AP) — Two Indianapolis police officers charged in the death of a Black man — who was shocked with a Taser during a mental health crisis — acted "recklessly" by restraining him face down longer than necessary, a prosecutor said during opening statements Monday.
Officers Adam Ahmad and Steven Sanchez were indicted by a grand jury in April 2023 in Herman Whitfield III's 2022 death. They are being tried together as co-defendants for what's expected to be a five-day trial.
Both men face one felony count each of involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, battery resulting in serious bodily injury and battery resulting in moderate injury, and one misdemeanor battery charge.
Daniel Cicchini, the chief trial deputy for the Marion County Prosecutor's Office, said in his opening statement that Ahmad and Sanchez held Whitfield face down on the floor of his parents’ dining room longer than was necessary while he was being handcuffed.
Cicchini said the officers' actions left the man, who was obese, “unable to breathe."
“Essentially his heart and lungs could no longer function properly,” Cicchini told the jury. "When they kept him in that position they did so recklessly.”
He also told the jurors that the two officers' actions were “a substantial deviation from their training.”
But Mason Riley, an attorney for Ahmad and Sanchez, said during his opening statement that Whitfield suffered from an enlarged heart. He said Whitfield, who weighed 389 pounds (176 kilograms) according to his autopsy, had died “before the handcuffing concluded.”
“Neither of them have committed a single criminal act,” Riley said of the co-defendants.
He also said neither officer, nor other officers who responded to the family's home, heard Whitfield say he could not breathe.
Ahmad, 32, and Sanchez, 35, were indicted after Whitfield’s family had spent nearly a year demanding that police release full body camera videos of his encounter with officers and called for the firing of up to six officers. Both officers remain on administrative duty with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.
Whitfield’s parents had called 911 on April 25, 2022, and reported that their 39-year-old son, a gifted pianist, was in the throes of a mental health crisis at the family’s Indianapolis home.
The videos of the police response to the Whitfield home were released in January 2023 and document Whitfield's final moments alive during a chaotic encounter with police.
Responding officers found Whitfield naked and pacing inside the home. Body camera videos show officers trying to convince Whitfield to put on clothing so he could be taken to a hospital. But Whitfield did not dress, and he avoided contact with the officers, moving from room to room.
Whitfield is eventually seen running past a dining room table before Sanchez shocks him with a Taser and Whitfield falls to the floor, toppling furniture. Sanchez, Ahmad and other officers are seen holding a struggling Whitfield face down on the floor while they work to handcuff him.
Whitfield can be heard saying “can't breathe” a few times and exclaiming before he eventually falls silent. When officers rolled the handcuffed Whitfield over, he was unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.
The first witness called Monday was Dominque Clark, one of the first officers to arrive at the Whitfield home. Jurors were shown her body camera video, starting with her arrival at the scene with Ahmad already inside the home.
Clark testified that after the officers Tasered and handcuffed Whitfield, she did not hear him say he could not breathe and she also did not hear him gasping for breath. Clark also said she felt that the officers were not using “maximal restraint” as they had their hands on Whitfield while he was being handcuffed.
“I would not say ‘holding him down.’ I would say they were making contact,” Whitfield, she said.
The Marion County Coroner’s Office ruled Whitfield’s death a homicide. An autopsy lists his cause of death as “cardiopulmonary arrest in the setting of law enforcement subdual, prone restraint, and conducted electrical weapon use.”
The coroner's office listed “morbid obesity” and “hypertensive cardiovascular disease” as contributing factors in his death.
The officers’ attorneys had sought to have the charges dismissed against both men, arguing in part that the grand jury proceedings were “defective” and that “the facts stated do not constitute an offense.”
The court dismissed a second count of involuntary manslaughter Sanchez had faced, but it allowed the remaining charges against the officers to proceed to trial, said John Kautzman, one of the officers' attorneys.
He said the involuntary manslaughter charge that was dismissed involved Sanchez's use of a Taser against Whitfield.
A civil lawsuit filed by Whitfield's family against the city of Indianapolis and six police officers, including Ahmad, Sanchez and Clark, states that Whitfield “died because of the force used against him” and calls the force used against him “unreasonable and excessive.”
“Mr. Whitfield needed professional mental health care, not the use of excessive force,” the filing said.
The family is seeking unspecified damages. That civil case is set for trial in July 2025 in federal court in Indianapolis.
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