Why the Wake DA says Raleigh police officers acted lawfully in man’s tasing death

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said Wednesday that there are no grounds for criminal charges against the Raleigh police officers involved in the tasing death of Darryl “Tyree” Williams.

Freeman said the prosecution of the officers is “unsustainable” and she asked for the case to be closed.

On Jan. 17 after 2 a.m., Williams was tased four times by officers who struggled to arrest him for allegedly possessing drugs.

Officers approached Williams parked in his car near businesses on Rock Quarry Road while conducting “proactive patrols” of an area identified by police to have high rates of crime.

Williams, who was unarmed, ran away from the officers in the incident and fell to the ground.

He struggled with officers, who deployed their tasers to subdue him when he would not put his arms behind his back.

Williams was heard on officers’ body camera footage saying “I have heart problems. Please!”

Darryl Williams’ autopsy report

An autopsy report from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner released earlier this month confirmed Williams died from sudden cardiac arrest stemming from being tased, cocaine use, physical exertion and physical restraint.

Williams, who was just over 6 feet tall and weighed 311 pounds, also had a few rib fractures, which likely came during CPR, according to the report. “However, injuries sustained during physical restraint cannot be fully excluded,” the autopsy report says.

The autopsy classified his death as a homicide, which is different than homicide as a criminal charge.

Autopsy rules man’s death after tasing by Raleigh police a homicide. What the report says

Status of the Raleigh police officers

Officers C.D. Robinson, 25, and J.T. Thomas, 22, deployed their tasers, referred to by Freeman as conductive energy weapons. Four other officers assisted at the scene.

The six officers were placed on paid administrative leave during the investigation. The News & Observer has reached out to the Raleigh Police Department to learn of the officers’ status.

Behind the DA’s ruling

In a three-page ruling, Freeman said her decision not to prosecute the officers for the in-custody death of Williams comes after an investigation by the State Bureau of Investigation, a review of the Raleigh Police Department’s use of force policies and their policies surrounding the use of tasers.

Freeman noted that it is not her authority to determine whether Raleigh police violated their own departmental policies.

Freeman stated the following factors as influencing the outcome of her decision:

▪ Williams “repeatedly failed to follow law enforcement commands throughout the entire encounter” and had a “substantial size advantage” over the officers whom he resisted.

▪ Officers Robinson and Thomas both said they were “concerned that Mr. Williams would assault and injure an officer” while resisting arrest.

▪ Williams was not able to be subdued and handcuffed by five different officers until he was tased a third time in a “pain compliance technique.”

▪ Officers Robinson and Thomas told investigators that they did not hear Williams say that he had heart problems. There is no way to substantiate whether this is true, but it is not determinative in the legal analysis, Freeman said. She also said that the officers did not know that he was unarmed at the time.

▪ Williams’ autopsy cited multiple factors that contributed to his death in addition to being tased and “these coexisting factors complicated a legal determination of the proximate cause of death,” Freeman said.

Police officers acted within state law according to North Carolina General Statute 15A-401, which “allows a law enforcement officer to use force to take into custody an individual attempting to elude arrest, or to defend himself or another from the use of physical force by an individual he is attempting to take into custody,” according to Freeman.

Williams died in the custody of police officers roughly an hour after encountering him, a police report previously said.

Attorneys call out Wake DA

Emancipate NC, a Raleigh criminal justice reform and civil rights group, has hosted news conferences since January to call for the officers involved in Williams’ death to be charged by the District Attorney and be fired by the police chief.

Most recently, Emancipate NC attorney Dawn Blagrove partnered as a co-counsel with nationally-known civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump, whose firm is representing Williams’ family.

Crump spoke briefly on Freeman’s decision during a press conference Wednesday in Wallace about the fatal police shooting of James Lanier, an unarmed Black man.

“He was tased because he was profiled,” Crump said about Williams. “The DA said she won’t bring charges in the brutal killing of (Williams) who said he had heart problems and yet the police continued to tase him.”

Crump and Blagrove were joined by Williams’ mother, Sonya Williams, at the Wallace press conference.

In a news conference earlier this month, Crump said Williams’ autopsy report “validated what we saw with our eyes” in officers’ body-worn camera footage of the arrest.

Emancipate NC also released a statement Wednesday about Freeman’s decision.

“District Attorney Lorrin Freeman decision not to prosecute the officers who killed Darryl Tyree Williams is disgraceful,” the group wrote. “She has once again failed to protect the Black people of Wake County by rubber-stamping the murder of an unarmed man by Raleigh Police Department. We all saw the video. The autopsy says Darryl Williams was killed. What more do we need for DA Freeman to hold RPD accountable for their criminal acts?”

A separate civil action lawsuit hasn’t been ruled out, attorneys previously told The N&O.