Maybe it’s because the grand jury didn’t have enough evidence. Maybe it’s because the police officers were white and the victim was Black. Maybe it’s because there was no video recording of the incident. Maybe it’s because it happened in Mississippi.
Whatever the cause of Damien Cameron’s death while in police custody, it did not receive the public outrage that Geoge Floyd’s tragic encounter received, even though the two Black men died in a similar manner: their necks compressed by a knee.
At least, that was the conclusion of new evidence from three renowned pathologists that contradicts the state’s chief medical examiner after the completion of her autopsy. She ruled that Cameron, 29, died of “undetermined” causes, which led the grand jury not to indict the deputies involved.
This is not the place to question the credentials of the white doctor and her forensic verdict; still, it’s hard to ignore this fact and other presumptions posed in this editorial.
We wonder to what extent other medical examiners were consulted and if such a practice was possible after Cameron’s death was defined as undetermined.
Dr. Michael Baden, a former New York City chief medical examiner, who performed an independent autopsy of George Floyd, said of Cameron, “This person died of asphyxia because of neck compression.” He declared that it was “a homicide, absolutely.”
His assessment was in accord with Dr. Zhongxue Hua, chief of the forensic pathology division at Rutgers University, who said, “There’s really nothing to be undetermined about.”
One more “maybe” should be added to our query: Maybe in some cases, additional experts are needed to determine the cause of death, particularly when Black men die in police custody.
We have no idea how this process works from state to state, but now we are waiting to see the state’s response to the new evidence, which bolsters the family lawsuit, according to Malik Shabazz, the family’s attorney.
It should be noted that one of the deputies involved in Cameron’s death, and allegedly the one who pinned his neck to the ground, was also one of the officers involved in the home invasion, torture, and shooting of one of the victims in the mouth, as we reported in an editorial two weeks ago.
Something is terribly amiss with law enforcement in Rankin County.