Legal Features
The Rutherford Institute’s complaint in Edwards v. City of Muskogee
Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have filed a Fourth Amendment lawsuit against Oklahoma police who, despite being faced with an African-American man who complied fully with police orders during an arrest, subjected him to excessive force and brutality that included throwing the man to the ground, tasering him, placing him in a chokehold, and rendering him unconscious so that he had to be hospitalized for three days. In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma on behalf of Jeriel Edwards, Rutherford Institute attorneys charge that City of Muskogee police officers used unreasonable and excessive force against Edwards even though Edwards complied with police orders and took no threatening actions toward the officers.
“If you ask police what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with law enforcement, they will tell you to comply, cooperate, obey, not resist, not argue, not make threatening gestures or statements, avoid sudden movements, and submit to a search of their person and belongings,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “The problem is what to do when compliance is not enough. How can you maintain the illusion of freedom when daily, Americans are being shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, challenge an order or merely exist?”
November 01, 2018 • Rutherford Institute Sues Oklahoma Police Over Taser, Chokehold, Use of Excessive Force Against Man Who Complied Fully With Police Orders
