Boot-camp tape sparks outrage: Mom: 'Martin didn't deserve this'

Tallahassee Democrat
Feb. 18, 2006

The release Friday of a videotape showing Bay County guards restraining and striking a limp and seemingly lifeless 14-year-old has ignited national attention and cries for a special prosecutor in the case and even closing the state's juvenile boot camps.

The parents of Martin Lee Anderson, who died on Jan. 6, a day after the incident, believe the tape raises questions about an autopsy by District Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Siebert that said the boy died from internal bleeding caused by a genetic blood disorder and not from injuries in an altercation with guards.

''Martin didn't deserve this right here - at all,'' the boy's mother, Gina Jones, said after viewing the tape Friday at her lawyer's office in Tallahassee. ''I couldn't even watch the whole tape. Me, as a mom, I knew my baby was in pain, and I am in pain just watching his pain.''

Charles Evans, president of the Tallahassee branch of the NAACP, watched the tape with Anderson's parents at the law office of Benjamin Crump.

"To see the tape proves there is an atrocious injustice that exists in these boot camps," Evans said.

The Florida NAACP is calling for all the boot camps to be closed. Anderson was the third young black male to die in state custody in the past three years. The boot camp concept for juveniles began in Florida with nine facilities in 1993, but will soon be whittled to four if the Martin County camp closes as scheduled later this year.

About 600 boys between ages 14 and 18 remain in the camps.

"We're not saying it's a racial issue, it's a children's issue," Evans said.

The video's release by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement follows a lawsuit filed by several news organizations and Crump. FDLE said it released the tape because of "compelling public interest and speculation as to its contents," according to spokeswoman Kristen Perezluha.
Anderson appears lifeless

The videotape appeared on national broadcasts Friday and was available on the CNN Web site. In it, Anderson is pulled out from a running drill by guards. For more than 20 minutes, until emergency personnel arrive, the guards restrain him and strike him on his arm and torso and knee him. Anderson appears limp, except once when he appears to move his legs slightly. As many as nine guards can be seen wrestling him to the ground and restraining him.

The guards appeared to strike him several times, but it's not clear how hard the blows were or where they landed. At one point, a guard struck him from behind, lifting his feet off the ground. As the videotape progresses, the officers bring Anderson to his feet to walk, and he collapses several times. Each time, the officers pull him to his feet again, and he collapses.

A woman in a white lab jacket with a stethoscope was present for much of the incident. She seemed to use the stethoscope once early on in the conflict. As the confrontation edged on 30 minutes, several of the guards ran in and out of the scene. Soon after, Anderson was put on a gurney and taken to a hospital.

Siebert said in an autopsy Thursday that Anderson died from internal bleeding caused by having the sickle cell trait, a genetic blood disorder that affects about 8 percent of African-Americans. He said there were some bruises and abrasions on Anderson, but he attributed them to attempts to resuscitate the youth.
'Slight, increased risk'

Experts on sickle cell say it would have been unusual for it to have killed the boy. There has been research linking the trait to sudden death after extreme exertion - such as that which might occur at a boot camp facility. In fact, the major study on the link between sudden death and sickle cell trait involved recruits at military boot camps.

''There is a slight, increased risk at the extremes of human endurance, but it really takes a profound amount of exercise and dehydration,'' said Dr. James Eckman, director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center at Grady Health System in Atlanta and a professor at Emory University.

While research has shown an increased chance of sudden death with heavy exertion, it mostly occurs either in extreme heat and humidity, or at altitude where the air is thinner.

''Certainly at sea level the risk would be very, very low unless it was very hot, very humid,'' Eckman said.

On the day Anderson passed out at the boot camp, weather records show the high temperature was 68.

Anderson was arrested in June for stealing his grandmother's Jeep Cherokee and sent to the boot camp for violating his probation by trespassing at a school.

"There are kids who did things 100 times worse than to go joyriding in your grandmother's car; you don't get the death sentence for that in America," Crump said.

The 80-minute tape was filmed by guards at the camp run by the Bay County Sheriff's Office. The U.S. Department of Justice is looking into a possible civil-rights violation, and state legislators on Friday called for an independent investigation.

"There is no indication of any physical resistance by the 14-year-old to his overseers, certainly nothing that appears to justify the continued show of force by the men who halted their assault only after the boy appeared lifeless," Sen. Les Miller, D-Tampa, said in a statement.

Crump said the medical examiner's conclusion suggests a cover-up.

"It's obvious it's home-cooking here," Crump said. "(The) Bay County medical examiner is doing what he can to assist Bay County officials."

Crump said his clients signed a release for Escambia County to perform the autopsy and that Bay County officials examined the body without permission from the family. The current commissioner of the FDLE, Guy Tunnell, is a former Bay County sheriff.

"Him having been former sheriff is not going to have any bearing on the investigation," Perezluha said.