Former SC deputies won’t face federal charges on in-custody death of Black man who was stunned, pepper-sprayed 

The Department of Justice (DOJ) won’t press federal civil rights charges against the South Carolina sheriff’s deputies who used pepper spray and a stun gun against Jamal Sutherland before he died in police custody.  

The two deputies at the Charleston County Detention Center forcibly extracted Sutherland, a Black man with a mental illness, from his cell for a bond hearing and restrained him when he did not comply with their requests. Sutherland died after an hour of resuscitation attempts. 

The deputies were identified as Brian Houle and Lindsay Fickett.

DOJ prosecutors initiated a review to determine whether the deputies’ force against Sutherland constituted misconduct that broke federal laws.  

Nearly two years after Sutherland’s death, the DOJ said in a Thursday statement that “prosecutors determined that insufficient evidence exists to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that deputies willfully violated the federal criminal civil rights statutes.”

The case is now closed without federal prosecution, but the DOJ noted that its conclusion “is limited strictly to an application of the high legal standard required to prosecute cases under federal civil rights laws [and] does not reflect an assessment of any other aspect of the incident that led to Sutherland’s death.”