Greene County Democrat

Tag: attorney Benjamin Crump

  • Newswire : Attorney Ben Crump demands video of Homewood, Alabama police shooting: ‘You won’t sweep Jabari Peoples under the rug’

    By Carol Robinson, AL.com

     Attorney Benjamin Crump addresses press conference in Homewood, Alabama church.
     Jabari Peoples, 18, was shot to death June 23, 2025, by a Homewood police officer in a city soccer park.(Facebook)

    National civil rights attorney Ben Crump has joined to fight for any footage to be released in the killing of a beloved Alabama teen who was shot to death by police in a Homewood city soccer park.
    Crump, known for his work on cases such as the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, was joined by Birmingham attorneys Leroy Maxwell and Rodney Barganier, Black Lives Matter and other community activists at a Tuesday press conference. 
    Crump said he is getting involved because 18-year-old Jabari Peoples was doing everything right in life when he was shot to death June 23. 
    Peoples was a 2024 graduate of Aliceville High School where he was standout track athlete and football player. 
    Peoples had just finished his freshman year at Alabama A & M where he was studying computer information and criminal justice with hopes of becoming a law enforcement officer, specifically a detective.
    He had no prior arrests, Crump said. “There’s nothing in his history that would suggest that he’s going to try to shoot a police officer,” Crump said. 
    “This is a tragedy of unimaginable circumstances,” Crump said. “His mother and father should be given a gold medal for the child that they were raising.”
    )Maxwell said he’s thankful Crump is joining the legal team.“In all this tragedy, today is actually a good day,” Maxwell said. “I’m glad we brought in a big gun. We needed it here.One of the things he brings is that coalition,” Maxwell said. 
    “(The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency) typically acts in a certain way and oftentimes they won’t release these videos under pressure, but they haven’t felt pressure like this in what attorney Crump brings to the table.”
    Homewood police say a veteran officer, who has not been publicly identified, approached the vehicle to investigate because of a recent increase in criminal activity in and around the city’s athletic complexes.
    The officer, police say, smelled marijuana and ordered Peoples and his female friend out of the vehicle.
    Police say the encounter ended with Peoples resisting, breaking away from the officer as he tried to handcuff him, and grabbing a gun from the driver’s side door pocket.
    The officer shot Peoples, who was pronounced dead a short time later at UAB Hospital.
    Peoples’ family and attorney Maxwell disagreed with that narrative, saying that Peoples wasn’t armed and didn’t resist.
    The Homewood Police Department turned the investigation over to ALEA, which is standard policy for many officer-involved shootings.
    ALEA denied the family’s request to see the footage, saying release of the video footage would jeopardize the ongoing investigation.
    There have been several protests following the fatal shooting, including at the Homewood Police Department, ALEA’s office in west Homewood, Homewood City Hall and during the World Police and Fire Games last week in the Birmingham area.
    Though Alabama state provides a way for families to view body camera and dash cam videos, the same law also allows law enforcement to withhold the footage for investigative purposes.
    Crump said he is grateful for all lawyers who take up the mantle to fight against injustice, to fight against the system for people who others think can be swept under the rug.
    “You won’t sweep Jabari Peoples under the rug,” Crump said. 
    “His family is just asking for answers. Is that so much to ask for?” he said. 
    “Your 18-year-old son who’s never convicted of any crime, he’s never even been arrested, was doing everything right that you would want for a child and he’s killed by the police, the people who are supposed to protect and serve him. Wouldn’t you want answers?”
    The attorneys said trust and transparency are on the line. 
    “This is very straightforward,” Maxwell said. 
    “If we’re about trust and transparency, honoring Jabari and his family, honoring the community and honoring the relationship that we want so deeply with law enforcement, it is necessary to release the footage.
    “This is not a hard investigation,” Crump said. “I mean, you got a video, you got an autopsy and you got an eyewitness. It shouldn’t take you a year to finish this investigation.”
    “Show the video. You can shut all of us up, shut me up, shut Black Lives Matter up, shut up attorney Maxwell, shut up (community activist) Frank Matthews, shut up everybody,” Crump said. “Show us the officer did nothing wrong. Show us that it was justified.”

    “If the officer did nothing wrong, we’ll be quiet,” Crump said. “We won’t say a word. But if he did something inappropriate, then we want justice for Jabari.”
    Crump said the family is seeking to have a private autopsy done before Peoples’ funeral which is set for Saturday at Aliceville City Hall. 
    “Because we don’t have the autopsy from the medical examiner, the family has to go through extraordinary lengths to have an independent autopsy performed before the funeral and that’s exactly what they are going to do because we need to know,” he said. 
    “We know the cause of death was a gunshot, we want to know the trajectory, the point of entry, the point of exit.” 
    Maxwell has said previously that an investigator who conducted a detailed charting of Peoples’ body found he was shot once in the back. Peoples’ parents, siblings and other family members joined Crump at the press conference at Friendship Baptist Church in Homewood and spoke of their slain son.
    “He had a lot of dreams, and he was willing to work for those dreams,” his mother, Vivian Sterling, said. 
    “Sometimes I thought he wanted to do too many things. He’d pass the airport and say, ‘Mama, I’m going to get my pilot’s license, but I don’t know if I’m going to do it before or after I go into the military.’”
    “He wanted three different degrees, computer engineering, electrical engineering, criminal justice,” Sterling said. “He wanted to do all sorts of things, and he knew he could do it.”
    “Jabari was one of the brightest kids, one of the loveliest kids,” his father William Peoples said. “We don’t know how we’re going to go on without Jabari but we’re going to fight for Jabari until our last breath.”
     Crump said the fight is far from over. 
    “We refuse to be well-behaved victims,” he said. “Jabari is going to continue to be a priority for us.”

  • Newswire : Ahmaud Arbery’s killers found guilty of hate crimes in Federal Court

    Ahmaud Arbery and his mother


    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent


    A federal jury found Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William “Roddie” Bryan guilty on all counts in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.
    The verdict came on the eve of the anniversary of Arbery’s murder.
    The McMichaels and Bryan chased Arbery through their mostly white Georgia neighborhood in their pickup trucks, cornering him before Travis McMichael shot the innocent jogger with a shotgun.
    The trio was convicted in state court and given life sentences. The federal charges included a hate crime that exposed each of the men’s history of racism. Throughout the one-week trial, defense attorneys tried to sell the jury that, while the men weren’t “likable,” their actions weren’t driven by racial hatred.
    However, Prosecutor Christopher Perras ferociously attacked that stance. The murder “was driven by their pent-up racial anger and [Travis McMichael] was just looking for a reason,” Perras insisted. He also noted that if the men thought Arbery had committed a crime, they never alerted the police.
    Trial testimony from FBI intelligence analyst Amy Vaughan revealed a host of racist remarks from Travis McMichael. Vaughn testified that Travis McMichael and his friends routinely used racist slurs directed at African Americans.
    One text from Travis McMichael to a friend describes how he enjoyed his new job because he didn’t have to work with Black people.
    “They ruin everything,” McMichael wrote. “That’s why I love what I do now. Not a [n-word] in sight.”
    In a Facebook video that purportedly shows a group of Black teenagers beating a white youth, Travis McMichael commented, “I say shoot them all,” and he referred the group as “monkeys.”
    Travis McMichael also referred to a woman who dated a Black man as an “[N-word] lover.”
    Kim Ballesteros, who lived next door to the McMichaels, told the court about a conversation in which Gregory McMichael used racist language to describe a tenant he had.
    “She was a large Black woman who did not pay her rent very well,” Ballesteros told the court. “Their name for her was the walrus.”
    When Gregory McMichael told her that the woman didn’t pay her rent on time, he disabled her air conditioning unit. “You should have seen how fast her big fat Black a– came with the rent check,” Gregory McMichael said, according to Ballesteros.
    The FBI’s Vaughan also testified that Bryan often used the n-word and words like “bootlip” to describe Black people.
    She said he routinely slurred African Americans on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. “Happy Bootlip Day,” Bryan told a friend in one message. “I worked like a [n-word] today,” he stated.
    Perras dismissed any notion that the defense attorney’s claims on behalf of his clients somehow justified their deadly actions. “There’s a big difference between being vigilant and being a vigilante,” he told the jury. “It’s important for you to understand the full depth of the defendants’ racial hatred.”
    Attorney Benjamin Crump released the following statement following the verdict:
    “Tomorrow marks two years since Ahmaud Arbery was stalked, trapped, and murdered in cold blood as he jogged through his Brunswick neighborhood. And today, after much sorrow, grief, and pain, Ahmaud’s family can finally put this chapter behind them. For the last 24 months, they’ve dedicated themselves to getting justice for their son. They’ve had to relive his brutal murder, watch and listen as he was demonized in court, and fight to share with the world who Ahmaud Arbery was and who he could have been had his young life not been so violently cut short.
    “For many of us, there was never any doubt that Greg McMichael, Travis McMichael, and William Bryan targeted Ahmaud because of his skin color. But because of indisputable video evidence, disgusting messages sent by the defendants, and witness testimony, their hate was revealed to the world and the jury. We hope and demand that the severity of their crimes are reflected in the sentencing, as well.
    “Ahmaud Arbery was denied the opportunity to define his own legacy, but America, we have the power to ensure that it is one that propels our fight for equal justice and dispels hate from this world. That is how we continue to honor Ahmaud and make sure his death was not in vain.”

  • Newswire: Pulitzer Board issues special citation to Darnella Frazier, the teen who recorded George Floyd’s murder

    Darnella Frazier takes video of George Floyd’s murder

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

     Pulitzer Prize to the list of awards and recognition bestowed upon Darnella Frazier, the teen who bravely videotaped the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The Pulitzer Prize board issued a special citation to Darnella, who is now 18. “For courageously recording the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists’ quest for truth and justice,” the Pulitzer Board wrote. For her efforts, Darnella is also receiving the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s (NNPA) highest journalism award and a monetary scholarship at the NNPA’s annual convention, which begins on Wednesday, June 23. NNPA is the trade association of the hundreds of African American-owned newspapers and media companies that comprise the Black Press of America. NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., applauded Darnella and called her a “freedom fighter” who ensured justice was finally done in the case of a police officer killing an unarmed African American. “We salute this brave young woman, who had the courage to keep on filming even as the officers tried to intimidate her,” Dr. Chavis stated. Floyd family Attorney Benjamin Crump told the Black Press that there would be no civil settlement or a trial and conviction of former officer Derek Chauvin had it not been for Darnella’s actions. “It was Darnella Frazier who stepped up,” Crump asserted. Officials in Minneapolis reached a record $27 million civil settlement with Floyd’s family, and Chauvin faces as much as 40 years in prison when he’s sentenced on June 25. “We wouldn’t have any of that without Darnella Frazier taking that video,” Crump reiterated. The video was the most damning piece of evidence during Chauvin’s trial, and Darnella took the witness stand and offered powerful testimony to back up the recording. “Even though this was a traumatic life-changing experience for me, I’m proud of myself,” Frazier wrote in an Instagram post on the one-year anniversary of Floyd’s murder. “If it weren’t for my video, the world wouldn’t have known the truth.” “My video didn’t save George Floyd,” she added, “but it put his murderer away and off the streets.”

  • Newswire : Clark autopsy reveals he was shot in the back six times

    Clark

    Renowned pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu reveals his findings of the independent autopsy he performed on the body of Stephon Clark. Dr. Omalu said Clark, who was killed by Sacramento police officers, was shot six times in the back. PHOTO/Robert Maryland

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Sacramento Observer

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Trice Edney News Wire) – The eight bullets that struck unarmed Stephon Clark hit him in the back or side, and none came from the front, clearly refuting the contention by police that Clark was moving toward them when they gunned him down. Those are the findings of an independent autopsy performed at the request of Stephon’s family by internationally renowned pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu.

    “These findings from the independent autopsy contradict the police narrative that we’ve been told,” said attorney Benjamin Crump, who has been retained by members of the Clark family to obtain justice.

    “From the time this investigation began, statements provided by the Sacramento Police Department have proven to be self-serving, untrustworthy, and unreliable. This independent autopsy affirms that Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances,” Crump continued.
    “The children lost their father and deserve justice. We are conducting a thorough investigation to determine how this happened,” co-counsel Attorney Brian Panish said.
    Crump said the Clark family requested the independent autopsy after Stephon’s body was released to them by the medical examiner. Dr. Omalu has been widely hailed as the man who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, and its relationship to brain damage in football players. His story was illustrated in the theatrical film “Concussion,” in which he was portrayed by Will Smith.
    According to Dr. Omalu’s findings, Clark was shot eight times with no front entry wounds. His independent autopsy identified four entry wounds in the lower part of Clark’s back; one in the side of his neck, with an exit wound elsewhere in his neck; one in the back of his neck; one under an armpit entering from the side, with an exit wound on the other side of his body; and one in the outside of a leg.
    Crump said this information shows that Clark clearly was not moving toward officers in a threatening manner and they could have given him time to comply with their commands to show them his hands at the time they opened fire.
    “Beyond the fact that police at first said Stephon’s cellphone was mistaken for a gun, but then changed their story to say they thought it was a crowbar, our autopsy has shown that he was shot repeatedly in the back – which is certainly not characteristic of someone menacing officers or preparing an imminent attack,” Crump said.
    Crump said he expects that authorities will try to dispute or minimize Dr. Omalu’s findings because they directly contradict the official story of this unjustifiable shooting.
    “When Dr. Omalu said football players were suffering brain damage, the NFL tried to dismiss his findings as completely wrong, but later had to reverse themselves. I’m sure the police will similarly try to discredit his findings about Stephon Clark, but once again the truth will win out.”