BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – A federal judge has dismissed portions of a lawsuit against Sheriff Wayne Ivey and others in the 2018 death of U.S. Army combat veteran Gregory Edwards in the Brevard County jail, tossing out claims that the force used to subdue Edwards violated his constitutional rights, according to our News 6 partners at Florida Today.
The summary judgment is the latest legal chapter in the Edwards case, which began after the 38-year-old husband and father died Dec. 10, 2018. Edwards — who was arrested after assaulting a toy drive worker at a Walmart in West Melbourne — was found unresponsive in his cell strapped to a restraint chair, with barbs from a stun gun still in his back, pepper spray on his face and a spit hood over his head.
At the time of his arrest, Edwards had gone without sleep for several days and was suffering what his wife described as a mental health “episode,” resulting from post-traumatic stress disorder related to his combat experience in the Army.
In a March 6 order, U.S. District Court Judge John Antoon dismissed federal civil rights claims brought against corrections deputies and nurses involved in the incident, dealing a blow to family assertions that the jail staff’s actions constituted excessive force, leading to the veteran’s death.
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The move, however, punted on a negligence claim against Ivey and further claims against the nurses and a jail medical services contractor, keeping the suit alive in state court.
Antoon expressed sympathy for Edwards’ family and raised concerns about how staff members handled the incident, even if he said it didn’t rise to the level of violating Edwards’ rights.
“The death of Gregory Lloyd Edwards was an unquestionable tragedy. And, at times, the Defendants’ actions may have fallen short of the high standards of conduct we expect from government officials charged with holding — and protecting — pretrial detainees,” Antoon wrote in the 51-page order. “But not every decision that might fail in hindsight to comport with the highest levels of prudence and compassion gives rise to a constitutional claim.”
Edwards’ death became a touchstone case in Brevard, prompting protests and calls for an independent investigation and the release of the jail video showing the confrontation at the jail. In July 2019, the office of State Attorney Phil Archer determined that the use of force against Edwards was justified and commended the actions of jail staff, causing further outcry.
The case took on new life shortly after the in-custody death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May 2020, as protests calling out police tactics and demanding criminal justice reform fanned out across the nation, including Brevard.
[WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO OF GREGORY EDWARDS’ IN CUSTODY. VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED]
In July, FLORIDA TODAY filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office for release of the jail video, citing the public’s right to know. Ivey had resisted sharing the video, saying it could compromise jail security.
It was finally made public in November 2020 after FLORIDA TODAY and the sheriff reached an agreement before the case went to trial. The agreement allowed certain security features at the jail to be redacted but provided the public its first glimpse of what happened to Edwards inside the jail.
Tragedy also struck the Edwards’ family again that year. Edwards’ 18-month-old son, Gregory Edwards Jr., died on July 2, 2020, days after he being pulled from the family pool at their home in Grant.
In December, with a sheriff’s office investigation lingering in the drowning death, Edward’s mother-in-law Margarita Rodriguez-Bonilla filed suit on behalf of the family against the sheriff’s office, the City of West Melbourne, and then-health contractor Armor Correctional in state and federal court.
Edward’s widow, Kathleen Edwards, a war veteran who also struggled with PTSD, later faced legal challenges of her own, when the sheriff’s office charged her in March 2021 with aggravated manslaughter of a child in the death of her son.
Kathleen Edwards has since moved out of Brevard County and is awaiting trial. She declined to comment for this story.
Deputies receive qualified immunity in use of force
Edwards died in the hospital the day after he was admitted to the jail following the West Melbourne assault.
An altercation broke out during booking after video showed Edwards struck out at a corrections deputy, ultimately leading nine responding officers to punch, knee, and deploy pepper spray and repeated blasts from a stun gun to get Edwards under control. Edwards was placed handcuffed in a restraint chair with a spit hood over his head because of the saliva and mucus from the pepper spray.
The surveillance video showed the U.S. Army medic alone in a holding cell, hands cuffed straight behind him, writhing against the straps that held his shoulders and legs and moving his mouth as if he were gasping for air. He was found unresponsive and barely breathing a short time later.
In the lawsuit, originally filed in a Miami-Dade court, Antoon said deputies were entitled to qualified immunity after attorneys for the family failed to show they had clearly violated Edwards’ rights.
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Edwards “undoubtedly posed a grave threat to jail security,” Antoon wrote, and the initial efforts to subdue him were “unfortunate” but “not excessive” — a point with which attorneys for Rodriguez-Bonilla agreed, the order noted.
FLORIDA TODAY investigation: A death in custody: Army veteran’s treatment in Brevard jail violated sheriff’s office policies
Deputies used “no more force than necessary to gain control of Edwards, and disengag(ed) when they managed to subdue him,” he wrote.
Likewise, the choice to restrain Edwards in the chair for nearly 25 minutes with his hands cuffed behind his back were “reasonable” in light of video showing that he continued to struggle against his restraints, “providing no indication that he would stop fighting if he were released,” Antoon wrote.
Deputies “could be forgiven” for leaving the stun gun barbs in his back “given the chaotic scene that preceded Edwards’ placement in the chair,” he said.
Judge raises concerns over use of spit hood and pepper spray
The combined use of the spit hood and the pepper spray, however — which was left on Edwards’ face for 15 minutes after he was restrained — gave the court “significant pause,” Antoon wrote.
“There was no ongoing reason to subject Edwards to the effects of the pepper spray once he was placed into the restraint chair,” he wrote. “Indeed, rather than minimizing the effects of the pepper spray, the Deputy Defendants arguably exacerbated them, covering Edwards’s face with a spit mask without any indication that he was actively spitting at the deputies.”
An independent medical expert hire by the defense testified that the combination of the spit hood and pepper spray may have exacerbated Edwards’ “excited delirium” — his official cause of death.
While Edwards’ family challenged the controversial diagnosis, which is not recognized by the American Medical Association or the American Psychiatric Association, Antoon noted the testimony from the defense’s own expert provided “at least some evidence ... that the Deputy Defendants’ actions may have injured Edwards.”
The court ruled, however, that attorneys for the family had presented “no evidence” that the spit hood could worsen the effects of the pepper spray.
The “relatively short time” that Edwards was subjected to the spray before he fell unconscious and the “lack of intelligible complaints” — defendants noted Edwards shouted incomprehensibly but made no specific complaints as he struggled in the chair — made its exact effects, or how it affected his condition, “unknown.”
“The Court recognizes the seeming insensitivity in suggesting that if only Edwards had protested more or lived longer, Rodriguez-Bonilla would be able to establish a claim for excessive force — especially when at least one medical expert believes that the pepper spray itself may have contributed in some way to his death,” Antoon wrote. “But to suggest otherwise would be to base this Court’s ruling on an unknowable counterfactual.”
Jail staff not “deliberately indifferent” to Edwards
Antoon also ruled against the claim that deputies and nurses who assessed Edwards throughout the ordeal had treated him with “deliberate indifference” — a key part of the family’s constitutional argument, he said.
Before the altercation, deputies had acted on information that Edwards was suffering from a mental health episode by assigning him to the medical unit, separating him from other detainees and making plans for an assessment by a nurse, Antoon said.
A 30-minute delay before removing Edwards from his cell for booking and assessment was a “short delay on a ‘quite busy’ day” at the jail, and there was no evidence it contributed to his death, the judge ruled.
Though no one had been specifically assigned to observe Edwards during his restraint, he was “monitored ... regularly” by deputies and nurses, who all testified they saw no signs of medical distress, Antoon said. Once he fell unconscious, staff came to his aid, Antoon said.
Delays in medical checks after the altercation and decontaminating his face from the pepper spray were excusable due to Edwards’ “aggressive state,” he said.
“Rodriguez-Bonilla suggests that the Defendants should have called 911 immediately once Edwards became unresponsive—and in some sense she may be right,” the judge wrote. But the decision to treat Edwards at the jail’s medical unit before sending him to the hospital failed to meet the “onerous bar” of deliberate indifference, he said.
Local attorney casts doubt on ruling
Though the judge ruled against the family’s federal civil rights claims, he remanded claims of negligence against Ivey and medical malpractice claims against the nurses and Armor Correctional back to state court, where the case will continue.
Attorneys for Ivey and other defendants declined to comment for this story, citing the pending litigation.
However, Brevard County attorney Jessica Travis, who represented FLORIDA TODAY in its suit against the sheriff over the jail video, criticized the ruling in a blog post, saying the facts on which Antoon relied were “contradicted or contrary to the video.”
Antoon failed to account for the pain from sitting on the stun gun barbs in his comments about Edwards continuing to struggle against the straps of the chair, Travis said. Video showed deputies could have removed the barbs during his restraint, she said.
He also didn’t account for other effects of the pepper spray that could have contributed to Edwards’ condition, she said.
“The judge ... ignored that pepper spray would cause mucus to run down the throat of someone who is strapped in a restraint chair with his head tilted back, gasping for air,” Travis wrote.
Travis told FLORIDA TODAY she didn’t have anything to add to the post.
Travis also took issue with the suggestion that the family’s excessive force claim was voided by the fact that Edwards made “no intelligible complaints” about the pepper spray on his face.
“The judge disregarded that Edwards may have had difficulty speaking due to the effects of the pepper spray and that the deputies had placed a spit hood on Edwards, leaving him alone in a room where no one could hear possible complaints,” she wrote.
“Further, it should be noted that since there is no audio on the jail video; there is no record of whether Edwards asked for help.”
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