No Suspension for Officers Who Killed Mentally Ill Man By Tasering Him 15 Times

The two county sheriff's department deputies in Georgia who killed a mentally unwell man by pinning him down and tasering him 15 times were not suspended and remain on the job, despite the ongoing investigation into the incident and the fact that a medical examiner said the man died from prolonged taser use and compression of his torso.

Body camera footage from the fatal encounter on November 20 of last year was released last week, and shows the distressing final moments of 32-year-old Chase Sherman's life.

Sherman, his parents, and his fiancée were traveling home from the Dominican Republic, where they had attended his brother's wedding. Over the course of the trip, his parents reportedly became increasingly concerned about his mental health. He had been hallucinating, and told his mother that he smoked synthetic marijuana before they left for Dominican Republic.

Sherman refused to board the family's connecting flight in Atlanta en route back to Florida, where the family lives and where he worked as a boat captain for the family's parasailing business. Instead, his parents decided to rent a car and drive the five and a half hours to Destin, Florida. During the drive, Sherman's state continued to deteriorate. According to reports, he was convinced that he had been kidnapped, couldn't recognize his parents, tried to exit the car, and bit his fiancée.

His mother, Mary Ann Sherman, dialed 911 requesting emergency assistance and told the dispatcher that her son was having a mental breakdown and appeared to be on drugs.

"My son is freaking out," Mary Ann Sherman reportedly said. My husband is trying to hold him. He's fighting us… We need help… He's crazy, yelling… He's hallucinating… He needs to be taken to a mental hospital. He's going to kill us all if we don't get him help."

The video shows what happened next – a chaotic and violent struggle in the confined space of a family rental car between Coweta County Deputies J.D. Sepanski and S.F. Smith, and Sherman.

Warning: The video below shows scenes of violence and distress, and may not be appropriate for some viewers.

Sherman is curled in the fetal position, barefoot and at one point, apparently grabbed one of the deputy's taser. "Let go of my fucking taser" a deputy says. "What's your problem buddy… That's a good way to get shot right there… I'll tell you.. If you grab my taser again…."

"Y'all need to go somewhere" a deputy tells his family at one point. "No" his mother replies, "No you're not going to shoot him."

"You understand this is for our protection?" the deputy responds. "Right now he is being combative, he tried to take my taser away."

At one point, he stops resisting. "Okay, I quit, I quit" Sherman says, as deputies continue to fire their taser at him. "I'm dead, I'm dead."

The death certificate obtained by local news organizations said the manner of death was homicide, and the cause of death was "sudden death during an altercation with law enforcement with several trigger pulls of an electronic control device, prone positioning on the floor of a motor vehicle, and compression of the torso by the body weight if another individual."

"They never said a word to him," Mary Ann Sherman told NBC after watching the newly released footage. "They never tried to talk him down."

"I can't believe a human being, when you call for help, would do that to somebody," added Kevin Sherman, his father. ""He says 'I quit,' and these dirty dogs didn't know when to quit."

"The videos today gave us the answer because what you see is a man in the backseat having a mental breakdown," L. Chris Stewart, the family's lawyer, told NBC. "The man was handcuffed in the back of the car but when he didn't comply, they whip out their tasers and they start tasering him multiple times."

A spokesperson from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation told VICE News that they have established the facts of what happened and have turned over the results of their investigation to the Coweta County District Attorney's office. The DA will now review those facts and determine whether the deputies violated departmental policies or civil rights. Should the office of Peter Skandalakis, the Coweta County DA, decline to bring the case before a Grand Jury, Sherman's parents plan to file a civil lawsuit and involve the Department of Justice.

Presumably, part of the investigation will hinge on whether the officers used their tasers in a manner that was within the department's own guidelines.

Tasers are a growing concern among legal and law enforcement experts who worry that police departments often readily outfit their officers with the devices with little training or knowledge about their dangers. An investigation by the Baltimore Sun last year found huge discrepancies in the ways that different departments in Maryland use and misuse tasers. According to a study by Amnesty International, there were more than 500 Taser-related deaths in the United States between 2001 and 2012. Some states are considering higher regulatory standards for Taser devices amid growing public concern over their safety.

In 2011, the Department of Justice in conjunction with the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) released taser-use guidelines, which underscores the importance of police departments' training their officers in how to appropriately use the weapons and offers a reminder that the devices are "less lethal," not "non-lethal."

The guidelines note that a person in a medical or mental crisis has a "high risk" of dying from being tasered. It also says that a person can die from being tasered if their chest is restricted, "when a subject's body position interferes with breathing."

The guidelines also recommend that law enforcement personnel wait five seconds after they fire their taser, "and then evaluate the situation to determine if subsequent cycles are necessary."

"Training protocols should emphasize that multiple applications or continuous cycling of [a Taser] resulting in an exposure longer than 15 seconds (whether continuous or cumulative) may increase the risk of serious injury or death and should be avoided."

CBS News was able to review records from Coweta County Sheriff's Office which showed that one deputy's taser was used nine times in a 2.5 minute period for a cumulative total of 47 seconds – including one that lasted 17 seconds. The other deputy's stun gun was used six times over a four minute period, for a total of 29 seconds.

The guidelines also state that Tasers "should not be seen as an all-purpose weapon that takes place of de-escalation techniques and other options," but rather, should only be used when there's a demonstrable risk of physical harm or death to another person.

Coweta County Sheriff Mike Yeager told NBC's Atlanta affiliate that the deputies didn't intend to kill Sherman. "He is not a victim in this case," Yeager said. "The family that called out for help that night, they're the victims in this case. He's the perpetrator… attacking, assaulting them."