Sister of Mississippi man who died after police removed him from car rejects lawsuit settlement

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A woman who sued Mississippi’s capital over her brother’s death has decided to reject a settlement after authorities publicly revealed how much the city would pay her survivors, her lawyer said Wednesday.

George Robinson, 62, died in January 2019, days after three Jackson police officers pulled him from a car while searching for a murder suspect.

The Jackson City Council on Tuesday approved paying $17,786 to settle the lawsuit Robinson’s relatives filed in state court in October 2019, WLBT-TV reported. City documents indicate the settlement is not an admission of liability by the city or the three officers named in the lawsuit. Robinson was black, as were the three officers.

The payment to relatives — including Robinson’s sister, Bettersten Wade — was unanimously approved. Wade’s attorney, Dennis Sweet III, released a letter Wednesday claiming the city of Jackson violated a confidentiality agreement that was part of the settlement. Sweet said that because of the public disclosure and because the city “seems to be claiming or inferring some sort of perceived victory,” Wade intends to continue suing the city.

Sweet said Robinson’s family reached a separate “substantial settlement” with an ambulance company.

Councilman Kenneth Stokes said he thought the city’s regulation was too small, although he voted for it.

“I say it just sends the wrong message about human life, especially black life,” Stokes said. “I think a step in the right direction would have been to pay the family a little more.”

The suit alleged that the three officers “brutally, viciously and mercilessly struck Mr. Robinson by punching and kicking him.”

“Mr. Robinson had committed no crime, had no active warrants for his arrest, and did not pose a threat to himself or anyone in the area,” the lawsuit states.

Robinson had been hospitalized with a stroke days before the police encounter and was taking medication, Wade said. He suffered a seizure a few hours after being beaten and died two days later of a brain hemorrhage.

Second-degree murder charges against two of the officers were dropped in the case. In August 2022, a Hinds County jury found former detective Anthony Fox guilty of negligent manslaughter — then in January of this year, the Mississippi Court of Appeals overturned Fox’s conviction. The appeals court majority wrote that prosecutors failed to prove that Fox “acted in a grossly negligent manner” or that Robinson’s death “was reasonably foreseeable under the circumstances.”

Wade is the mother of Dexter Wade, who was run over by an off-duty Jackson Police Department officer in March 2023.

Dexter Wade was buried in the Hinds County Poor People’s Cemetery. But it was not until October that his mother was informed of the burial.

His body was exhumed on November 13 and an independent autopsy was carried out. A wallet found in his jeans pocket contained his identification card with his home address, his credit card and a health insurance card, said civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents Wade’s family.

On November 20, Dexter Wade’s family held a funeral for him and he was buried in another cemetery.