Cedric Lofton, 17, was handcuffed and placed face down at a detention center in Wichita, Kan., last year. The district attorney says the employees were acting in self-defense.
No criminal charges will be filed in the death of Cedric Lofton, a 17-year-old who lost consciousness after he was handcuffed and placed face down in a juvenile detention center in Wichita, Kan., the local district attorney said on Tuesday.
The state’s “stand your ground” law prevents his office from filing criminal charges in the case, Marc Bennett, the Sedgwick County district attorney, wrote in a report.
The employees of the center “acted in self-defense under Kansas law,” Mr. Bennett wrote, explaining that the law makes them “immune from prosecution” in this case.
He added: “This is not a reflection of this office’s approval of what happened to Cedric Lofton on September 24, 2021. This should never have happened.”
Mr. Lofton was arrested on Sept. 24 when the police were called to a house in Wichita after he began “exhibiting erratic and aggressive behavior” toward his foster family, according to an autopsy report from the Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center.
The police took Mr. Lofton to a county juvenile center, where he fought with correctional staff members, who placed shackles on his ankles, rolled him onto his abdomen and handcuffed his wrists behind his back, the report said. He appeared to calm down and made “snoring sounds,” but when staff members checked for a pulse four minutes later, they could not find one, the report said.
Mr. Lofton did not regain consciousness and died two days later, according to the report, which was filed in Sedgwick County District Court last month.
The decision not to file charges devastated the family, Andrew Stroth, a Chicago-based lawyer who is representing the teenager’s biological parents and his older brother, said in an interview on Tuesday. Mr. Bennett’s rationale doesn’t make sense given that Mr. Lofton was unarmed, weighed 135 pounds and posed no threat, said Mr. Stroth, who is representing the family along with Steven Hart, another lawyer in Chicago.
Officials put Mr. Lofton “in a restraint system and then later in a prone position, and they basically took Cedric’s breath away and killed him,” Mr. Stroth said.
“The idea of a stand-your-ground defense or immunity makes absolutely no sense based on the facts in this case,” he added.
A spokesman said on Tuesday that Mr. Bennett would have no further comment.
In his report, Mr. Bennett explained the robustness of the state’s stand-your-ground law. Kansas appellate courts, he wrote, have held that people have the right to shoot an unarmed assailant who was punching them in the face; stab an unarmed neighbor with a sword after being threatened and followed into one’s own garage; and shoot an unarmed man in the back based on the belief that he was running to a car to retrieve a gun.
Mr. Bennett wrote that there was no evidence that throughout the struggle, which lasted 35 minutes or so, workers had discerned that Mr. Lofton was in physical distress. The evidence suggests that Mr. Lofton continued to resist throughout the struggle, meaning that the staff members could continue to “lawfully apply restraint,” Mr. Bennett wrote.
Mr. Lofton continued to make statements that led staff to believe “he was either under the influence of drugs or having a mental health crisis,” Mr. Bennett wrote. Staff members reported that no one’s “full weight” had been placed on Mr. Lofton as he lay prone, and video shows the adults appearing to kneel or lie down next to Mr. Lofton, Mr. Bennett wrote.
The employees in the county Corrections Department who were involved in the encounter had been placed on paid administrative leave while the results of the district attorney’s investigation were being awaited, Sedgwick County officials have said. The employees’ status has not changed, a county spokesman, Akeam Ashford, said late Tuesday. Mr. Ashford said there had been no disciplinary action related to the death of Mr. Lofton.
A medical examiner determined that the cause of death was homicide. “In my opinion,” the medical examiner, Dr. Timothy S. Gorrill, wrote last month, “Cedric Lofton died as a result of complications of cardiopulmonary arrest sustained after physical struggle while restrained in the prone position.”
That finding came several months after Jeff Easter, the county sheriff, said in September that a preliminary autopsy had found that Mr. Lofton did not experience life-threatening injuries at the center.
In an email to news organizations after Dr. Gorrill’s report was released, Mr. Bennett wrote that the determination that the death was a homicide “does not reflect a legal determination” regarding the viability of criminal charges.
“Whether or not criminal charges can be brought is a separate, legal determination to be made by the Office of the District Attorney based on the laws of the State of Kansas and the evidence collected by law enforcement,” he wrote.
Mr. Lofton was a high school senior and planned to move to California after graduation to pursue a musical career, Mr. Stroth said.
Maurice W. Evans, a local pastor, said the death of Mr. Lofton represented a community failure. Mr. Lofton’s foster father had locked him out of the house that night and had called the police, Mr. Evans said. Police officers treated the teenager like a criminal rather than as someone experiencing a mental-health crisis, he said, and detention staff members improperly restrained him.
“Every link in the chain failed this young man,” Mr. Evans said. “Each individual chain link treated him worse than the previous one until it ended in his death. This was a five-hour ordeal. This kid was killed after five hours of being mentally and physically abused by multiple people in our system.”
Mr. Stroth said Mr. Lofton’s family would continue to pursue “all legal avenues to get justice for Cedric,” but he did not elaborate.
“Family and the community and stakeholders in the community are going to continue to fight for justice for Cedric,” he said. “They’re going to continue to fight to make sure people are held accountable for this unjustified killing of an unarmed 17-year-old.”
