NEW YORK – The family of a Black U.S. Air Force airman gunned down by a sheriff's deputy in Florida is represented by a prominent civil rights lawyer dubbed “ Black America’s attorney general ” for his role in some of the most consequential cases of police brutality over the past decade and a half.
Benjamin Crump rose to prominence representing the families of Trayvon Martin, George Floyd and other Black people whose deaths at the hands of law enforcement officials and vigilantes sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.
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He also represented families exposed to lead-contaminated water in Flint, Michigan, as well as the family of the late Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose harvested cells became a cornerstone of modern medical advances.
The 54-year-old civil rights lawyer from Florida has said his mission is to hold police and vigilantes who kill with impunity accountable by making their actions costly in the court of law.
“What I’m trying to do, as much as I can, even sometimes singlehandedly, is increase the value of Black life,” Crump told The Associated Press back in 2021.
On Friday, former Okaloosa County deputy Eddie Duran was charged in the May shooting death of Roger Fortson, a 23-year-old senior airman who had answered his apartment door while holding a gun pointed toward the ground.
Here is a look at some of Crump’s most high-profile cases involving Black victims:
The 17-year-old unarmed teenager was fatally shot in an Orlando suburb in 2012 by a member of the community’s neighborhood watch. The following year, Martin’s parents settled a wrongful-death claim against the homeowners association for the gated community in Sanford. Crump said at the time the award amount was confidential. In his criminal trial later that year, George Zimmerman, whose father is white and whose mother is Hispanic, claimed self-defense and was ultimately cleared of all charges.
The unarmed 18-year-old was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Brown’s death sparked nationwide protests and became a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement. But a grand jury declined to indict Wilson, and the U.S. Justice Department opted against civil rights charges. Crump helped Brown’s family eventually reach a $1.5 million wrongful death settlement with the city in 2017.
The 46-year-old died in May 2020 after Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis officer, pinned him to the ground with a knee to his neck in the case that sparked nationwide protests and a broader reckoning on racial justice. In March 2021, the city of Minneapolis agreed to pay a $27 million settlement to Floyd’s family, which Crump said at the time was the largest pretrial civil rights settlement ever. The following month, Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter.
The 26 year old was shot and killed in 2020 after Louisville police officers broke down her apartment door to serve a “no-knock” search warrant in a drug case. The city settled with Taylor’s family for $12 million later that year in an agreement that also stipulated reforms on how warrants are handled by police. One of the former officers pleaded guilty to conspiracy that year while another faces retrial after a jury deadlocked last November over charges that he used excessive force in the botched raid. The Justice Department also filed civil rights charges against four officers in 2022, largely over the faulty warrant used to search Taylor’s home. But on Friday, a federal judge dismissed some of the charges against two of the officers.
The 25-year-old was killed in 2020 while running in a neighborhood outside of the port city of Brunswick, Georgia. The three white men who chased him down in a pickup truck and fired at him with a shotgun at close range were convicted of murder in 2021. They are currently appealing their separate convictions on federal hate crime charges. Arbery’s mother, meanwhile, filed a federal lawsuit against the three men and local authorities seeking $1 million.
The 29-year-old died in the hospital in 2023, three days after Memphis, Tennessee, police officers kicked, punched and hit him with a police baton during a traffic stop. Five now former officers, all Black, have been charged with second-degree murder. One pleaded guilty to federal charges in November. Another is expected to change his not guilty plea Friday. Crump, meanwhile, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Nichols’ family seeking $550 million.
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Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.