PANAMA CITY — Jurors say a Walton County sheriff’s deputy did not use excessive force when he shot and killed an unarmed Freeport man.
Hours lapsed Thursday night as jurors deliberated the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Panama City against Deputy Nick Embry.
Family members of Jeffery Weekley filed the civil lawsuit after he was shot and killed in the woods near his Freeport home in 2009. It claimed the deputy used excessive force and the Walton County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO) did not properly investigate the homicide or discipline the deputy after the shooting.
The Weekley estate asked for up to $20 million in damages. However, jurors determined that Weekley was an imminent threat to Embry and that the deputy had probable cause to use deadly force.
During the trial’s last day, Embry demonstrated for jurors the events from the evening he shot and killed Weekley, who Embry believed to be intoxicated and armed with a pocket knife when he arrived at a domestic disturbance call on Pope Street.
“Kill me. Go ahead, kill me,” Embry shouted in the courtroom as he recounted Weekley’s allegedly hostile charge toward him. “That’s when he jammed his hands into his pockets, and I fired twice.”
No weapon was found on Weekley.
The family’s attorneys spent most of the trial trying to discredit the narrative Embry gave following the shooting because he was the only eyewitness to the incident.
A third person, Evelyn Burch, called WCSO to trespass Weekley from her home. Burch might have been able to testify whether the shouts Embry demonstrated for the court could be heard from her home about 50 yards away, but she was never called to the stand.
Possibly one of the most dooming testimonies to the plaintiff’s case came from Dr. Kris Sperry, a forensic pathologist. Sperry said in the 10 to 12 seconds Weekley’s lungs filled with blood from the shots but before he lost consciousness, he had time to smear blood in the “V” formation on his chest. The smear and the lack of blood below it were not necessarily counterintuitive to Embry’s version of events, Sperry said.
“He was down on his back rapidly, with 10 to 12 seconds to move his arms,” Sperry said. “That’s where I expect the blood transfer came from.”
In Embry’s reports from Aug. 3, 2009, he said he saw the 40-year-old Weekley lying facedown behind some bushes when he came across him. Embry ordered Weekley to come closer so they could talk. That’s when Weekley became enraged and charged him, Embry said.
“I said anything I could to get him to stop,” he testified.
Two shots later, Weekley was dead on his back with two bullets in his chest.
The plaintiffs’ forensic investigator testified the angle could have only been achieved if Weekley was in a “catcher’s position,” squatted submissively on the ground, and not in a “football player’s stance,” as Embry testified.
“If you say he’s lunging forward, there’s no way he can end up on his back,” said plaintiff attorney David Bennett. “A body in motion stays in motion.”
But Embry’s defense presented a computer-generated diagram depicting how the angle could be achieved as Embry described it and testimony from Sperry that refuted the hypothesis that Weekley was crouched during the shooting.
“Jeffrey Weekley’s life ended too soon,” defense attorney Carl Raymond Peterson Jr. said. “But it ended because he refused several loud, authoritative commands. Why he refused, we will never know.”
In addition, the plaintiffs’ attorneys highlighted inconsistencies from original interviews with Embry and depositions following the shooting in anticipation of their case against WCSO.
The lawsuit against Sheriff Michael Adkinson still is pending, and the jury’s finding for Embry likely will influence its outcome, according to the Weekley family’s attorneys.
“There is no bigger case than an officer shooting a citizen under the colors of the law,” Bennett said. “ … If you can win a case with ‘I thought he had a knife,’ authorities can get away with shooting anyone. That’s not justice.”