City settles 2019 lawsuit of man who died after JPD encounter
In an unanimous vote Tuesday, the Jackson City Council settled the city’s lawsuit with Bettersten Wade by agreeing to pay $17,786.25 in damages.
The settlement, accepted by Wade according to City Attorney Drew Martin, closes the chapter on the nearly five-year lawsuit the city has been fighting. A separate settlement with the ambulance company, American Medical Response INC., is being reached, Martin said.
Wade filed a wrongful death lawsuit in October 2019 against the city, three officers working for the Jackson Police Department at the time and American Medical Response, INC., an ambulance company.
The lawsuit states on Jan. 13, 2019, Wade’s brother, George Robinson, 62, was “brutally, viciously and mercilessly beat” by three, Black officers in the Jackson Police Department. The Clarion Ledger received a copy of the lawsuit after submitting a public records request to the city.
Robinson, who is also Black, was hospitalized later that night and died two days later. He died of a subdural hemorrhage caused by blunt force trauma, according to the Hinds County Coroner.
The three officers, Anthony Fox, Desmond Barney and Lincoln Lampley, were all charged with second-degree murder in 2020. A Hinds County judge dismissed the charges on Barney and Lampley in 2021. But Fox, who was accused of pulling Robinson out of the car and slamming him to the ground, was convicted in 2022 and sentenced to five years in prison.
Fox’s sentence was cut short, though. He was acquitted after the Mississippi Court of Appeals found prosecutors failed to prove he “acted in a grossly negligent manner” or that the death of Robinson “was reasonably foreseeable under the circumstances.” He was released from prison on Feb. 7 and works for the Clinton Police Department.
Calls to Wade’s attorney Dennis Sweet were not immediately returned.
What about the Dexter Wade case?
More recently, a second member of Wade’s family was allegedly killed by JPD.
When asked
if Wade has
filed
another lawsuit against the city over the death of her son, City Attorney Martin told the Clarion Ledger that nothing has been filed.
Her son, Dexter Wade was struck and killed by an off-duty Jackson police officer on March 5, 2023 while he was crossing the highway on I-55 South near McDowell Road. Wade filed a missing person’s report with JPD days later, but never heard anything. She wasn’t able to retrieve the body of her deceased son until early October — 172 days after reporting him missing — when finally learning the information that Dexter had been buried in an unmarked grave at a
Hinds County penal farm after his body went unclaimed.
Wade has since spoken out, criticizing JPD, as well as the Hinds County Coroner’s Office for their lack of a stringent death notification policy and calling for justice for her son. The case has garnered national attention, with civil rights attorney Ben Crump being hired to represent Wade’s family. It has also shed light on the Hinds County Penal Farm, where 215 people have been buried in unmarked graves without their families being notified since 2016, according to a report by NBCNews.com.
Crump has asked the United States Department of Justice to investigate. He has held numerous press conferences in Jackson calling for justice for Wade and other victims who were never notified that their loved ones were buried in the penal farm.