On Nov. 28, seven guards and a nurse were charged with aggravated manslaughter against a child for the murder of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson. He died of ammonia suffocation during a beating at the Bay County Boot Camp in early January. Anderson arrived at the camp just hours before being beaten by the guards. He was sent there for joyriding in his grandmother’s car.
“I’m finally getting justice for my baby,” exclaimed Anderson’s mother, Gina Jones, at a press conference following the
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A video has been released showing the seven guards kicking, kneeing, choking and hitting Anderson while the nurse watches. During the 30-minute beating, the guards covered Anderson’s mouth as they forced him to inhale fumes from five ammonia capsules through his nose resulting in his suffocation.
“You wouldn’t do this to your dog,” said Benjamin Crump, the lawyer representing Anderson’s family, “stuffing ammonia tablets up his nose, pulling his neck back, covering his mouth.”
The case reached indictment after tremendous community outcry and protest.
Initially, Dr. Charles Siebert’s autopsy made the outrageous claim that Anderson died of complications related to sickle-cell anemia, a usually benign blood disorder trait found in people of African descent—a trait that often provides immunity to malaria.
On April 20, 35 students occupied Gov. Jeb Bush’s office for 20 hours demanding that he meet with Anderson’s parents and make public the results of the first autopsy. The next day, over 1,500 people, including civil rights leaders Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, protested in Tallahassee, the state’s capital. Sharpton and Jackson also met with Gov. Bush to press the demands. Anderson’s parents then finally met with the governor.
The protests resulted in a second autopsy, which revealed that Anderson died of ammonia suffocation.
A $40 million civil suit against the Bay County Sheriff’s Office, the guards and the state’s Department of Juvenile Justice is being conducted in a federal court by Martin’s parents, Robert Anderson and Gina Jones.
Governor Bush, who is trying to appear as an advocate for justice, complained recently that the investigation was “taking too long” and that the indictments will show that the “judicial process can work.” But the military-style camps aimed at criminalizing working-class and oppressed youth, like the one where Anderson died, are the brainchild of Jeb Bush. He is equally responsible for the deaths of Anderson and two other Black youth who previously died in the boot camps.
Bush is not interested in justice. He and other representatives of the capitalist class use camps and other repressive institutions, like prisons, as a tool against the multinational working class.
Anderson’s killing—and the repression carried out by the boot camps in general—can only really be stopped by the people’s movement. Community pressure won the closing of the public camps in May with the passage of the Martin Lee Anderson Act, but private camps still exist in Florida.
Bush’s prosecutor clears high-ups
Florida’s government is acting to protect higher officials who tried to cover up the faulty investigation and undermine Anderson’s parents’ fight for justice.
”Other people should’ve been indicted, but I can’t prove anything. I have my reservations, but today I’m overjoyed the
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On Nov. 28, State Attorney Mark Ober, special investigator for the case, cleared Guy Tunnell, the former director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement; Steve Meadows, the state attorney in Bay County; Frank McKeithen, the county sheriff; and Dr. Charles Siebert, the medical examiner who conducted the first autopsy.
Still, Tunnell was forced to resign after making racist remarks about U.S. senator Barack Obama and Rev. Jesse Jackson just as they were organizing for the Tallahassee rally with university students to demand a meeting with the governor.
Tunnell, McKeithen and Meadows had been accused of influencing the investigation in the camp’s favor. Meadows deleted emails relevant to the case. All three had been in communication via email regarding the investigation.
The lawsuit being pursued by Anderson’s parents is restricted to a wrongful death claim since the charges of conspiracy among state agencies has been thrown out by Bush’s appointed investigator.
The mobilization of the people won the indictments and the closure of the racist boot camps. But the racist capitalist system that perpetuates the criminalization of working-class youth has yet to answer to the people.
Click here to read more from PSL about Florida’s boot camps.
