Lawmakers: Video shows guards beating boy at boot camp

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

By BRENT KALLESTAD

Associated Press Writer

February 9, 2006

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A videotape shows guards brutally beating a boy at a military-style boot camp for juvenile delinquents in Panama City not long before the teenager died, two lawmakers said Thursday.

The state refuses to release the tape to the public, but the Bay County sheriff on Thursday characterized the lawmakers' description of it as overblown and blasted the two lawmakers as "loose cannon politicians" interfering with his investigation.

Martin Lee Anderson, 14, of Panama City, died Jan. 6 at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola. The youngster collapsed after he complained of breathing problems while doing exercises that were part of intake procedures at the camp. The Bay County sheriff's office has said officers restrained him after he became uncooperative.

State Rep. Gus Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, called the videotape "horrific," saying he had "never seen any kid being brutalized ... the way I saw this young man being brutalized.

"Even towards the end of the videotape, where you could just see there was pretty much nothing left of Martin, they came out with a couple cups of water and splashed him in the face," he said. "When you see stuff like that, you want to go through the TV and say, 'Enough is enough. Please stop hitting this kid.'"

An attorney for the family, Ben Crump, said the guards would force ammonia tablets up Anderson's nose in efforts to keep the youth conscious.

"We can never ever let anything like this happen again and if we don't get this videotape out, people will never know the truth," said Crump, who demanded the tape's release on behalf of the family at a Panama City news conference Thursday. "Police brutality is unacceptable at any time."

"I don't think there's any question there was excessive force," said Rep. Dan Gelber, a Democrat from Miami Beach and former federal prosecutor familiar with custody cases, who also viewed the videotape.

"I think (the public is) going to be shocked at the treatment of this kid and the lack of attention that was paid to his core health needs," Gelber said. "This is a relatively small kid with a half a dozen of pretty strong men and he seemed to be phasing in and out of consciousness."

Sheriff Frank McKeithen issued a prepared statement accusing Barreiro and Gelber of overreacting with "irresponsible, premature and incorrect statements" that "add fuel to an already volatile situation."

Bay County authorities and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have refused to make the tape of the incident public, but Barreiro and Gelber said it would be released soon. FDLE spokeswoman Karen Mason said the tape would not be released Thursday because it remains a part of the investigation and doesn't fall under the state's open records requirements. Bay County sheriff's officials referred questions to FDLE.

"It's absurd," said Barbara Petersen, president of the Tallahassee-based First Amendment Foundation. "Technically they may be able to claim the exemption ... (but) this is an issue of critical public concern. Kids are dying.

"We can't see the tape?" Petersen asked. "What sense does that make?"

Once a record that is exempt is released to someone who is not specifically authorized by the law to have it, the record loses its protected status, Petersen said. The question is whether that includes videotape that hasn't been "released," but has been viewed.

"That's a question for a judge," she said.

Gov. Jeb Bush, who was in Orlando, said he had not seen the tape but was aware of the contents. Several of his aides had seen the tape.

"When you have someone in the custody of the state, irrespective (of) their reasons of being there, who dies, it's a concern," Bush said. "Absolutely we're concerned."

Barreiro said the beating could be considered worse than the Rodney King case in the 1990s in Los Angeles.

"Rodney King lived. This kid didn't," he said.

Anderson's family said it plans to sue Bay County and the state Department of Juvenile Justice, which oversees boot camp programs.

The department gave the Bay County camp a good review in a June 2004 quality assurance report, listing it in full compliance with state standards.

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Associated Press reporters David Heller in Tallahassee and Melissa Nelson in Panama City contributed to this report.

Family of teen who collapsed at boot camp plans to sue officials

Associated Press

January 9, 2006

PANAMA CITY, Fla. - The mother of a 14-year-old who collapsed during his admission to a Panhandle boot camp said Monday her son wanted to do whatever it took to succeed at the disciplinary school.

Gina Jones said her son, Martin Lee Anderson of Panama City, told her the day before he died that he was going obey the rules at the Bay County Sheriff's Office boot camp program.

"That's all we had been talking about for the past week. He said 'mom I'm going to be good. I'm going to look them dead in the eyes and I'm going to be good'," she said.

Anderson collapsed Thursday morning after doing push-ups, sit-ups and other exercises as part of the intake process at the camp. He died Friday night.

"My baby is not used to doing sit-ups and exercises like that, he did them all and he ran a mile-and-half," Jones said. "They were saying they were going to make him a man with this program but he was still just a child. He hadn't become a man yet."

She said Anderson was in good physical shape and enjoyed playing basketball.

Jones said her son had a broken nose, a cut lip and other bruises on his face when she saw his body. She was told her son "bled from the inside," but said she did not know exactly how he died.

Benjamin Crump, a Tallahassee wrongful death attorney representing Anderson's family, scheduled a Tuesday news conference to announce the filing of a lawsuit. Crump said the family would sue the Bay County Sheriff's Office and the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.

"It's going to be for the value of the young man's life - the full and complete value," Crump said late Monday.

Investigators are awaiting autopsy results, but Dr. Charles Siebert, medical examiner for Bay County, said he has ruled out trauma or an injury as the cause of death. Toxicology reports are pending.

Anderson was sent to the boot camp after a June arrest for grand theft and had passed a physical screening required for admission to the program.

The Department of Juvenile Justice gave the Bay County camp a good review in a June 28, 2004, quality assurance report, listing it in full compliance with state standards the last time it was reviewed. The report ranked Bay County as the state's top juvenile boot camp.

Anderson had just arrived at the Panama City camp on Thursday and was doing the exercises that are part of the camp's physical fitness assessment when he became uncooperative and had to be restrained, the sheriff's office said.

He later complained of breathing problems and a nurse was called, who recommended he be taken to the hospital. Four minutes after an ambulance was called, he became unresponsive, officials said. He was taken to Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, where he died early Friday.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Bay County Sheriff's Office and the DJJ are investigating his death. DJJ director Anthony Schembri said his office also will investigate procedures at the state's five other boot camp programs because of Anderson's death.

Ruth Sasser, a spokeswoman for the Bay County Sheriff's office said Monday, her office has provided FDLE investigators with a video tape showing portions of Anderson's boot camp admission. Sasser said she did not know whether the Anderson's collapse or subsequent medical treatment were included on the tape.

The tape's contents are part of the investigation and would not be made public, she said.

Jones said she hopes her son's death will lead to changes in the state's juvenile justice system.

"I hate it had to happen to me and my child. I just want people to know that this happened," she said.

Close juvenile boot camps, legislator says

His proposal comes a week after a teen died after entering a Panhandle camp. But some lawmakers support the camps.

Associated Press

January 12, 2006

TALLAHASSEE - A Republican lawmaker wants the state to close its military-style boot camps for juvenile offenders.

State Rep. Gus Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, chairman of the House Criminal Justice Appropriations Committee, called for eliminating the camps the week after 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson died shortly after entering such a camp in Panama City.

"These programs are not working. ... We need to shut these things down," Barreiro said Wednesday.

But his counterpart in the Senate, Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, said he still supports the camps.

"Every once in a while something happens," Wise said. "It happens in prisons. It happens in real life, too. ... It's a shame. ... We just have to make sure we try to fix it."

Gov. Jeb Bush said lawmakers should take a hard look at the camps.

"When you look at recidivism rates, they have had a proven record of success," Bush said. "When you have a case where a child dies, you need to pause and do the necessary investigations."

He said policies at the boot camps across the state may need to be standardized.

"I'm looking forward to seeing what the investigation yields," Bush said.

The state Department of Juvenile Justice's records show that 62 percent of graduates from the several camps around the state are arrested again after being released - a rate experts call high. The camps are run by county sheriffs' offices under contract from the state.

"Boot camps don't work," said Aaron McNeese, dean of Florida State University's College of Social Work, which has done some of the research.

Cynthia Lorenzo, a Department of Juvenile Justice spokeswoman, said the department is reviewing all of the sheriff's offices' policies for the camps in light of Anderson's death.

Anderson was sent to the Bay County Sheriff's Office camp after a June arrest for grand theft. He was doing push-ups, sit-ups and other exercises as part of the intake process Jan. 5 when he became uncooperative and had to be restrained, authorities said. He soon complained of breathing difficulties and collapsed. He was transferred to a Pensacola hospital and died early the next morning.

On Tuesday, Anderson's family filed an intent to sue. The family's attorney, Ben Crump, said the boy appeared to have been abused - he suffered a cut lip, a bloody nose and a scrape on the side of his face when he was restrained. A sheriff's spokeswoman denied that.

The victim's mother, Gina Jones, said her son was in good physical shape and enjoyed playing basketball. Anderson was about 6-foot-1 and weighed about 140 pounds, she said.

The Department of Juvenile Justice gave the Bay County camp a good review in a June 2004 quality assurance report, listing it as being in full compliance with state standards.

Sheriff's investigators have not completed a preliminary report on Anderson's death.

Tape released showing teen restrained at boot camp

MELISSA NELSON

Associated Press

February 17, 2006

PANAMA CITY, Fla. - Guards at a juvenile detention boot camp kneed and struck a boy who appeared to have gone limp while others restrained him on the day before he died, a videotape released Friday showed, sparking outrage from his parents.

The boy, 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson, died the next day. A medical examiner has said he died from internal bleeding unrelated to the confrontation.

The boy's mother, Gina Jones, said the tape proves her contention that the guards killed her son.

"Martin didn't deserve this right here. At all," she said. "I couldn't even watch the whole tape. Me as a mom, I knew my baby was in pain and I am in pain just watching his pain."

She said she walked out of her lawyer's office when the tape showed guards shoving her son up against a pole. The family viewed the tape at their lawyer's office in Tallahassee as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement made it public.

On the tape, as many as nine guards can be seen restraining Anderson. Guards are seen to knee Anderson and wrestle him to the ground. On the ground, he was struck several times by one of the guards, either on his arm or the side of his torso, while he lay motionless.

Anderson was limp throughout most of the ordeal and never appeared to offer significant resistance.

A woman in a white coat with a stethoscope was present while the guards restrained the boy and at one point used it to check on him. Near the end of the confrontation guards appear to become more concerned and several began running in and out of the scene. A few minutes later, emergency medical personnel arrive and put the boy on a gurney and take him away.

In all, the guards appeared to strike him several times, but it's not clear from the tape how hard the blows were or where they landed. FDLE has also acknowledged the tape was edited to conceal other youths' identities, so it is unclear how long the ordeal lasted.

At one point, a guard struck him from behind, lifting his feet off the ground. At the beginning, as the guards are pinning him against a pole, they struck him three times with their knees.

"The viewing of this will result in many questions, concerns and accusations," said Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen.

Bay County Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Siebert said Thursday that Anderson suffered internal bleeding because he had the sickle cell trait, a disorder that Siebert said produced a "cascade of events" that led to his death Jan. 6, the day after he arrived at the camp. Siebert said one in eight African Americans has the disorder, but it would not show up in routine blood work.

Two Florida legislators who viewed the tape last week, Rep. Gus Barreiro, R-Miami Beach and Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, portrayed the scene as out-of-control, with guards punching and choking Anderson even as he went limp. Bay County sheriff's officials said guards restrained Anderson after he became uncooperative while doing push-ups, sit-ups and other exercises as part of his physical evaluation hours after being admitted to the camp.

"When people see the tape and you say he just died of natural causes, it doesn't add up," Barreiro said Friday. "It doesn't make sense and goes against all the logic of watching what happened to this young man."

Siebert said there were some bruises and abrasions on the body, but he attributed them to attempts to resuscitate the youth.

The Florida Southern Christian Leadership Conference called on the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America to review the autopsy findings to determine if they are correct.

"It is our position that Dr. Siebert's findings have implications beyond the local level. This could have far reaching ramifications of an adverse nature upon those with the sickle cell trait if the coroner's findings are incorrect," said Florida SCLC President Sevell C. Brown III.

The boot camp concept for juveniles began in Florida with nine facilities in 1993, but will soon be whittled to four if the Martin County camp closes as scheduled later this year. About 600 boys between ages 14 and 18 remain in the existing camps.

The boot camp where Anderson was sent is run by the Bay County Sheriff's Office for the state. Anderson was arrested in June for stealing his grandmother's Jeep Cherokee and sent to the boot camp for violating his probation by trespassing at a school.

Anderson was the third young black male to die in state custody in the past three years.

Willie Lawrence Durden III of Jacksonville was found unconscious in his cell at the Cypress Creek Juvenile Offender Corrections Center in Citrus County last October and Omar Paisley, also 17, died from a burst appendix that went untreated in June 2003 at a juvenile detention facility in Miami.

The U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday that it is also investigating possible civil rights violations in the Anderson case.

News organizations had sued for the tape to be made public. The FDLE said it would be released when its investigation was complete.

The department said Friday that while the investigation is not finished, it released the tape "due to compelling public interest and speculation as to its contents."

Associated Press reporters Brent Kallestad, David Royse and Andrea Fanta in Tallahassee contributed to this report.

Autopsy uproar not M.E.'s first

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER AND MARC CAPUTO

Miami Herald

Feb. 21, 2006

A medical examiner involved in a boot camp death autopsy allowed his license to lapse and once signed a mistake-prone autopsy saying a woman had male genitalia.

Dr. Charles Siebert, who released a controversial autopsy in a teen's boot camp-related death, has been without a medical license for three weeks and recently issued two botched autopsy reports -- one of which listed a mother as having ''unremarkable'' testicles.

Siebert's medical license lapsed Jan. 31, and he's ''in violation'' of state law if he practiced medicine after that date, said a state health department spokeswoman, who was unable to elaborate on Siebert's case due to the Presidents' Day holiday.

Siebert appears to have worked ever since 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson was kneed, choked and wrestled down by seven Panama City boot camp guards Jan. 6. Cause of death: sickle-cell trait, according to an autopsy report released last week by Siebert, who couldn't be reached for comment Monday.

That report, roundly panned by experts on the rare blood disorder that mostly affects blacks, outraged Martin's family members.

But it didn't shock Frances Terry, 57, as she watched the video of Martin's boot-camp altercation unfold on her television set in the small community of Blountstown.

`HE MESSED UP'

''He's a bad doctor. He messed up my daughter's autopsy and my husband's autopsy and I'll bet he messed up the autopsy of that poor boy,'' Terry said Wednesday as she sat next to Martin's mother in the offices of attorney Benjamin Crump.

``He said my daughter had testicles. She didn't. I washed her from the day she was born and, trust me, she didn't have testicles. He said my husband had no scars. He did. He had a seven-inch scar on his back that even a blind person could see.''

Some experts said Monday such errors are fireable offenses.

Terry's husband and daughter were killed by a massive tornado spun off by Hurricane Ivan on Sept. 15, 2004.

Terry said her daughter, Donna Reed, was 34 and had a child long before having her ovaries and uterus removed in major surgery to stop the pain from endometriosis, an organ ailment. Terry said her daughter's gallbladder and appendix were also removed in other surgeries.

Yet the autopsy signed by Siebert on Nov. 29, 2004, notes Donna Reed's three tattoos in depth as well as her ''smooth tan'' appendix, the gallbladder that's ''not distended,'' the ''uterus is not enlarged,'' and that the ``ovaries and fallopian tubes are unremarkable.''

But it was this sentence that really dealt a blow to Frances Terry: ``The prostate gland and testes are unremarkable.''

Also, her 55-year-old husband, James Terry, had a seven-inch scar running along his spine and a nearby four-inch scar. Terry, a truck driver, had back surgery after a load of roof trusses fell on him. But his autopsy, signed by Siebert, said Terry had no scars.

Frances Terry complained about her daughter's autopsy to Steve Meadows, the Panama City-based prosecutor of the six-county 14th Judicial Circuit where Siebert practices.

On Monday, Meadows, through deputy chief Joe Grammer, acknowledged the meeting and blamed the incident on ''transcription errors.'' Grammer said Siebert corrected the errors in a revised report.

CONFIDENCE IN SIEBERT

Grammer said he couldn't confirm the specifics of the allegations Terry made, but ''it probably can be confirmed the woman didn't have testicles.'' He said it was a ''fair statement'' to say that, ''transcription errors'' aside, the prosecutor's office has confidence in Siebert's work.

But Dr. Joseph Davis, retired medical examiner in Miami-Dade, said the questions aren't easy to dismiss. He said that although errors happen, even boilerplate mistakes in an autopsy report render the entire report questionable.

In the past, he said, some pathologists used ''machines'' or templates that allowed the examiner to simply fill in the blanks. ''I would not permit that in my office,'' he said. ``If it's true that he was coming forth with a female who had male gonads, that's not good.''

Broward County's former medical examiner was also surprised by the extent of the errors.

''It happens, but not very often,'' Dr. Ron Wright said. ``A few people do that sort of thing. They usually find different work.''

`I FIRED A GUY'

He added: ``I fired a guy over this. I fired more than one . . . Obviously, it looks really bad.''

The attorney for Martin's family, Crump, is not only questioning Siebert's skills and integrity. He's concerned with Kristin Schmidt, the nurse who stood by and rendered almost no aid as guards grappled and hit Martin for more than 20 minutes.

One mother of a boot camp detainee who witnessed the incident plans to address the news media today to describe how she feared for her son. Shauna Manning told The Miami Herald that Schmidt refused to believe her when she said her son couldn't perform all the camp's required exercises because he has asthma.

Manning said Schmidt told her: ''I don't believe you. He's just trying to get sympathy and get out of the program. That's what these kids do. They use medical issues to try to get out of the program.'' Schmidt couldn't be reached for comment Monday, and has refused comment in the past.

After Martin's death, Manning's son was transferred to a different facility to finish his sentence for burglary.

Martin's mother, Gina Jones, said her child was ''murdered'' for stealing his grandmother's car. She said Siebert's autopsy of her son was part of a ``coverup.''

''My baby died from kicks, punches, chokes, you name it,'' she said. ``My baby's nose was swollen; it was broken. My baby's bottom lip was cut, the face was scraped . . . He said no bruises? He said sickle-cell trait? That's a lie.''

Though Martin's autopsy was performed Jan. 6, the day the teen died, the four-page report was not signed by Siebert until Feb. 16, two weeks after his license became ''delinquent,'' according to state Department of Health records. Health department spokeswoman Thometta Cozart confirmed the license had lapsed and said that ``he is not to practice medicine in Florida.''

LICENSE PROBLEM

Dr. Zachariah P. Zachariah, director of cardiology at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale who served on Florida's Board of Medicine for eight years, said a doctor ``cannot practice medicine as soon as he finds out his license is delinquent; he has to cease and desist until he renews his license.''

While the possible punishments for practicing medicine with a lapsed license can vary, Zacharia said one thing is clear: ``That is grounds for discipline.''

Frances Terry said she has a few punishments in mind: ``He should lose his license, and never do something like this again. He should be slapped on both sides of his face for all he's done.''