Deputies Face A $25 MILLION Lawsuit After Being Charged With MURDER (Lawyer Explains)

[00:00:01]This is a terrible, terrible death, and Rowland should be with us today.

[00:00:04]>> 34-year-old man walks into a Virginia jail over a disturbance at a 7-Eleven.

[00:00:09]Six days later, he is dead. The state's own medical examiner does not call it an accident, does not call it natural. The examiner calls it a homicide. And now three of the deputies who put their hands on him are charged with murder, and his family is in court asking for $25 million.

[00:00:27]I am going to show you exactly how a trespassing arrest turns into a murder case. What the state has to prove and the one word that decides whether these deputies ever see a conviction. My name is George Graves. I am a criminal defense attorney. I have spent more than 15 years on both sides of cases like this one.

[00:00:45]Defending people the system wanted to bury and watching how the system protects its own. So when a man dies in a cell and it takes the state months to charge anyone, I do not start with the outrage. I start with the >> The sheriff's office initially reported it was a medical emergency, but just hours ago the medical examiner's office tells us Hill in fact died from asphyxia due to restraint with neck and torso compression. And again, it was ruled a homicide.

[00:01:12]>> file. Here is the file.

[00:01:14]June 4th, 2024, Roland Hill, 34 years old, is arrested by Virginia Beach police at a 7-Eleven.

[00:01:22]The charges are small, trespassing, disorderly conduct, resisting. The kind of arrest that fills a booking log on any given night in any American city. He is also, by every account including the families, a man in the middle of a mental health crisis. He is taken to the Virginia Beach Correctional Center, the city jail, run by the Virginia Beach Sheriff's Office. And this is the part people skip past, so I am going to slow down on it. The danger to Roland Hill was not the street. He survived the street. The danger was intake. At intake, deputies decide Hill is combative and uncooperative, and they put him into a device called the wrap.

[00:02:01]Now, I want to be fair about the device itself, because this matters. The wrap is a real, commercially sold restraint used in jails all over the country. It straps the ankles, wraps the legs, and runs a harness across the chest, so a person is folded and immobilized. Used the way the manufacturer says to use it, it is supposed to be safer than a pile of officers holding someone down.

[00:02:23]>> According to Holcomb, >> the wrap is a device that is used by the police department. We no longer have it at the sheriff's office. We We have taken off the harness before, and I and I won't go into the training because it is a criminal investigation.

[00:02:34]>> And are all deputies trained on that?

[00:02:35]>> Not all. Not all of them.

[00:02:37]>> That is the whole sales pitch. Used the right way, it saves lives. That is not what the body cam shows. What the record describes is deputies striking Hill while he was already in the device. A knee to the head while they worked on him. Two deputies down on or near his neck and his torso.

[00:02:54]And then a man folded into a restraint on the floor of a jail whose breathing goes from labored to nothing. He is left unresponsive on that floor for roughly 6 minutes before anyone treats it as the emergency it was.

[00:03:06]Six days later on June 10th, Ronald Hill died. Everything in this case turns on what the office of the chief medical examiner in Norfolk wrote next. So, let me read it to you plainly.

[00:03:17]The manner of death, homicide. The cause of death, positional and mechanical asphyxia due to restraint with neck and torso compression.

[00:03:25]>> Mr. Hill did not die by accident.

[00:03:27]>> According to the medical examiner's office, Hill's cause of death was positional and mechanical asphyxia due to restraint with neck and torso compression. It was ruled a homicide.

[00:03:36]>> to teach you two things here, because the whole rest of this case lives in the gap between them. First, what that cause of death actually means. Positional asphyxia is when the position a person is forced into stops them from breathing. Fold a human body forward, compress the chest, put weight on the back and the neck, and the diaphragm cannot pull air. Mechanical asphyxia is the weight itself doing the work. Put those together face down in a restraint with people on top and a person can suffocate without a single mark that looks like the cause. The body just runs out of air. This is not exotic. Medical examiners have warned about prone restraint deaths for 30 years. Second, and this is the part the internet always gets wrong. So, hear me out. A medical examiner calling a death a homicide is not a criminal verdict. It does not mean a court found anyone guilty of anything.

[00:04:26]Homicide to a medical examiner means one thing.

[00:04:29]This death was caused by the actions of another person as opposed to disease or an accident or the person's own hand.

[00:04:36]That is it. It is a medical classification, not a legal one. A homicide finding does not convict a deputy. What it does is far more practical. It takes he just died in custody off the table. And it hands a prosecutor a foundation to build on.

[00:04:51]>> Here are the three deputies accused of second-degree murder of 34-year-old Rollin Hill. His family remembered him at a Saturday vigil at Mount Trashmore.

[00:04:59]Rollin's father on the first day Rollin was born.

[00:05:03]>> When he was born, I took him from Gail and I was holding him until the doctor said, "Mr. Hill, I think you need to pass your son back to your wife."

[00:05:12]I was very, very proud father on that precious day.

[00:05:17]>> And a prosecutor did build on it. This is where most channels stop reading and it is the most important part. On January 3rd, 2025, a special grand jury in Virginia Beach handed up indictments.

[00:05:29]Three former deputies, the charge second-degree murder. Eric Baptiste charged with second-degree murder and five counts of assault and battery.

[00:05:38]Michael Kidd, second-degree murder and two counts of assault and battery.

[00:05:43]Kevin Wilson, second-degree murder.

[00:05:45]All three had already been fired back in October, along with two other deputies who were not charged. Five careers ended, three men indicted. After the indictment, each was released on a $5,000 bond. Look again at those extra charges because they are not decoration.

[00:06:02]Baptiste has five counts of assault and battery.

[00:06:05]Kid has two. Wilson has none beyond the murder count. That tells you the grand jury saw different deputies doing different things, and it tells you the prosecutor built insurance. If a jury balks at murder, those assault and battery counts are still standing. A prosecutor who charges only murder is betting everything on one number. A prosecutor who stacks the lesser counts underneath is making sure that even on a bad day, somebody answers for something.

[00:06:32]That is not weakness. That is how you try a hard >> And tonight, the Virginia Beach Commonwealth Attorney's office said that a special grand jury indicted those three former sheriff's deputies in connection to Roland Hill's death. Eric Baptiste, Michael Kidd, and Kevin Wilson are all charged with second-degree murder. Kidd and Baptiste also face assault and battery charges.

[00:06:53]>> case. Now, here is the word I promised you at the top. The word is malice.

[00:06:58]Because second-degree murder in Virginia is not about whether these men meant to kill Roland Hill. Nobody is claiming they walked into that jail planning a death. Second-degree murder requires malice, and malice in the law does not mean hatred. It means acting with a reckless disregard for human life. A conscious doing of a wrong act without provocation or justification. The state's theory is that punching a restrained man and kneeling on his neck until he stops breathing is exactly that. And the prosecution has one fact that turns recklessness into malice.

[00:07:32]Training. Every one of these deputies was trained on that device. The warnings about restraint asphyxia, about not leaving a person prone with weight on their back. Those are not secrets. They are in the manuals. They are in the certification. Officers in this country have been taught for decades that a man face down under pressure can die quietly and fast. So, when the state argues malice, this is the spine of it. You were trained to know this kills, you did it anyway. You did it to a man already strapped into a device already helpless.

[00:08:04]That is the line between a tragic accident and a conscious disregard for human life, and it is the hill this whole criminal case is fought >> Holcomb says now he's requiring arresting officers to remove any wrap restraints from a suspect before entering the BSO custody.

[00:08:20]He also appointed a staff member to watch as an inmate advocate in any serious use of force incidents.

[00:08:26]>> They'll watch the inmate for breathing.

[00:08:28]They'll watch the inmate for positioning. They'll watch the inmate for uh signs of distress so that we can help them.

[00:08:34]>> But, on. And this is where I am going to be straight with you, the way I would be if you were sitting across my desk.

[00:08:40]Second-degree murder is a hard charge to win here, harder than people want to hear. The defense is not going to argue these deputies are saints.

[00:08:48]The defense is going to argue this is manslaughter at worst, not murder. They will say there was no malice, just a restraint that went wrong. They will put up their own experts to fight the medical examiner on causation, to argue Hill's condition, his crisis, his exertion contributed to his death. They will point out the wrap is an approved device they were trained to use. Every one of those arguments has worked somewhere before.

[00:09:13]Charging murder is the right call on these facts. Proving it to 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt is a different mountain. These three men are charged, they are not convicted. Under our system, they are presumed innocent, and they are entitled to make every one of those arguments.

[00:09:27]I am telling you the case is strong and the case is beatable both at the same time because that is the truth.

[00:09:32]>> Virginia Beach Sheriff's Office fired all three deputies after the incident, but defense attorneys pointed to a stellar record for all of them before Hill's death. Sergeants named Eric Baptiste officer of the quarter during his time as a deputy, and defense attorneys presented 16 character letters for Michael Kidd and Kevin Wilson.

[00:09:51]>> The trial for Baptiste's case was set to happen early next year, but at a hearing last month, it was delayed after his defense told the court they were having issues scheduling expert witnesses. At that time, Baptiste's lawyers were asking the trial be moved to summer.

[00:10:04]Now, instead of January, Baptiste's case will move to September 28th, 2 years well after Hill's death.

[00:10:10]>> And you deserve the truth. If you have a family member who lives with mental illness, the most dangerous 20 minutes of their life may be the 20 minutes after an arrest, inside a building you cannot see into. What you are allowed to ask, what records you can demand, how you hold a jail accountable when the door closes behind them, I put all of it into my book, Know Your Rights, Make Them Pay. It is plain English, it comes from cases exactly like this one, and the link is in the description.

[00:10:35]>> alone.

[00:10:35]>> The real problem is Mr. Hill was arrested for trespassing and failure to ID.

[00:10:41]He was clearly going through some type of mental health episode, and he was brought to the jail.

[00:10:47]We need to implement a crisis receiving center here in Virginia Beach that we can get these folks the help they need and not bring them to the back of my jail. They need medical experts helping them, not Now, the lawsuit, because the criminal case answers one question, did the state break its own law? And the civil case answers a different one, who pays? On May 29th of this year, the attorney Ben Crump, along with the firm Price Benowitz, filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of Roland Hill's estate.

[00:11:17]His father, Stanley Hill, is the man bringing it.

[00:11:20]And notice he filed two kinds of claims, not one, because Virginia gives you two.

[00:11:25]A wrongful death claim belongs to the family for their loss, the father who buried his son. A survival action belongs to the estate for what Ronald Hill himself went through, the conscious suffering in those minutes on the floor before his breathing stopped. Different claims, different damages. And the survival action is the one that makes a defense lawyer sweat because it puts the jury inside those final minutes and asks them to put a number on them. And the number being reported is $25 million, but I want to correct something you have probably seen because the detail is the story. It is not $25 million total. The complaint seeks $25 million per defendant plus punitive damages. And there are a lot of defendants, the three deputies, the sheriff Rocky Holcomb by name, the sheriff's office, the jail, the city itself, and a chain of supervisors. The strategy there is simple and it is smart. You do not just sue the three men who were fired and posted $5,000.

[00:12:23]You sue the institution because the institution is where the policy lives >> can legally be connected to a person's death.

[00:12:30]>> You don't have to prove that there's any sort of criminal intent. You just have the person is responsible for the other person's death.

[00:12:36]>> He says unlike a criminal case, a civil lawsuit does not require proving criminal intent, only whether someone can be held legally responsible.

[00:12:43]>> there's adequate grounds for a civil suit.

[00:12:45]>> The Hill family's lawsuit seeks $25 million in damages. Corcoran says that's not unusual in high-profile wrongful death cases.

[00:12:52]>> At times, plaintiff attorneys, they ask for a lot, you know, hope or realizing or hoping that they may not get that full amount.

[00:13:00]>> And the money, but the choice that tells you the most about this case is a choice most people will not even notice. Crump filed this in Virginia state court, not federal court. And if you have watched my other videos, you know the usual play for a police death is a federal civil rights claim. A section 1983 case.

[00:13:18]So why go state? One word again, immunity.

[00:13:22]Qualified immunity is the federal doctrine and lets an officer escape a civil rights lawsuit unless the right they violated was already crystal clear in a prior case. It is the wall that kills more police misconduct suits than any jury ever does.

[00:13:36]And here is what Virginia did not do.

[00:13:38]Virginia did not abolish qualified immunity. They tried. The bills failed more than once.

[00:13:45]So a smart lawyer looks at that wall and instead of running into it in federal court, he files a wrongful death and survival action under Virginia law in a Virginia courtroom where that particular wall is not standing in the same place.

[00:13:58]That is not a technicality. That is the entire game. To win it, the family has to show the deputies caused Ronald Hill's death through negligence and to get those punitive damages on top, they have to show willful or wanton conduct, a conscious disregard for his safety.

[00:14:14]The criminal indictment, the firings, the medical examiner's homicide finding, every one of those becomes a brick in the civil wall they are building.

[00:14:23]>> Following the hearing, Virginia Beach Sheriff Rocky Holcomb put out a statement saying he watched the body camera video months ago and immediately requested an independent investigation from Virginia State Police. Holcomb says he has decided not to release the full video of this incident because of the ongoing trial and out of respect for Hill's family.

[00:14:41]>> Ronald's father, Stanley Hill.

[00:14:44]>> When Ronald was registered as a organ donor, Lifenet was able to find organ matches for my son's heart, liver, and two kidneys.

[00:14:56]And which he saved four lives immediately.

[00:14:59]>> Ronald's sister at the vigil.

[00:15:01]>> You were just misunderstood and had so much love to give to others and wanted others to love you. These past few months have shown just how much others love you. You just couldn't see it.

[00:15:11]>> 39-year-old Michael Kiss.

[00:15:13]>> Justice has to be served.

[00:15:14]>> I just want to stand here and say that I loved him and I'm here for him and then I will always be here for him and I'm I'm to show up for him every time we have an event, anytime his family needs me, I'll be here and I love him. Rest in peace.

[00:15:27]>> Cases like this one do not end when the cameras leave.

[00:15:30]There are three trials coming, the first one this September, and a civil suit that will grind on for years. If you want to follow where these actually land, the verdicts, the settlements, the cases, the news drops after one cycle, that is what I do every week inside the Defense Brief, my channel membership.

[00:15:47]Members get my breakdowns before anyone else. Link is in the description if you want in. Here is the through line. A man in crisis was arrested for something small, put into a device meant to keep him alive, and came out of it dead, and the state of Virginia looked at its own deputies and said this was a homicide, and these three will stand trial for murder. That almost never happens.

[00:16:10]Whether it ends in a conviction, whether that family ever sees a dollar of those 25 million, we are going to find out in a courtroom, the slow way, the right way. I will be watching every day. I am George Graves. Know your rights.