A federal civil rights lawsuit will move forward against the five Sedgwick County corrections officers who pinned 17-year-old Cedric Lofton to the floor of a holding cell until he went into cardiac arrest and died in September 2021.
Eric Melgren, chief judge of the U.S. District Court of Kansas, denied the officers’ petition to dismiss all claims against them, saying in an Oct. 3 ruling that a jury must decide who to believe about what happened inside a small cell at the Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center.
A video camera in the lobby captured the struggle, but the view of the officers and Lofton is obscured by the cell door and the angle of the camera. No audio was captured.
A jury trial is scheduled to begin Dec. 3 and is expected to last 10 to 15 days. An appeal of Melgren’s decision by the county officers could potentially change the schedule. Jeffrey Kuhlman, the officers’ lawyer, said he’s analyzing the orders and weighing his clients’ options.
The five juvenile corrections officers — William Buckner, Karen Conklin, Benito Mendoza, Brenton Newby and Jason Stepien — have said that they did not apply pressure to Lofton’s back or neck area as they held him down in the prone position for more than 40 minutes. They have said they continued to pin Lofton to the ground because they feared for their safety, and their lawyers argued that it was Lofton’s own resistance that caused his death.