Widow of Black man shot, killed by Georgia state trooper wins $4.8 million from state
Julian Lewis, a 60-year-old unarmed Black man, was driving his Nissan Sentra to a store after work to pick up an orange soda for his wife when he was shot and killed by a Georgia state trooper in 2020, according to state investigators.
Now his widow will get $4.8 million.
The state of Georgia agreed to pay Betty Lewis before she took the case to court, making it the largest pre-litigation settlement in state history dating back to 1990, the law firm of Hall & Lampros LLP said in a news release. Betty Lewis’s lawyers said they were readying to sue the former trooper, the Georgia State Highway Patrol and related officials before reaching a settlement through mediation.
“Our hearts grieve for Betty Lewis, who lost her Golden Years with her husband because of unwarranted and unnecessary deadly force during what should have been a routine traffic stop,” attorney Andrew Lampros said in the release.
Lampros added the “events of that August night should never have happened,” calling it “unconscionable.”
According to the law firm, Julian Lewis was driving to the store on Aug. 7, 2020, when a state trooper activated his blue lights to pull him over for a broken taillight. Lawyers said investigators later determined neither of his taillights were “in a condition to justify probable cause for a stop.”
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation identified the trooper as Jacob Gordon Thompson, who is white and was 27 years old at the time.
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Investigators said Thompson tried to pull Lewis over on Stoney Pond Road in Screven County, which stretches less than two miles through farmland and woods in rural southeast Georgia. Screven County sits on the border with South Carolina, about 78 miles northwest of Hilton Head.
According to an initial news release dated one day after the shooting, Thompson intended to stop Lewis for a traffic offense but “the car refused to stop and led the trooper on a brief chase down several county roads.”
Lawyers for Betty Lewis said it is believed her husband was trying to “drive toward a more familiar area where he knew other people would be present” and that he turned on both his turn signals as a sign of acknowledgment to the trooper.
Thompson then used what’s known as a Precision Intervention Technique, or PIT maneuver, to stop the Nissan, investigators said.
The trooper hit Lewis with enough force to spin his car in the opposite direction before coming to rest in a ditch, according to the widow’s attorneys and the GBI.
“Less than two seconds passed from the time the trooper opened the door to his vehicle and fired a shot that killed 60-year-old Lewis instantly,” attorneys said, citing testimony from state investigators.
Thompson fired one round. Lewis was pronounced dead on the scene, state investigators said.
Thompson later told investigators that he thought he heard Lewis rev his engine “at a high rate of speed” after the crash, “making him fear for his life and prompting the shooting,” lawyers for Betty Lewis said. Investigators reportedly determined the engine in Lewis’s Sentra was “completely disabled” after the crash.
A week after the shooting, Thompson was arrested and charged with felony murder and aggravated assault in the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit. He was also fired from the Georgia State Patrol.
A grand jury, however, declined to indict him in June 2021, The Associated Press reported.
Brook Bacon, son of Julian Lewis, told WJBF after the grand jury’s decision was announced that he was “shocked and in disbelief.”
“What the Grand Jury did today was worse than what Jacob Gordon Thompson did when he shot my father in the head,” Bacon said, according to the TV station. “It was murder when Thompson killed my father. But what this District Attorney and Grand Jury have killed is any belief Black people can have in this Justice System.”
According to Betty Lewis’s lawyers, state officials have not released dashcam footage from Thompson’s patrol car. Thompson was not wearing a body camera at the time.
Her attorneys said the settlement “does not bring back her husband” but it does send “a powerful message to the State and those in law enforcement and other positions of power that unnecessary use of force against innocent citizens is unlawful, morally corrupt and carries legal consequences.”
This story was originally published April 1, 2022 at 2:16 PM with the headline "Widow of Black man shot, killed by Georgia state trooper wins $4.8 million from state."
