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The Virginia prosecutor investigating the death of Irvo Otieno has withdrawn charges against five law enforcement officers who were indicted on murder counts last year, curtailing the scope of what was once a sprawling case to just three defendants.

Otieno, a 28-year-old Black man whose family said he was in mental distress when he arrived at Central State Hospital for treatment, died there of asphyxia as Henrico County sheriff’s deputies and hospital workers <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/20/irvo-otieno-video-virginia-deputies/" target=_blank>restrained him for 11 minutes, according to surveillance video</a> and the medical examiner.

Authorities in Virginia’s Dinwiddie County initially charged 10 people in Otieno’s death. Seven were sheriff’s deputies and three were hospital workers inside the admissions room where Otieno died March 6, 2023. His death sparked international headlines, becoming a rallying cry against police use of force targeting unarmed Black men. Otieno’s family said he was an aspiring musician who was off his medication at the time.

Otieno’s mother, Caroline Ouko, criticized the decision by Dinwiddie Commonwealth’s Attorney Amanda Mann to drop five of the cases. At a news conference Monday in Richmond, Ouko said she had met with Mann to protest her “radical, reckless decision.”

The group of deputies and hospital workers swarmed Otieno, who was bound at the hands and legs, but not all were piling on him or exerting the same level of force, defense attorneys argued for months in private talks with Mann’s office.

Ann Cabell Baskervill, who sought the initial charges as Dinwiddie’s top prosecutor in 2023, agreed to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/06/20/otieno-virginia-charges-dropped-defendants/" target=_blank>drop the cases</a> against two hospital workers last year before resigning to enroll in a French graduate school.

Mann, who took over this year as the county’s top prosecutor, filed court papers Friday seeking to dismiss the indictments against Henrico County sheriff’s deputies Jermaine Branch, Dwayne Bramble, Randy Boyer, Bradley Disse and Tabitha Levere, according to court records. Circuit Court Judge Joseph M. Teefey Jr. granted the requests Sunday, the records show.

Virginia law allows Mann to refile the charges against the five deputies. Mark Krudys, an attorney for Ouko, said the prosecutor assured Otieno’s mother at their meeting that the five defendants would be “brought back” and that Mann did not view their cases as being weaker than the others.

“She ... assures us that this is just a reconfiguration,” Krudys said. “But we’ve been waiting, as Ms. Ouko said, 14 months today. We don’t want to hold our breath anymore.”

Mann wrote in court filings that she decided to stop prosecuting the five deputies because she was unable to change her office’s trial strategy by the time she took over the investigation.

An interim prosecutor who filled in after Baskervill’s departure decided the order in which the eight defendants would stand trial. Mann disagreed with that sequence, and a judge denied an earlier request she had made to reshuffle the order, she wrote.

“The order in which the defendants are tried is of strategic importance,” Mann wrote. Her filings do not delve into any deputy’s conduct.

Russell Stone, the defense attorney for Bramble, said video of Otieno’s final moments did not show Bramble acting with malice, a key element required to prove second-degree murder.

Dinwiddie County Commonwealth's Attorney and Circuit Court

“I have seen that video two dozen times, and I defy anyone to point to anything that Dwayne Bramble did that wasn’t in keeping with his training,” Stone said. “The original prosecutor overreached — charged before doing a thorough investigation.”

Stephen A. Mutnick, who represents Boyer, said, “We are fortunate that Ms. Mann has decided to take a step back and really examine the evidence in the case.”

Two sheriff’s deputies, Brandon Rodgers and Kaiyell Sanders, and hospital worker Wavie Jones still face second-degree murder charges. Jones’s trial is scheduled to start in late September; Rodgers’s in October and Sanders’s in December.

Edward Riley, the defense attorney for Sanders, said he had expected some defendants’ charges would be dropped after the discussions defense attorneys had with Mann.

“It is truly a tragic situation, but Kaiyell, and the others, followed their training and were doing their best to get Mr. Otieno the help that he obviously needed,” Riley said.

Police initially encountered Otieno while responding to a report of a burglary on March 3, 2023, and he was put on an emergency mental health hold and sent to Parham Doctors’ Hospital for an evaluation and help, authorities have said.

He was accused of assault at that facility and taken to the Henrico County jail. Jail surveillance video shows Sanders, one of the sheriff’s deputies still under indictment, punching at Otieno before he was removed from his cell and taken to Central State Hospital on March 6, 2023, for mental health treatment, officials have said.

In a court filing last year, Baskervill had argued that all 10 original defendants should face trial at the same time because each participated in restraining Otieno, although she added that “the most culpable persons as first-degree principals would be those on his torso.”

“It is not irrelevant that if one person here had acted differently, then Otieno may very well have been able to survive,” Baskervill wrote at the time.

Honorable Mention, Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, 2019

Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth

Emory University, BA, English

Salvador Rizzo covers crime and courts for The Washington Post. He was a reporter for The Fact Checker from 2018 to 2021 and previously covered New Jersey politics.

Salvador Rizzo

George Polk Award in 2014 for political reporting for investigation of relationship between Virginia governor and wealthy supporter

Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., BA in English Literature

Laura Vozzella covers Virginia politics for The Washington Post. Before joining The Post, she was a political columnist and food writer at the Baltimore Sun, and she has also worked for the Associated Press, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Hartford Courant.

Laura Vozzella

Prosecutor drops charges against five deputies Irvo Otieno death

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Funeral for Irvo Otieno, killed by sherrifs deputies and employees of Central State Hospital earlier this month, on March 29 in Richmond, VA.

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