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December 20th, 2015 
Awake Goy According to the newly obtained investigation files, Cpl. Tiffany Bratton, who discharged 15 of the tasings, told investigators when she tased Lambert, he “was lying on his back” and he “grabbed the end of the Taser and was pulling it.” She “stated this probably happened several times,” according to investigators.
But the video does not show Lambert ever grabbing a Taser.
In addition, his hands were cuffed behind his back throughout the tasing – making such an action physically unfeasible.
Bratton also claimed the repeated tasings were needed because after Lambert was tased, he kept getting back up – four times in all.
A state investigator writes that once Lambert was first tased in the hospital doorway, Bratton said after about “five seconds” he “got back up.”
Then after a second tasing, she said “Lambert hit the ground then right back up.” After a third tasing, Bratton said “Lambert hit the ground then got right back up.” And after a fourth tasing, she said after 5 seconds – the standard length of a tasing – “he got back up.”
Another officer, Clinton Mann, told state investigators Lambert “jumped up” once after a tasing.
On the video, however, Lambert is never seen getting himself up on his feet after the first tasing.
Instead, the video shows his body went stiff and dropped after the first tasing in the hospital doorway. Then he mostly rolls around on the ground, according to the video, and asks the officers to stop. While he is on the ground, they also shackle his legs.
Bratton’s claims to investigators, now public for the first time, are legally significant for two reasons.
If prosecutors believed Lambert did repeatedly grab an officer’s weapon and get up after tasings, that alleged conduct might justify additional tasings.
“If an officer credibly stated that a suspect was trying to get the Taser several times, than that would certainly justify elevating the force used by the officer,” says Kendall Coffey, a former federal prosecutor.
So while Bratton’s claims are not supported by the video, the claims could provide an internal written record that would seem to cut against charging the officers. (There is no indication that police planned to release the video, or expected it to be made public during the 2013 investigation.)
Second, it is a crime to deliberately mislead state investigators, a separate charge that prosecutors could investigate.
“In Virginia, it’s a Class 1 Misdemeanor – it carries up to 12 months in jail – for any person to knowingly and willfully make a materially false statement to any law enforcement officer investigating the commission of a crime,” said Steve Benjamin, a Virginia defense attorney.
That crime, obstruction of justice, covers “materially false statements” made to law enforcement officers “conducting an investigation of a crime.”
The Virginia State Police, which led the state investigation into the tasing, indicate Bratton made the claims to a law enforcement officer investigating the tasing, Agent Kevin George, in May 2013.
Benjamin said a claim about “whether the suspect was lunging for a taser” is material, and prosecutors would also analyze whether it was deliberately misleading.
Coffey, the former federal prosecutor, said “if an officer states to a police authority that the suspect was resisting – grabbing a taser – at the time the suspect was handcuffed, that’s serious matter. It certainly could be considered a charge for making a false statement,” he told MSNBC.
Rod Sager, who served as a federal prosecutor in Virginia for six years, told MSNBC a false statement made to investigators can also give prosecutors wide leverage in a case. “A potential false statement is always helpful,” he said, and can be used in cross examination “should that person go on trial and take the witness stand.”
The investigation file also includes a handwritten statement from Bratton, dated the day of the incident, which claims Lambert got up three times during the tasing, but does not claim he ever grabbed her Taser.
Source Article from http://www.copblock.org/149755/officers-linwood-lambert-jr-tasing-death-mislead-investigators/
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