Cracked windshield, confusing laws surround death of man shot by trooper in Horry County
A cracked windshield, case law from over 100 years ago and an incomplete investigation have lawyers and legal experts analyzing the legality of the police shooting that killed a Horry County man.
Tristan Vereen was shot and killed by Whitney Benton, a South Carolina Highway Patrol trooper who was pursuing him, first by car then by foot in the Red Bluff area of Longs. The reason for the initial traffic stop is still unclear but Vereen’s lawyers are alleging it was due to a crack in Vereen’s windshield. South Carolina Department of Public Safety has only said the cause was an “equipment violation.”
Jimmy Richardson, Horry County Solicitor, confirmed the windshield had a crack in it, based on photos SCHP sent him, but did not know if that was the reason for the stop.
The traffic stop, if it was because of Vereen’s windshield, and its legality are coming under question after Vereen’s lawyer Harry Daniels said a cracked windshield is not a traffic violation. Daniels argues Vereen had a right to resist arrest because the initial stop was “illegal.”
“South Carolina does not, to the best of my knowledge, have a specific statute that prohibits driving with a cracked windshield,” said Seth Stoughton, an expert on criminal justice law at the University of South Carolina. Stoughton, who is a former police officer, said “state law does not clearly prohibit driving with a cracked windshield but that there is some confusion on that point.”
The law gets ‘really tricky’
In dashcam footage of the incident, obtained by The Sun News after a Freedom of Information request, audio is cut from the first 34 seconds of the video when Benton starts to pursue Vereen in his police cruiser. It is unclear why the audio was left out, and why Benton was pursuing Vereen.
It is also not clear from the video how severe the crack in Vereen’s windshield was. The two men get into a shouting match on the highway as Vereen pulls over then drives in a circle and Benton yells for him to pull over. Vereen yells back before driving away but it is not clear what he is saying due to the quality of the audio.
If the reason for the stop was a cracked windshield, there is not much case law that gives insight to the legality of it.
In one case from 2012, State v. Harrison, a SC court of appeals upheld the admission of evidence resulting from a traffic stop for a broken windshield.
In that case, the court specifically noted that “trial counsel did not argue . . . that the stop, being based upon the broken windshield, was an improper basis” but instead raised the issue about whether the defendant should even be allowed to make that argument on appeal.
Ultimately the court said that “the traffic stop was proper based upon the officer’s observation of a cracked windshield.”
South Carolina law is vague on the subject of equipment violations, according to the state’s code of law “no person shall drive or move on any highway any vehicle unless the equipment thereon is in good working order and adjustment as required in this chapter and the vehicle is in such safe mechanical condition as not to endanger the driver or other occupant or any person upon the highway.”
There is also this section specifically about windshields:
“No person shall drive any motor vehicle with any sign, poster or other nontransparent material upon the front windshield...which obstructs the driver’s clear view of the highway or any intersecting highway,” the law states and continues to require proper windshield wipers on cars.
In the early 1990s a bill to amend the code of laws so that “a vehicle with a cracked or broken windshield that does not obstruct the driver’s view is not considered unsafe or dangerous” made its way through committees in the state senate but was never signed into law.
“I believe it didn’t pass, because it would give officers the complete capricious, arbitrary ability to interpret the law, which is a violation of the Constitution, the law has to be clearly established,” Daniels said.
He argues that Vereen’s view was not obstructed by the crack in his windshield.
“A cracked windshield and a chipped windshield is not a violation,” he said.
Daniels also pointed to another arrest Benton made in 2013, when he pulled a man over for a cracked windshield. A complaint was filed against Benton for inappropriate comments during the stop but not for the arrest itself.
“And this is where things get really tricky, because even if state law does not prohibit driving with a cracked windshield, officers do not violate the Fourth Amendment so long as they reasonably thought that state law did prohibit driving with a cracked windshield,” Stoughton told The Sun News in an email. “But the question is whether the arrest was lawful as a matter of state law, not necessarily whether it was constitutional.”
Stoughton said determining whether a stop is lawful is an objective analysis, not a subjective analysis.
“It doesn’t matter if the cracked windshield was Benton’s only reason for stopping Vereen,” he said. “Because the question is whether a reasonable officer in Benton’s position could have had the legal authority to stop him on some other basis.”
Use of force
After the car chase, Vereen took off on foot, followed by Benton. He ran around in circles in the backyard of a home on McNiell Chapel road until Benton tased him causing him to fall face first into the ground, according to video released by the solicitor’s office.
From there the pair get into a fight. At one point Benton is wrestling Vereen and drops his taser. Vereen picks it up and uses it on Benton. In photos released by the solicitor’s office Benton has bumps consistent with a taser prong on his neck, as well as a bite mark from Vereen on his body.
The scuffle and fight over the taser ends when Benton shoots Vereen in the chest.
Both Daniels and Stoughton raised questions about the use of a taser to subdue Vereen who was running from the trooper. They cited a case, Tennessee v. Garner, where a 15-year-old was shot while running from Tennessee police, although the officer “figured” he was unarmed.
In their decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found that “the Fourth Amendment prohibits the use of deadly force unless it is necessary to prevent the escape of a fleeing felon and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of violence to the officer or the community.”
Daniels called tasers “deadly weapons,” and cited multiple instances where people have died after being tased by police.
Stoughton said it was “not a good use of a taser.”
“Tasers are defensive weapons essentially, But just someone running away is not physically threatening. So you don’t get to use a taser in those situations,” he said.
This isn’t the first time Benton has tased someone who was running from him.
On Aug. 4, 2013, Benton used excessive force when he tased and handcuffed Teko Washington, a federal lawsuit alleges.
Washington was pulling into his driveway and “made the poor decision” to run away from the trooper because he had a small amount of cannabis in his pocket, the lawsuit states.
He climbed a 6-foot fence and as he crested the top, he felt a shock in his neck and lower back.
Washington fell from the fence, unable to control his body, and landed on his neck, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit says he heard a crack and could not move his body. Washington lay face-down with his arms under his body as Benton climbed over the fence and yelled for him to turn over. Washington was having trouble moving and Benton “aggressively grabbed his hands and placed them behind his back,”according to the lawsuit.
Benton called EMS for Washington while “making fun” of him for faking his injuries, which the lawsuit alleges he was not. At the hospital, Washington was treated for spinal cord injuries. At the insistence of Benton, Washington was transported to jail instead of undergoing normal medical procedures, the lawsuit says.
When he was released from jail, Washington had surgery for his spinal cord injuries and suffered permanent injuries to his wrists and back, the lawsuit states.
The case was settled after mediation, according to federal court records. Benton paid an unspecified amount of money to Washington, who in turn dropped the suit.
Resisting arrest
If the traffic stop was unlawful, South Carolina law allows people to forcefully resist unlawful arrests, according to Stoughton who pointed to case law for examples.
One of them stemming from a 1919 South Carolina Supreme Court appeal case, State v. Bethune.
In the case, the court upheld the right of a man to “defend himself from an unlawful arrest, and for the purpose of protecting himself he has the right to use whatever force is necessary, even to the taking of life, if that be apparently necessary.”
The 1919 appeal saved a man from the electric chair and was cited in a more recent case in Myrtle Beach.
In 2001, Robert McGowan pointed a shotgun at a police officer after getting pepper-sprayed. The officer, James Mills, fired a warning shot with his pistol to which McGowan responded by firing and hitting the officer in the hand.
Mills then fired and hit McGowan who surrendered after getting grazed by the bullet.
In court McGowan said his arrest, initially for disorderly conduct, was unlawful and he had the right to resist the arrest with deadly force.
The jury and the SC Supreme Court disagreed, saying he had the right to resist an unlawful arrest, but only with appropriate force.
“But such person should use no more force than is necessary to resist the unlawful arrest, and is justified in using or offering to use a deadly weapon only where he has reason to apprehend an injury greater than the mere unlawful arrest, as danger of death or great bodily harm,” the Supreme Court ruling read.
Vereen’s case is an ongoing investigation and it remains to be seen why Benton initiated the stop and whether it was lawful.
“The short answer is: I’m not sure; we don’t have a lot of facts about the incident and the law is rather murky,” Stoughton said.
This story was originally published October 1, 2021 at 10:44 AM.
