On July 8, 2015, Jonathan Sanders, a 39-year-old Black man, died while being restrained by Stonewall, Mississippi police officer Kevin Herrington.
[4] Following a medical autopsy in July 2015, which determined the cause of death as homicide by "manual asphyxiation", Clarke County District Attorney Bilbo Mitchell scheduled a grand jury.
[5] In January 2016, a grand jury determined that Sanders died of "mechanical asphyxia" after swallowing a bag of cocaine, and that the police officer was in the right to pursue Sanders based on the suspicion he was involved in drug activity.
[6] The jury concluded that Sanders "did not act in conformity with his normal character due to the influence of cocaine which was found in his system at the time of his death".
[7][8] The NAACP doubted the grand jury findings and released a statement asking for an outside investigation by the Department of Justice.