How Much Force?

Ramsey W. Hall, 26, son of a North Carolina judge, was a topnotch graduate student in English at Nashville's Vanderbilt University. He was a big man, 6 ft. 2 in. and 220 Ibs., and as far as anyone knew he was gentle and re strained. One night last January he went berserk: three policemen tried to subdue him. Ever since, Nashville has been up in arms over the fact that in the subsequent fight he was killed by the police.

On his last day alive, a day pressured by exams, Hall got a speeding ticket from a traffic cop who recalls him as "very courteous." He conferred normal ly with an English professor, then walked into a grocery store, phoned a girl in Mississippi he barely knew and asked her to marry him. "I am intoxicated with love," Hall said. He began crying and laughing; a policeman was called, and drove him home. Later, Hall spoke wildly to his landlady, Mrs. Aline Johnson, and started kicking the door between their apartments. Shortly be fore midnight, Mrs. Johnson called the police, and three officers arrived. "I wish you'd just talk to him," she said.

Deep Concerns. Hall rebuffed the police, demanding to see an arrest war rant. Suddenly he pushed Mrs. Johnson down an outside flight of six steps and started swinging at the cops. All were smaller than he. Together they knocked him down, but Hall fought free. Patrol man Joseph W. Jackson, 28, clubbed him on the head with his night stick; the stick broke. Hall grabbed the bro ken stick and slugged Jackson. With that -- and before his fellow officers could get back into the struggle -- Jackson drew his pistol and fired six times, killing Hall.

"I would give anything if this had never happened," said Jackson, who had never used his gun before. "I exercised what I felt was my best judgment, and I did what I thought I had to do." Nashville Police Chief Hubert O. Kemp agreed with him, went on TV within hours after Hall's death and called it "a clear case of justifiable homicide."

Others were not so sure. "We are deeply concerned with why three armed policemen could not handle one unarmed student," said Baxton Bryant, executive director of the Tennessee Council on Human Relations. More than 1,400 Nashville teachers and students petitioned for a full investigation, and the local U.S. attorney called in the FBI for a study (still under way) in case any issue of federal rights arose.

Responding to the outcry, Nashville District Attorney Thomas H. Shriver went to work. Hall's body was exhumed, and an autopsy report indicated that the cop's bullets had gone through his neck, chest, right arm, right side and back. The Davidson County grand jury, devoting 32 hours to the case, heard testimony from Vanderbilt University Hospital Psychiatrist John Griffith that he and three other psychiatrists had analyzed the patterns of Hall's behavior and concluded that he was not under the influence of drugs, including LSD. Hall, said Dr. Griffith, was probably the victim of a sudden "psychiatric illness of psychotic proportions" that erupted "less than 24 hours prior to his death."

Not Enough Training. Under Tennessee law, a policeman is empowered to use deadly force if he is in danger of great bodily harm--and possibly even if he only thinks he is. Concluding its hearings, the grand jury has just refused to indict Patrolman Jackson.

To many in Nashville, the case suggested a different and perhaps broader problem. Before assuming his duties two years ago, Jackson received only 13 weeks' training--obviously not good enough to prevent him from panicking to the point where he had to use all six bullets in his service revolver to discourage an assailant.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.