$3.7 Million Settlement for Family of Herman Whitfield III, Tased and Held Face Down by Police
After trial: Settlement of $3.7 million, reported by WFYI from a copy of the settlement document. No court found liability, and the city did not admit wrongdoing.
Won by Waples & Hanger.
Gladys Whitfield called 911 on April 25, 2022 asking for help for her son, who was experiencing a mental health crisis. Six Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers responded. Herman Whitfield III was tased and restrained face down until he stopped responding. He was pronounced dead at a hospital within the hour. The coroner ruled it a homicide.
What happened
On April 25, 2022, Gladys Whitfield called 911 from her home in Indianapolis. Her son, Herman Whitfield III, was experiencing a mental health crisis and she was asking for help for him.
Six Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers responded to the call.
What followed ended with Whitfield tased and then restrained face down on the floor until he was unresponsive. In the department's own released footage he can be heard telling the officers, more than once, that he could not breathe. He was pronounced dead at a hospital within an hour of the call his mother had made.
In July 2022 the Marion County Coroner ruled the death a homicide.
Two of the responding officers were criminally charged. Their trial was held in 2024 and both were found not guilty on all counts. The four other officers who were present were never charged.
In 2023 Whitfield's parents brought a wrongful death action against the city and the responding officers. In March 2026 that case settled. The defendants agreed to pay the family $3.7 million, and the city did not admit wrongdoing.
The reason the figure is what it is has to do with which law the claim was brought under. Indiana's Tort Claims Act caps what a governmental entity can be made to pay on a state-law negligence claim, at levels well below this. Those caps do not reach a federal civil rights claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. A case pleaded as a constitutional violation is not subject to the state's limit, which is why an in-custody death in Indiana can resolve in seven figures when a negligence claim against the same defendant could not.
The family was represented by Richard Waples of Waples and Hanger in Indianapolis. His statement on the settlement was brief: the family was satisfied with the resolution and devastated by the loss of their son, and hoped the outcome would make this kind of death less likely in future.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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