It’s been more than three years, but Jeffrey Lemon will finally have his day in court.
The 68-year-old Black man was arrested in Georgia under questionable circumstances in 2021 after Clayton County sheriff’s deputies threw him to the ground and placed a knee on his back after he was accused of running a red light in the suburban Atlanta county.
Charged with obstruction and cited for the red light infraction, he was also charged with possession of marijuana for a small amount of residue police found in a pipe in the trunk of his car after they had arrested him. He ended up spending two nights in jail.
But the case remained pending for more than three years until his attorney filed a motion for a speedy trial last month. The trial is now scheduled to begin on Monday, and Lemon hopes prosecutors will drop the case without forcing a trial.
“My hope is that they dismiss everything, but it’s a corrupt system, so I do not know what to expect,” Lemon said in a telephone interview with Atlanta Black Star.
Lemon also said he was offered a plea deal late Thursday where prosecutors would drop the marijuana and red light charges if he pleaded guilty to the obstruction charge, but he refused the deal because he plans on filing a lawsuit if he is cleared of all the charges.
The arresting deputies, Jon House and Demetrius Valentine, both resigned after the incident, but House, who initiated the traffic stop, was rehired three months later.
“The arrogance that I experienced from Officer J. House and Sgt. Valentine … had a total disregard for me as a human being,” he wrote in a letter describing his version of the arrest.
Lemon’s arrest took place a month after Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill was indicted on federal charges after he was accused of strapping pretrial inmates to a restraint chair for hours, violating their civil rights. Hill was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison in March 2023 but was released after serving less than a year.
However, Lemon’s case remained pending during that entire time, and he believes it is because they are trying to cover up their unlawful behavior and prevent him from filing a lawsuit.
The Arrest
The incident took place on May 27, 2021, while Lemon was driving his Camaro on Valley Hill Road and spotted a Clayton County sheriff’s deputy behind him, who turned out to be House.
He said he was on the inside left lane and needed to merge into the outside right lane in order to make a right turn up ahead, but when he stopped his car at a red traffic light, the deputy stopped his patrol car next to him in the right lane.
He said the deputy then refused to drive forward after the light had turned green, preventing Lemon from merging into the lane.
Lemon said he waited a few seconds, hoping the deputy would move, but then began driving to the next intersection when it became clear the deputy was not going to move.
He said the traffic light was green when he made a right turn at the next intersection, but the deputy pulled him over and accused him of running the red light.
Lemon told the deputy he did not run the red light but handed him his driver’s license, but the deputy began accusing him of trying to avoid him, which is when he realized the deputy was trying to escalate the interaction and when he attempted to call his daughter and a friend but they did not answer.
He then called 911 because he began fearing for his life as the deputy began accusing him of things he did not do, which was when House called for backup.
Valentine arrived and threatened to shock him with a Taser if he did not step out of the car, so he complied under duress, which was when Valentine wrestled him to the ground, and House placed a knee on the back of his neck.
“I was humiliated,” he said. “For the guy to come up and not try to have any dialogue. He just immediately walked up and said, ‘Get your ass on the ground before I tase your ass.’”
He said he had been on his way to rent a new home when he was arrested, so he had $1,800 in cash on him, but they refused to let him use that money to bail himself out, forcing him to remain in jail for two days.
“They would not take the money, so I had to keep it in my shoe the entire time I was in jail,” he said.
He said the aggressive arrest left him with a condition called cervical stenosis, where he is now in constant pain and has already spent thousands of dollars in medical bills.
The Report
Deputy House describes the arrest in a much different light, claiming in his report that he became suspicious when Lemon did not pull forward at the intersection after the light had turned green, believing he was trying his best to avoid getting pulled over.
He then claimed that once Lemon began driving forward, he ran a red light when making a right turn, which was when House pulled him over.
However, that claim contradicts his initial claim because if Lemon was truly trying to avoid getting pulled over, he never would have run a red light knowing the deputy was behind him.
House also claimed he began fearing for his life after spotting a knife in the center console of Lemon’s vehicle, which was when he called for backup and ordered him out of the car, but Lemon said there never was a knife.
“There was no knife,” Lemon said. “I want to see their inventory list of things they removed from my car. That will show there was no knife.”
House claimed in his report that he found the weed in the trunk while conducting an inventory of items inside the car, which they had ordered impounded. He also claimed the “evidence was dropped at the Sheriff’s Office Property room” but makes no specific mention of the alleged knife being placed in the room.
Valentine ended up resigning from the department two weeks later without providing an explanation, according to his personnel records obtained by Atlanta Black Star. He was then hired by the nearby Fairburn Police Department in Georgia the following month.
And House resigned in November 2021 because he was unhappy “a change in the mission of this agency that does not fit my personal goals,” according to personnel records obtained from the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office.
House was then hired by the nearby Riverdale Police Department, only to resign from that job three months later because “the health insurance provided by the city is expensive and is not providing proper healthcare to my family,” according to his resignation letter obtained by Atlanta Black Star.
He was then rehired by the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office in March 2022, where he remains employed.
Lemon believes there is bodycam and dashcam video footage that would prove his innocence, but when Atlanta Black Star made a public records request for any available footage from the arrest, the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office claimed “no records exist” pertaining to the arrest.
“That sounds like another lie,” Lemon said.
