Deputies appeal order for trial in disabled man’s death

BALTIMORE – Three Maryland sheriff’s deputies are appealing a federal judge’s order for them to stand trial for the asphyxiation death of a man with Down syndrome.

The appeal was assigned a case number Monday in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia.

Frederick County deputies Richard Rochford, Scott Jewell and James Harris are appealing last month’s U.S. District Court ruling denying their motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the parents of Robert Ethan Saylor.

The 26-year-old New Market man died in 2013 as the deputies, moonlighting as mall security guards, struggled to remove him from a movie theatre because he hadn’t purchased a ticket for a second viewing of a film.

The death was ruled a homicide but the deputies weren’t charged.

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