Ten years after Tawon Boyd died following a struggle with Baltimore County police, Maryland's Attorney General's Office has decided not to reopen his case — even though a statewide audit last year concluded his death should have been classified as a homicide rather than an accident. The office says there still isn't enough evidence to prove criminal culpability beyond a reasonable doubt.
Boyd died on September 21, 2016, two days after going into cardiac arrest while being taken into custody by Baltimore County police, according to CBS News. The state medical examiner originally ruled his death accidental, attributing it to a synthetic drug commonly known as bath salts. Boyd's family has long accused the responding officers of using excessive force, and the station's report details how the Maryland Attorney General's Office has now formally concluded its audit of the case without reopening it for prosecution.
How the Middle River Encounter Unfolded
Baltimore County police responded to a 911 disturbance call at a home in Middle River on September 19, 2016, per the same account, and found Boyd yelling about an intruder. Boyd had reportedly been drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana before he began acting erratically. He tried to get into a locked police car, told a neighbor to call police, and did not comply with officers' orders to sit on the ground, prompting officers to decide he needed an emergency evaluation.
The ensuing struggle lasted about five minutes. Boyd allegedly grabbed, scratched, and kicked at the officers, who hit him in the face twice, handcuffed him, used their weight to keep him on the ground, held his hands above his head, and cuffed his ankles, the article notes. A witness named Deona Styron said five officers were on top of Boyd at one point and that one officer had an arm around his neck, and she said Boyd repeatedly told them he could not breathe. A Baltimore County spokesperson, Elise Aramacost, described the situation as a violent struggle.
Medics administered Haldol, a drug used to control acute psychotic symptoms, before Boyd went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital. Medics resuscitated him and he was admitted to the hospital, where he suffered multi-system organ failure. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later conducted an autopsy. Court records reviewed by Police1 show the family's 2017 federal wrongful death lawsuit alleged emergency medical personnel violated Maryland EMS protocols by injecting Boyd with Haldol under the assumption he suffered from “excited delirium,” a diagnosis state protocols barred from justifying that treatment.
That 2017 lawsuit named former Baltimore County Police Chief Jim Johnson, five individual officers, one paramedic, and one EMT, accusing Johnson of failing to properly train and supervise personnel, according to Police1's reporting. Baltimore County ultimately agreed to a settlement to resolve the litigation — CBS News reports the family received a $1 million settlement in 2019, while Police1's court-record review put the figure at $1.15 million, with a federal judge signing the dismissal order on June 26, 2019.
There is also a discrepancy in how the incident was first described publicly. Initial police reports stated officers had responded to a 911 call from Boyd's girlfriend after dispatch relayed a female yelling in the background, but department updates later confirmed Boyd placed the 911 call himself, seeking medical assistance because he felt disoriented, according to The Guardian.
A Statewide Audit Reopens Old Wounds
Boyd's family hired their own investigators and sought an independent review of the medical examiner's findings after the Baltimore County State's Attorney's Office declined to pursue criminal charges in December 2016. That independent scrutiny eventually became part of a much larger reckoning: a statewide audit of Maryland's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, launched after former Chief Medical Examiner Dr. David Fowler offered controversial defense testimony during the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, asserting that George Floyd's cause of death was undetermined and citing excited delirium, according to Revolt TV.
The resulting May 2025 audit reviewed 87 restraint-related in-custody deaths in Maryland from 2003 to 2019, and independent forensic reviewers disagreed with original state findings in more than half of those cases — determining that 41 deaths originally classified as accidental, natural, or undetermined, including Boyd's, should have been ruled homicides. The Associated Press reported that 75 percent of the decedents in the reviewed cases were Black. State auditors found that medical examiners operating under Dr. Fowler exhibited systemic racial and pro-police bias, frequently citing excited delirium — a diagnosis major medical associations have rejected — in nearly half of the reviewed cases to avoid ruling deaths homicides, according to the Maryland Office of the Attorney General.
Why the Homicide Finding Didn't Lead to Charges
In its September 2026 decision, the Attorney General's Office explained that under National Association of Medical Examiners guidelines, a homicide classification simply means a death resulted from a volitional act committed by another person — it does not establish criminal intent or legal culpability, which must be determined through the legal process. Prosecutors said they found insufficient evidence to prove criminal culpability beyond a reasonable doubt, and the office said it concurs with the Baltimore County State's Attorney's Office's original 2016 decision not to pursue charges.
As of this week, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has not modified the official cause or manner of death listed on death certificates for Boyd or any of the other 40 cases reclassified by independent auditors — all 41 death certificates retain their original determinations, per the Maryland Attorney General's Office.
Following the declination, the Attorney General's Office said it will give Boyd's family and their legal representatives an opportunity to review investigative materials maintained in the official file, gathered from police and prosecutor records under state disclosure rules. Boyd's family has not publicly commented on the latest decision.
