A copy of the letter sent from the DOJ to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office

The U.S. Department of Justice cleared the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office’s recent arrest of a 24-year-old that caught national attention in September because of its brutality, saying in a letter the arrest “does not give a rise to a prosecutable violation of the federal civil rights laws.”

The Justice Department told JSO in a letter Friday it has closed its review of the matter.

Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters has defended the officers who arrested Le’keian Woods on Sept. 29. All of them have returned to work. 

Those officers jolted Woods with a Taser twice and punched and kneed him at least 17 times during his arrest. It left Woods’ face so puffy and bloody that his mugshot required a content warning when displayed by local TV news stations.

Woods’ attorney Harry Daniels sent a letter on Oct. 5 to the DOJ, detailing Woods’ closed head injury, a ruptured kidney and severe swelling and cuts to his face. Daniels also wrote that Woods “is one of several unarmed people of color who has been brutally beaten after encountering members of JSO.”

An Oct. 23 DOJ letter, reported on earlier this week, said the department was “monitoring the incident.” After that letter became public, the Sheriff’s Office pushed back, saying “any characterization that the Department of Justice is actively monitoring the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office is categorically and unequivocally false.”

In a statement Friday, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters criticized “false and misleading statements stating that the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office was actively being investigated.”

Le’keian Woods, 24, twelve days after his arrest.

The September incident began, police said, after they stopped a truck Woods was a passenger in after witnessing him involved in a drug deal. When the truck stopped, Woods took off running and fell on the pavement face first after he was hit with a Taser prong. Police said they believed Woods was armed at the time of the rest, but no gun was found on him. Police did take a gun from the pants pocket of another passenger, who was arrested without incident.

Legislators have also called on the Justice Department to investigate JSO over its jail conditions.

State Rep. Angie Nixon and state Sen. Tracie Davis asked the department to investigate the Duval County jail after The Tributary found the death rate among inmates tripled after the jail privatized medical care.

The letter cited that reporting, and urged the department to investigate “potential violations of federal law by those involved.”

The DOJ referred that request for internal review, but federal prosecutors wouldn’t “confirm or deny” they were investigating the jail conditions. The department said the legislators “should not interpret this acknowledgment as confirmation of an investigation of the matters described in your letter.”

Nichole Manna is The Florida Trib's Senior Investigative Reporter. She has been with the organization since 2023 and has covered the criminal justice system for more than a decade.

Nichole has extensively covered conditions at the Duval County jail and in 2024 received first place from the Green Eyeshade Awards in online investigations for her reporting of medical neglect at the facility. That series of stories was recognized with awards at the local, regional and national level. She took home the first place prize for a feature story in a small newsroom from the Online Journalism Awards in 2025 for her series, ‘Cold-Blooded’, which dissected a 1993 death penalty case and questioned whether the defendant received a fair trial.

Prior to joining The Trib, Nichole was an investigative reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas where she was a Livingston Award finalist for a series of stories about a neighborhood with the lowest life expectancy in the state. Her work helped get residents access to free pop-up clinics and they continue to receive help with food disparities.

She is currently working with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network to produce an investigative project.

You can reach her at nichole@floridatrib.org.