Ghana has enlisted Ben Crump, the American civil rights lawyer famous for representing the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, to pursue justice for Ghanaians recently killed in the United States.
Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa announced the engagement on November 12, 2026, describing it as a decisive step in the government's push to secure accountability for the victims and their families. According to GhanaWeb, approval was granted on November 10, 2026, for Ghana's Permanent Mission in New York to hire Crump, and the arrangement comes at no cost to the Ghanaian taxpayer.
Who is Ben Crump?
Benjamin Lloyd Crump has spent his career representing families in cases of police violence and civil rights violations. His clients have included the families of Trayvon Martin, killed in Florida in 2012; Michael Brown, shot dead in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014; and George Floyd, who died in May 2020 after a Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck for minutes.
Crump also represented the family of Breonna Taylor, fatally shot by police during a raid on her Louisville, Kentucky, home in March 2020. Adomonline reports that in 2020 he was among the lawyers acting for the families of Ahmaud Arbery, Taylor and Floyd, three cases that transformed the American conversation on policing.
His firm's roster extends to Tyre Nichols, Stephon Clark, Keenan Anderson and Sonya Massey. In 2015 he represented nine of the 13 Black women victimised in the Oklahoma City rape case involving former officer Daniel Holtzclaw, and he argued a excessive force case at the US Supreme Court for Robbie Tolan in 2008.
A record of landmark settlements
Crump's results explain why Ghana chose him. He secured a $27 million settlement for George Floyd's family and $12 million for Breonna Taylor's family. In Flint, Michigan, he won a $641 million settlement for children harmed by contaminated drinking water, and a $411 million verdict for Duane Washington, severely injured in a truck accident.
He has also recovered more than $200 million in settlements over allegations of racial discrimination in banking, a practice Americans call