Georgia sheriff to release body camera video of traffic stop in which deputy killed exonerated man
WOODBINE, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia sheriff planned to release video Wednesday of a traffic stop in which a deputy fatally shot a Black man who had previously been wrongfully imprisoned for 16 years.
Camden County Sheriff Jim Proctor’s office said in a statement that it planned to post body camera and dash camera video online at 4 p.m. showing the stop that left 53-year-old Leonard Cure dead.
Cure’s mother and siblings arrived at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s local office with their attorney, civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, to view the video before its public release. The family deserves answers, Crump told reporters earlier at a news conference outside the Camden County courthouse.
“I don’t feel, no matter what happened, that he should have been killed,” Mary Cure said as she grasped a large, framed portrait of her slain son. “That’s the bottom line. His life should not have been taken.”
When three officers came to her house Monday, she said, “My heart just dropped. I knew it.”
She knew her son was dead before the officers told her: “How do I know that? Because I lived with that fear and so did he.”
Cure was wrongfully convicted of armed robbery in 2004 and spent time in a Florida prison before he was released three years ago.
The Innocence Project of Florida persuaded a case review unit of the Broward County prosecutor’s office to take a look at his case. That unit examined an ATM receipt and other evidence that Cure was miles away from the robbery. A judge vacated his conviction in 2020.
A sheriff’s deputy pulled Cure over Monday along Interstate 95, a few miles north of the Georgia-Florida line. Authorities say Cure had been speeding, driving faster than 90 mph (145 kph), and faced a reckless driving arrest.
Citing preliminary information, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a news release Monday that Cure, who was Black, complied with the deputy until he was told he was under arrest.
After the deputy used a stun gun on Cure when he didn’t obey the deputy’s commands, Cure assaulted the deputy, the bureau said. The deputy then used the stun gun a second time, along with a baton, before pulling out his firearm and shooting Cure.
“He is someone that was failed by the system once and he has again been failed by the system. He’s been twice taken away from his family,” Seth Miller, executive director of the Innocence of Project of Florida, said Wednesday.
Miller said that for so many of his clients, including Cure, their biggest fear is that an officer will knock on their door or stop them while driving “without cause, for something they didn’t do, send them back right where they worked so hard to get out of. I can only imagine that must have been what he was thinking during this traffic stop.”
“It’s hard for us to understand how he could not be subdued without taking lethal force,” Miller said. “We look forward to seeing the video and making our own judgments then.”
Cure’s older brother, Michael Cure, told reporters his brother was an “exceptional individual.”
“In fact, after being wrongfully convicted for 16 years, you know what he did? He forgave the idiots that locked him up,” he said.
Michael Cure said he’s not as forgiving as his brother and lashed out at law enforcement, saying his family had been forced to join the “unfortunate club” of families whose loved ones have been killed by police.
“Here we are now, one of those families,” he said.