Judge restricts bodycam footage for Brown's family
An Elizabeth City man's family will be able to see only a fraction of the video recorded by Pasquotank County deputies when they shot and killed him last month, a judge has ruled.
Posted — UpdatedThe judge's order limits the family to seeing less than 20 minutes of the nearly two hours of video recorded by law enforcement that day.
Three of the five available videos are at least a half-hour long, but the most the family will be allowed to see of any of them is 4 minutes, 50 seconds. They also will be allowed to see 4½ minutes of a 17-minute video and all 3 minutes of another video.
Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Foster ruled last week that authorities had up to 10 days before disclosing video from the deputies' body-worn and dashboard cameras to Brown's immediate family, giving the Pasquotank County Sheriff's Office time to blur the faces of the deputies seen in the videos and redact their voices from the audio.
Although Friday marks 10 days since Foster ruled in the case, the 10-day clock didn't formally start until he issued a written order spelling out his ruling, which came Thursday.
Sheriff Tommy Wooten said Friday evening that he and attorneys for the Brown family have agreed to have the family see the video next Tuesday afternoon.
"The portions of the videos withheld are found to not contain images of the deceased, and thus are not appropriate for disclosure at this time," Foster wrote in his order. "Nothing in this order shall prevent the reconsideration for release of the videos at a later time, upon the conclusion of both internal and criminal investigations arising from these incidents."
Attorney Wayne Kendall said Friday that, at some point, he and other lawyers representing Brown's family will formally request the full unedited video.
"We want to see all of the evidence so we can make our own independent determination as to what happened, whether or not any laws were violated, whether or not any civil rights were violated," Kendall said. "Eventually, I expect we will obtain all videos fully and completely in an unredacted format."
"Let's be clear. This was an execution," Cherry-Lassiter said at a news conference after seeing it, alleging that deputies were shooting at Brown as he sat in his car and continued firing as he tried to avoid being shot by driving away.
According to an autopsy Brown's family requested, he was killed by a shot to the back of his head.
District Attorney Andrew Womble refuted Cherry-Lassiter's version of the shooting, saying the video shows that no shots were fired until Brown started to leave in his car and that he struck deputies both backing up and driving forward.
Under North Carolina law, law enforcement videos aren't considered public record, and a judge must sign off before they can be released.
Wooten didn't respond Friday to a request for comment.
The FBI has opened a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting.
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