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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.

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By
Matthew Burns
, WRAL.com senior producer/politics editor, & Joe Fisher, WRAL reporter
ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — A judge ruled Brown's family would only be able to see only a fraction of the video recorded by Pasquotank County deputies when they shot and killed him last month.

The 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.

Brown, 42, was shot five times by deputies trying to serve a warrant to search his home and car on April 21 as part of a drug investigation. Authorities said he had a history of resisting arrest, so several deputies went to his home.

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."

Brown's son and family attorney Chantel Cherry-Lassiter were allowed to see one 20-second clip of the shooting on April 26.

"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.

Foster said the video won't be released publicly for several weeks, if at all, to allow time for the State Bureau of Investigation to complete its review of the shooting.

Under North Carolina law, law enforcement videos aren't considered public record, and a judge must sign off before they can be released.

Wooten said three Pasquotank County deputies fired their weapons at Brown, and all three remain on leave, pending the outcome of the SBI and internal investigations. No deputies were injured in the incident.
The attorneys representing Brown's family sent a letter to Womble on Wednesday requesting that he seek a special prosecutor in this case because the relationship between his office and the deputies involved presents a conflict of interest. Gov. Roy Cooper similarly called last week for a special prosecutor in the case.

Wooten didn't respond Friday to a request for comment.

The FBI has opened a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting.

Brown's death prompted days of protests, with people marching in the streets demanding to see the bodycam video. Elizabeth City officials put a nightly curfew in place on April 27 to keep the demonstrations under control. The curfew was relaxed it a few days later amid peaceful marches and was lifted altogether on Thursday.

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