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WATCH: The Moment the Newest ‘BLM Martyr’ Leonard Cure is Shot by Police (and a Legal Deep Dive)

Screenshot/Public Domain/Fair Use

On Monday, a man named Leonard Cure was killed by a cop (Staff Sgt. Buck Aldridge of Camden County, Georgia) during a traffic stop and this has been gaining attention in the news this week. As best as we can tell, there are three reasons why the attention has been increasing:

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1) Cure is black and Aldridge is white, and the media always assumes that means the officer is racist. In some circles, whether or not a person is racist is judged by the color of one’s skin and not the content of your character, without any sense of irony.

2) Three years ago, Cure had been exonerated in another crime for which he served more than a decade in prison.

And:

3) The police just released dashcam footage showing the shooting. 

Let’s start with that footage, because it gets us at the most immediate issue: Was this a valid shooting? And there is a LANGUAGE WARNING in effect for that video, because people often curse as they fight.

One thing to note is that it appears that they are editing out the sound of the gunshot, so it can be difficult to pinpoint the moment when the shot was fired. By reports, it was a single shot and if you listen closely just after the 2 minute mark, the sound kind of 'skips' as though it was momentarily cut off. We have looked for unedited footage in vain.

Based on that and the reporting, it would appear that the shot was fired basically while they were wrestling. This screencap would appear to be a split-second after the shot. 

We base that on other reporting, that audio ]skip' and the fact that Cure fell very quickly afterward. To be blunt, Cure was dominating the officer until that moment, but a gunshot would usually change that very quickly.

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As we pointed out in a previous post discussing the legality of a shooting (that time by a civilian), there are three questions we can ask as bystanders:

First, ‘would I do it?’ In other words, ask yourself if you would do the same thing in the same situation.

Second, ‘is it legal?’ That should be self-explanatory.

Third, ‘is this the best practice to keep you out of legal trouble?’

In terms of legality, there are two moments that are relevant. First, just after the 1:30 mark, Aldridge tased Cure. That led to Cure attacking Aldridge. They wrested for several seconds, and then just after the 2:00 mark is when we believe the shot was fired, which is the second relevant moment.

The tasing is important because it is the first moment that there is real violence between these two. But is it deadly force—which as we told you previously, means force likely to cause death or a significant bodily injury? We have seen some jurisdictions say that using a taser is inherently deadly force, but Georgia law apparently looks at it more on a case-by-case basis. We tend to think that is the right approach. We don’t think it would be seen as deadly force in this case if only because when Cure was hit with it, it only seemed to make him angrier. He didn’t seem to be significantly debilitated by it.

And since it is not deadly force, we believe it was justified.

But then there is also the gunshot and, at that moment, we think it is obvious the shooting was justified. They were wresting and, while we don’t see Cure reaching for Aldridge’s gun, Aldridge was probably very concerned that Cure might try to get his gun. If we are right that Aldridge shot while they were wrestling (as opposed to once Cure was actually down), that looks like a clean shoot to us.

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But we don’t think the officer is above criticism in this encounter. Most basically, if he only ticketed Cure, maybe none of this would have happened. Now, this was a bit more than pushing the speed limit a little, with Cure allegedly going over 100 mph. He was allegedly also driving recklessly, but its not clear if Aldridge thought Cure’s conduct was separately reckless driving, or if Aldridge thought that driving 100 mph was inherently reckless, however skillfully one is doing it. So, there might be duplication in the charges. But unless Cure was driving in a way (beyond speeding) that was really reckless, we can’t help but think that a ticket would have sufficed. But to be fair to Aldridge, he may have been following local policy on that subject.

Still, whether it is policy or the individual officer’s decision, we are reminded of something we read from Law Professor Stephen A. Carter:

On the opening day of law school at Yale, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.

Carter is arguing against making too many things criminal and, naturally, there is nothing wrong with having a law against speeding or reckless driving. But that quote also highlights the fact that every encounter is fraught with danger for both the police and the private citizen and it’s an argument for being reluctant to escalate the amount of force the state uses. So … maybe a ticket would have been the better way to go.

There is also the tragic fact that Cure had pretty recently been exonerated in a different state—Florida—for a crime he didn’t commit. This post links to an article on the Innocence Project of Florida website:

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He had been convicted of armed robbery of a Walgreens. The innocence project has its own biases, but it seems beyond question that Florida not only set him free, but they agreed to vacate his convictions, gave him a settlement for wrongful incarceration and even officially apologized to him, so … yeah, we are inclined to think he was actually innocent.

Humor aside, that still might have played a role in how this all played out. He plainly thought it was ridiculous to be arrested for a speeding offense and maybe in his mind he was thinking, 'oh G-d, I’m about to get railroaded again.' He might have had no trust that the system would work for him since it already failed him once, so he might have thought that resisting arrest was the best option for him. We are not saying his conduct was legal, moral or even a good idea. It wasn’t, on all three counts. We’re just saying its understandable as human conduct and we aren’t going to think he was a bad person in general because of how he acted in the last moments of his life.

Of course, the usual suspects were angry about the whole thing:

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As you can see, the ACLU has already been Community Noted as was this SPLC Tweet:

Remember, folks, there is a radical faction of leftists who really want to get rid of the police entirely. These are often the exact same people who oppose the right to bear arms. But we are pretty sure that if someone is trying to break into their own homes, they are calling the police.

And they got pushback:

This is a fair point. If the officer didn’t know his background—and he probably didn’t—it has no relevance to the shooting.

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We’re more meh about it, but it has its moments.

And that is true. As we said previously, none of this means Cure deserved to die. No reasonable person should be glad he is dead. He probably deserved to go to prison for attacking the officer, but that’s the extent of it. The lawful use of force is not about determining guilt for a crime and then determining punishment. It is about issues such as danger to self or others, or, for the police, the amount of force justified in carrying out an arrest.

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Yeah, pretty much.

***

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