A Georgia prosecutor will not issue charges against a deputy who fatally shot a previously exonerated robbery defendant during a violent traffic stop. The district attorney, Keith Higgins, of Brunswick Judicial Circuit, said Camden County sheriff’s Staff Sgt. Buck Aldridge was justified in opening fire on Leonard Allen Cure, 53, during a traffic stop on the side of I-95 on Oct. 16, 2023, because Cure was violently resisting.
“Use of deadly force at that point was objectively reasonable given that he was being overpowered at that time,” he told The Associated Press in a phone interview.
But Cure’s attorneys disagreed with the decision, MSN reports.
“This decision is a devastating failure of justice, sending the message that law enforcement officers can take a life without consequence,” attorneys Ben Crump and Harry Daniels said in a statement to Law&Crime on behalf of Cure’s family. “Leonard Cure was a man who had already fought so hard to reclaim his life after a wrongful conviction, only to have it stolen from him again. His family will not stop fighting for accountability, and neither will we.”
During the incident, Staff Sgt. Aldridge ordered cure out of his pickup truck. Cure was argumentative and that escalated to resistance, dashcam video from the incident shows. The deputy tried to subdue him with a Taser, but Cure fought through it and began to physically overwhelm him. Official body worn camera and dashcam videos of the incident are available on YouTube.
As the fight continued, Staff Sgt. Aldridge shot and killed Cure.
In an ongoing federal lawsuit, Cure’s family has sued Aldridge and Camden County Sheriff Jim Proctor. They said that Aldridge escalated the traffic stop. And that Aldridge’s decision to use a Taser on Cure was unlawful.
Cure had spent 16 years in a Florida prison, sentenced to life in a 2003 armed robbery in Broward County. Years later, prosecutors relented and worked with the Innocence Project of Florida to get him out, Law&Crime reports. An ATM receipt showed Cure was miles from the crime scene during the incident. The Innocence Project of Florida also said the photo array was “an unreliable, suggestive identification procedure” because it featured multiple pictures of him when shown to one of the victims.
