A Georgia sheriff’s deputy won’t face criminal charges for fatally shooting a Black man during a 2023 traffic stop that spiraled into a violent struggle, the district attorney who examined body-camera video and other evidence in the killing said Tuesday. Leonard Cure, 53, was killed just three years after Florida authorities had freed him from prison after serving 16 years for a crime he did not commit, the Associated Press reports. A white deputy in Camden County, Georgia, pulled Cure over for speeding on Interstate 95 near the Florida line on Oct. 16, 2023. The deputy ordered Cure to get out of his pickup truck and shocked him with a stun gun when Cure refused to put his hands behind his back. Body- and dash camera video showed Cure was fighting back and had a hand at the deputy’s throat when he was shot point-blank. “Use of deadly force at that point was objectively reasonable given that he was being overpowered at that time,” District Attorney Keith Higgins told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday. Higgins, Georgia’s top prosecutor for the coastal Brunswick Judicial Circuit, said he told Cure’s family of his decision during a meeting Monday and also notified the deputy, Staff Sgt. Buck Aldridge.
Attorneys for Cure’s family have insisted Aldridge used excessive force. “This decision is a devastating failure of justice, sending the message that law enforcement officers can take a life without consequence,” family attorneys Ben Crump and Harry Daniels said in a statement. Aldridge still works for the Camden County Sheriff’s Office, assigned to its administrative division, said Deputy Dalton Vernakes, a spokesman for Sheriff James Kevin Chaney, but had been placed on administrative leave while Cure’s shooting was investigated by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. “The GBI did a thorough investigation and the district attorney came to the right conclusion regarding Mr. Aldridge’s use of force in this instance,” Aldridge’s attorney, Adrienne Browning, said by email. “We’re happy he’ll be able to continue to serve the citizens of Camden County as he’s done for the past 12 years.” Relatives have said Cure likely resisted because of psychological trauma from his long imprisonment in Florida for an armed robbery he didn’t commit. Officials exonerated and freed him in 2020.