BRUNSWICK, Ga. — UPDATE: The family press conference has concluded. You can re-watch it in full in the video player above this story.
Among those to speak at the press conference were Leonard Cure's mother.
"Unfortunately for me and my family, there is no peace to be had," she said.
She recounted the years her son was in jail, her efforts to get him freed, and the haunting effect his incarceration had even upon his release. She said he was "terrified of the police" and "afraid to go anywhere."
And she was afraid, too.
"I went to see him every weekend (in jail), to try to give him courage and let him know I would be there one day when he came home," she said. "So when he came home I was frightened. Every time he left the house, to go to work, wherever, I was calling forever trying to figure out where he was."
Of Staff Sgt. Buck Aldridge, who shot Cure during the traffic stop and is one of the subjects of the lawsuit, she said "somebody needs to pay."
"Money doesn't mean a damn thing to me. Give me my son back," she said.
Original story below
The family of Leonard Cure, a man who spent 16 years wrongfully imprisoned before his exoneration and release, will announce a federal lawsuit Tuesday morning against the Camden County Sheriff's Office in the traffic stop shooting last year of the 53-year-old.
Cure had been out of jail for three years at the time of the shooting last October. His family previously announced in December an intent to sue the sheriff's office and Staff Sgt. Buck Aldridge in Cure's death.
A press conference is due to be held at 10 a.m. ET in front of the Frank M. Scarlett Federal Building in Brunswick. The family is expected to offer remarks, and civil rights attorney Harry Daniels and Camden County NAACP representatives will also speak.
11Alive's Jacksonville sister station First Coast News reported in December that the family was planning to sue for $16 million -- $1 million for every year he spent wrongfully imprisoned.
Cure, who lived in the Atlanta area, was convicted of a 2003 armed robbery of a drug store in Florida’s Dania Beach. His conviction came from a second jury after the first one deadlocked. Cure was sentenced to life in prison because he had previous convictions for robbery and other crimes.
In 2020, the Broward State Attorney’s Office new Conviction Review Unit asked a judge to release Cure from prison. Broward’s conviction review team said it found “troubling” revelations that Cure had solid alibis that were previously disregarded and no physical evidence or solid witnesses to put him at the scene.
An independent review panel of five local lawyers concurred with the findings.
Cure was released that April after his sentence was modified. In December 2020, a judge vacated his conviction and sentence.
“I’m looking forward to putting this situation behind me and moving on with my life,” Cure told the South Florida Sun Sentinel at the time.
“I can only imagine what it’s like to know your son is innocent and watch him be sentenced to life in prison, to be exonerated and ... then be told that once he’s been freed, he’s been shot dead,” Seth Miller, executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida, said after the news of Cure's death.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said at the time he'd been pulled over on I-95 near the Georgia-Florida state line. He got out of the car at the deputy’s request and cooperated at first, the GBI said, but a struggle ensued when he was told he was being arrested.
Video of the traffic stop was later released. Aldridge's attorney said in November the video shows he fired in self-defense.
"The first aggressor in this case was Buck Aldridge," Daniels, the family attorney, asserted in December. "The first person who initiated some type of force was Buck Aldridge."
According to an Associated Press account of the video, published in November, it showed Cure arguing, but obeying commands to get out and put his hands on his truck, before ignoring commands to put his hands behind him.
That's when Aldridge fired his Taser into Cure's back. Cure fought back, and video shows them grappling beside the highway. Cure maintained a grip on Aldridge's face and neck after being struck with a baton.
“Yeah, b****!” Cure could be heard saying. He could be seen slumping to the ground after Aldridge fired a single shot.
Retired LaGrange Police Chief Louis Dekmar, etired police Maj. Neill Franklin and a third expert all told the AP they believed the shooting was legal, as Aldridge appeared to be in danger when he fired. But they also criticized how Aldridge began the encounter by shouting at Cure and said he made no effort to deescalate.
“He escalated the situation with Mr. Cure,” said former Memphis police officer Thaddeus Johnson, a criminal justice professor at Georgia State University and a senior fellow for the Council on Criminal Justice. “He has no control over his emotions.”
The Associated Press also reported in November that personnel records showed Aldridge was fired in August 2017 by a police department in the same Georgia county after he threw a woman to the ground and handcuffed her during a traffic stop. The Camden County Sheriff's Office hired him nine months later.
Relatives have said Cure likely resisted because of psychological trauma from spending 16 years imprisoned in Florida for an armed robbery he didn’t commit. Officials exonerated and freed him in 2020.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating Cure's death and will submit its findings to prosecutors.