A Georgia man released after serving 16 years for a crime he did not commit has been shot dead by police during a traffic stop.
Leonard Cure, 53, was sentenced to life for armed robbery in 2003 but freed in 2020 after a review found there had been no physical evidence or witnesses, and that his solid alibis had been ignored.
He moved to Atlanta and was returning from a visit to his mother when a Camden County deputy pulled him over on Monday morning as he drove down Interstate 95 near the Georgia-Florida line.
‘Cure complied with the officer’s commands until learning that he was under arrest,’ the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
‘After not complying with the deputy’s requests, the deputy tased Cure.
Leonard began campaigning against wrongful convictions with visits to schools and lawmakers after his exoneration in 2020
He was returning from a visit to his mother when a Camden County deputy pulled him over on Monday morning as he drove down Interstate 95
Camden County Sheriff Jim Proctor lashed out at ‘news media, and rumors within the community, (which) have provided the public with misinformation’
‘Cure assaulted the deputy. The deputy used the Taser for a second time and an ASP baton; however, Cure still did not comply.
‘The deputy pulled out his gun and shot Cure. EMT’s treated Cure, but he later died.’
Camden County Sheriff’s office said it had turned over bodycam footage of the incident to the bureau which is investigating the killing.
But friends who helped exonerate Cure said they were ‘devastated’ at the death of a man who had himself begun campaigning against wrongful convictions with visits to schools and lawmakers.
‘The Leonard we knew was a smart, funny and kind person,’ said a spokesman for Broward State Attorney Harold Pryor.
‘He had been working a job in security, he was hoping to go to college and wanted to work in broadcast radio production, he was buying his first home.’
Cure was convicted of the 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.
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Cure was released that April after his sentenced 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.
In June, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a claims bill granting Cure $817,000 in compensation for his conviction and imprisonment, along with educational benefits.
Cure had been represented in his exoneration case by the Innocence Project of Florida.
The group´s executive director, Seth Miller, said he was devastated by news of the death, which he heard from Cure´s family.
‘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,’ he said.
Miller said he has represented dozens of people convicted of crimes who were later exonerated.
‘Even when they´re free, they always struggled with the concern, the fear that they´ll be convicted and incarcerated again for something they didn´t do,’ he added.
Camden County Sheriff Jim Proctor lashed out at ‘news media, and rumors within the community, (which) have provided the public with misinformation’.
‘It is common for rumors to occur, but blatant false information by some media representatives should not be tolerated,’ the office wrote on its Facebook page.
The office’s media spokesman Captain Larry Bruce told Dailymail.com that a local TV reporter had wrongly suggested that that the sheriff’s office has no jurisdiction over I-95.
‘I responded to her and said the sheriff is the top guy and he has control of every inch of Camden County,’ he added.
The sheriff was slammed in 2013 when he first suspended and then reinstated his deputy Chad Palmer who had dressed in blackface as a black prisoner in a striped jail uniform ‘picking cotton’ at a Halloween party.
There is no suggestion that Deputy Palmer was involved in Leonard’s traffic stop.
‘Extremely insensitive, is what it is,’ he explained at the time.
‘I do not believe Chad Palmer is a racist. I have had to take action.
‘There’s been a lot of thought, a lot of prayer into this decision,’ he added.
‘I thought about firing him but decided against it.’
