Attorneys for the City of Savannah and the family of a man killed by a Savannah Police officer are accusing each other of misrepresenting the facts and potentially tainting a jury pool in a federal lawsuit.
The family of Saudi Lee and their attorneys, William Claiborne and David Utter, hosted a press conference last month to release body-camera footage from Lee’s death. Former SPD officer Ernest Ferguson fatally shot Lee on June 24, 2022, and has since been indicted and sued related to the incident.
In a filing last week, an attorney hired by the city says the press conference and statements Claiborne made were an attempt to taint a future jury pool and asked a federal judge to sanction the lawyers.
The city took special issue with Claiborne likening Lee to Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin, other young Black men killed in what the courts and public believe to be racially-motivated killings.
The lawyers’ “purposeful conduct warrants a sanction more severe than an award of attorneys’ fees or some other monetary penalty. Their antics cannot be undone and have potentially rendered a fair and unprejudiced case and future trial impossible,” alleged Taylor Dove, the attorney hired by the city.
The controversial shooting resulted in murder charges against the former officer, an overhauled background check for new SPD hires and calls for the police chief and mayor to resign back in 2022. Lee’s family filed a federal civil rights suit against the city last year for negligent hiring and against Ferguson for excessive force and wrongful death. The city and Ferguson have both denied any wrongdoing.
For lawyers, a sanction by a federal judge can represent a public or private admonishment by a judge or a monetary punishment. The city asked for a sanction that could include outright dismissal of the lawsuit “or any other sanction which the Court finds proper.”
Claiborne said his team plans to challenge the motion.
“On behalf of the plaintiffs, we want to ensure that the jury pool is not tainted by the false statements that have been made by Mr. Ferguson’s criminal defense attorney and representatives to the city,” said Claiborne, in a statement shared with The Current.
The public’s right to know is at the heart of the legal wrangling over public statements.
David Hudson, an Augusta-based attorney and longtime counsel for print and electronic media, said he believed the city’s motion should not succeed. He said if juries were excluded due to news coverage and videos, there would never be trials involving high-profile people or incidents.
“Juries are not required (to) have no prior knowledge of the case; juries are required (to) have not made up their minds and commit to decide based only on the evidence,” Hudson said. He said judges have tools for screening out potentially biased jurors.
Hudson also said the city opened the doors to the video’s release to the public.
“The city itself filed the video in the record of the civil case. Unless otherwise ordered by the Court, pleadings in a civil case are a public record,” Hudson said.
For background on the case, read our past coverage:
Video interpretation
Claiborne’s comments and the city’s motion for sanctions had to do with differing interpretations of the facts. Those include Lee’s use of a gun and what he said moments before his death.
When Ferguson stopped Lee on the muggy June day in 2022, Lee told Ferguson he was taking out his weapons permit to give to him, according to the footage.
The video shows Lee gave Ferguson his wallet, unholstered a gun from his waistband and ran away from Ferguson.
Within 11 seconds of meeting, Ferguson shot Lee four times in the back, according to the video and prosecutors.
The grand jury indictment accused Ferguson of murder and lying to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation when he said Lee pointed a gun at him first.
It’s a statement that Ferguson continued to express as the months went on after the shooting. He said on his GoFundMe page that the Carver Village neighborhood was a “hotspot for weapon and drug offenses,” and he shot Lee to “stop his actions and threats of death or grave bodily harm to us.”
Ferguson’s criminal defense lawyer reiterated that Lee pointed a gun at the officer.
According to The Current’s review of the footage, it does show Lee with a handgun while running, but it was not pointed at officers.
Also at issue is what Lee said during the encounter while running away from the police officers.
In its legal filing, the city alleges that Lee said “You’re going to have to kill me,” which police lawyers suggest shows Lee’s intent to harm Ferguson and others.
Lawyers for Lee’s family argue that he said something else: “You’re going to kill me.”
At the press conference in question, Claiborne said they were releasing the video to the public in order to combat misinformation.
“We are here to just simply rebut Officer Ferguson’s lies, and nothing does that better than the actual video footage,” he said.