A Wake County judge is ordering the release of North Carolina State Highway Patrol recordings related to the death of Tyrone Mason, a 31-year-old Black man who died in a single-vehicle crash in the early hours of Oct. 7 last year.
The videos are believed by activists and state officials to reveal brazen misconduct and unethical behavior from a State Highway Patrol trooper and his supervisor surrounding Mason's death.
Superior Court Judge Thomas Currin sided with the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that includes several newsrooms petitioning for the release of the body camera and dashboard camera footage in question.
深夜福利 is one of the newsrooms that joined the lawsuit.
鈥淚 do find that the release of these videos is necessary to advance a compelling public interest, namely, confidence in law enforcement,鈥� Currin said in a Friday morning hearing for the petition.
The Raleigh Police Department also petitioned for the release of the recordings.
Raleigh Police's support is rare, as the police department has typically fought such petitions, according to Mike Tadych, the attorney representing the media organizations in the lawsuit.
In December, the State Bureau of Investigation opened an inquiry into Sgt. Garrett Macario and his supervisor Sgt. Matthew Morrison of the State Highway Patrol for their involvement in the crash. Macario and Morrison have been on administrative leave since the investigation began.
Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman was present at Friday's hearing and also encouraged the release of the footage.
Freeman reviewed the footage of the troopers involved in Mason's death as part of her office's investigation and began to dismiss nearly 200 pending traffic-related cases this year involving the troopers. She said this was due to their credibility being compromised.
"Speaking generally, law enforcement credibility and integrity is incredibly important to the work that we do as prosecutors," Freeman told 深夜福利. "We have a constitutional duty to disclose material that could be used for impeaching their credibility to the defendant. When we have knowledge that an officer鈥檚 commitment to telling the truth is lacking, I believe that it is important that we not proceed with asking others to believe him. Hopefully the public sees that we are intent on pursuing justice in the right way."
Mason's mother, Henrietta Mason, previously said she didn't believe law enforcement's official account of her son's death, and spent months seeking help in investigating the case.
The legal team representing Mason's mother includes Raleigh attorney Sean Cecil and renowned Black civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Bakari Sellers, who publicly called for accountability from the State Highway Patrol and for support from the Governor and Attorney General to release the footage.
Mason's legal team said in a statement Friday afternoon that the decision to release the recordings is an "important step forward" for Mason's family and the people of the state.
"(The judge's) decision is a win for justice and it proves what we鈥檝e believed all along," the legal team said. "Trooper Garrett Macario and Sgt. Matthew Morrison lied to all of us. They didn鈥檛 try to help Tyrone Mason. They weren鈥檛 interested in protecting or serving him. They let him die, they conspired to cover it up and then they hid behind a blue wall for protection."
The footage related to Mason's death will be released within the next four business days.
