What to Know Today
North Carolina prosecutor says shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. was justified. The verdict from Pasquotank County District Attorney Andrew Womble offered a starkly different picture of the April 21 incident than Brown’s family, whose lawyers have called the shooting an execution. Brown was killed while in his car after officers served him a search warrant. Womble released a portion of bodycam footage on Tuesday, while saying officers were justified in using fatal force because Brown’s vehicle posed a deadly threat. The footage shows a chaotic scene in which Brown’s car is backing up as armed officers swarm him, and then driving away as they fire upon him. The family and the North Carolina attorney general called on a state court to release all bodycam footage, not just the portion of relatively low-quality video released Tuesday, which did not necessarily line up with eyewitness reports. During his press conference, Womble added that deputies on the scene knew that Brown was not known to carry weapons and was unarmed during the fatal encounter. “To say this shooting was justified, despite the known facts, is both an insult and a slap in the face to Andrew’s family, the Elizabeth City community and to rational people everywhere,” read a statement from Brown’s family counsel.
With gun violence testing his agenda, Larry Krasner easily wins primary fight. The progressive Philadelphia prosecutor, who worked to dismantle the tough-on-crime policies of his predecessors, faced fierce blowback among police unions and their allies. Opposing forces seized on the city’s elevated rates of gun violence — homicides were up 40 percent last year — and threw their weight behind former city prosecutor Carlos Vega. But Krasner easily held off Vega by more than 40,000 votes. Related: Though Krasner won, his reform agenda is facing a number of headwinds, as my colleague J. Brian Charles reported last week.
Dissident NRA board member is fundraising to appeal the bankruptcy ruling. Phillip Journey, a Kansas judge who previously spearheaded an effort to get an independent examiner appointed during the National Rifle Associaition’s bankruptcy proceedings, is trying to raise $100,000 to launch an appeal to a Texas’s judge’s decision last week to dismiss the bankruptcy push as lacking good faith. While Journey testified against NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre during the hearings, he is also wary of the New York attorney general’s ongoing attempt to dissolve the organization entirely. So, as The Reload reports, Journey is hoping to keep the bankruptcy alive, have a trustee take over NRA operations, and have a committee of NRA members chart the organization’s reorganization. Board members Owen “Buz” Mills and Rocky Marshall are supporting Journey. ICYMI: In our most recent weekly newsletter, Will Van Sant previewed the road ahead for the NRA after its court loss. Among other things, experts told him a bankruptcy appeal was a long shot. (You can sign up for The Weekly here.)
Supreme Court unanimously rules against warrantless gun seizure for man being evaluated for suicide. The high court ruled that police violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure when taking a Rhode Island man’s guns from his home after he agreed to go to the hospital following a dispute with his wife. The court said exceptions to the Fourth Amendment that previously allowed a warrantless search of vehicles or other public settings do not apply to the home.
Man charged over Capitol insurrection under house arrest for firearms violations. Patrick Montgomery, a Colorado resident, was indicted in federal court on several counts, including assaulting a police officer on January 6. But after learning of a March incident in which Montgomery shot and killed a mountain lion with a handgun, prosecutors say he violated the terms of his pretrial release, which included a restriction on possessing guns.
Data Point
$25 million — the funding earmarked for an Office of Violence Prevention in Austin, Texas, last summer that is supposed to go toward community violence intervention programs. With the city facing still-elevated gun violence this year, a City Council member is attempting to expedite the launch. [Austin American-Statesman]
