At least one attorney has asked a Hamilton County Criminal Court judge to order the sheriff's office to produce dash camera footage involving his client or to dismiss the criminal case should the videos not exist.
The request comes after a "catastrophic data loss" caused thousands of Hamilton County Sheriff's Office videos from dashboard cameras to disappear, something that potentially could jeopardize criminal and civil cases.
The motion, filed on Monday by attorney Robin Flores, states that a letter was sent to the sheriff's office on March 15, 2019, demanding that all body or dash camera recordings related to his client's arrest, as well as jail surveillance footage, be preserved.
Attorneys often send such letters in an effort to protect evidence from being destroyed. If it is destroyed, and a judge finds that the evidence was significant to the suspect's defense, the case could be dismissed.
The videos in question reportedly showed the March 13, 2019, arrest of 25-year-old Kelly Vaughn. He claims to have been severely beaten by two deputies - Christopher Bell and Jacob Goforth - after his family members called 911 seeking help for possible alcohol poisoning.
On the way to the jail, Vaughn kept insulting Bell, according to the civil suit. In response, Bell allegedly slammed on his brakes, and because he didn't fasten Vaughn's seat belt, Vaughn's face hit the screen between him and the deputy.
When they arrived at the jail, Bell reportedly grabbed Vaughn by his hair and pushed him face-first onto the pavement. All the while, Vaughn remained handcuffed, according to the suit. In one of Bell's reports, he states he was "[f]earing for [his] safety" because Vaughn had allegedly threatened to spit on him, and he was "unaware if Vaughn's bodily fluids contained any severe, communicable diseases."
On the ground, Vaughn was allegedly punched in the face nine times.
Bell then allegedly asked an unidentified correctional deputy "if the beating was captured on video." The deputy told him there "should not be any [video] given the position of the vehicle," according to the suit.
"It is our belief that officers involved in this incident may have taken steps to eliminate any video/audio that is available," Flores wrote in his demand to preserve evidence.
The sheriff's office did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment.
Flores asked the sheriff's office to notify him of its efforts to preserve the evidence or of its intent to deny the demand within 15 days. Assistant county attorney Sharon Milling responded the same day, stating, "We are in receipt of your [demand] and have I have [sic] notified the appropriate people."
But, according to Flores, no videos were produced in the discovery phase - when attorneys review evidence they've requested.
"To date, the state has provided NO recordings as demanded and requested by the Defendant," Flores wrote in his motion. "... the [demand] placed the state on notice of the need to preserve the recordings."
On Feb. 25, Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond hand-delivered a letter to the Hamilton County District Attorney's Office disclosing that "a server containing in-car video has had a software failure [on Jan. 13] and the HCSO has experienced unrecoverable data loss of in-car video footage" between Oct. 25, 2018, and Jan. 23 of this year.
Sheriff's office personnel have said that video requests fulfilled before Jan. 13 were preserved because the videos were downloaded and released to the requester. And that only "a couple" of requests made after the failure - none of which involve cases of alleged police brutality, they said - were unfulfilled.
Since Friday, the sheriff's office has not clarified exactly how many requests are pending.
In the meantime, attorneys have filed motions in federal court and now in state court asking judges to order the county to preserve all electronic evidence and, in some civil cases, to allow the plaintiffs to conduct a forensic examination of all technology involved with preserving dash camera videos.
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