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A Columbus County Superior Court judge issued an order Monday requiring the county and the sheriff’s office to release additional public records to The Assembly and Border Belt Independent concerning former sheriff Jody Greene and operations at his office.
The news outlets filed suit against the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office last September, alleging that the county’s handling of its public records requests “evinces a pattern of ongoing and willful defiance of our state’s transparency laws.”
From October 2022 through late 2023, reporters requested thousands of documents related to the sheriff’s office operations and Greene himself. The former sheriff made national news after a local TV news station aired a recorded phone call in which he referred to deputies as “Black bastards” and “snakes”; he later resigned under threat of removal from office.
A 2023 investigation by The Assembly and Border Belt Independent revealed that dozens of people had been subpoenaed as part of a wide-ranging federal investigation into abuses of power by Greene and some of his deputies.
Records requests made as part of that investigation went largely unfulfilled until The Assembly and Border Belt Independent took the matter to court. The sheriff’s office has released some of the requested documents in the months since, including correspondence between the sheriff’s deputies and county leaders, and legal complaints from citizens relating to allegations of misconduct by sheriff’s deputies.
Monday’s order from Judge Quintin McGee gives the sheriff’s office and Columbus County until 5 p.m. on Friday, May 16, to review and submit remaining documents to the news outlets.
Erin Epley, a lawyer for the sheriff’s office and the county, said the office cannot release large portions of the remaining requested documents because making them public would violate attorney-client privilege, or that the records concern personnel matters.
North Carolina’s public records law requires government agencies to respond “as promptly as possible.” A Columbus County judge found the sheriff’s office had violated that standard in a separate public records lawsuit three years ago.
Epley said there are more than 4,400 documents related to the records request. She said attorneys have worked “tirelessly” since the lawsuit was brought in September to vet the documents for confidentiality and to determine what could be released.
During Monday’s hearing at the Columbus County Courthouse, Epley said the reason many of the documents were not released sooner was that Columbus County Attorney Amanda Prince believed releasing them would tamper with the ongoing federal investigation into Greene.
As of Monday morning, more than 2,000 of those documents had been reviewed and vetted, Epley said. The remaining 1,300 documents must be assessed and given to the news outlets by Friday, according to McGee’s order.
Joie Johnston, an attorney representing The Assembly and Border Belt Independent, argued that, regardless of their role in a federal investigation, the records remain public and should have been released before the suit was brought, according to North Carolina public records statute.
Disputes remain about which records must be released. Epley and the sheriff’s office claim all of the 14 public records requests the news outlets made will be fulfilled by this Friday. Johnston said only three of the requests have been completed.
Brad Kutrow, a lawyer also representing the news outlets, and Johnston will also ask the judge to award court fees, which will be paid by either Columbus County or the sheriff’s office. They argue that the court “shall allow a party seeking disclosure of public records who substantially prevails to recover its reasonable attorneys’ fees if attributed to those public records.”
Ben Rappaport is a reporter at the Border Belt Independent. A graduate of the Hussman School of Journalism & Media at UNC-Chapel Hill, he previously worked for the Chatham News + Record.