Why We’re Suing Columbus County

Last year, we revealed that dozens of people had been subpoenaed as part of a wide-ranging federal investigation into abuses of power on the part of former Columbus County Sheriff Jody Greene and some of his deputies. Greene, who 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,” resigned under threat of removal from office.

Now the Border Belt Independent and The Assembly are filing a lawsuit to access numerous public records related to the alleged misconduct by Greene and some of his deputies that we’ve been trying to get ahold of for more than year.

From October 2022 through late 2023 we requested, among other things, correspondence between the sheriff’s office’s top brass and county leaders, as well as letters and legal complaints from citizens relating to allegations of misconduct by sheriff’s deputies. 

County officials largely ignored our requests, so we sought help from lawyers. Our attorneys disputed a county attorney’s conclusion that the letters and complaints we requested were “personnel records” protected from disclosure, but still no records were released. 

Our attorneys pressed further. In May, a Wilmington-based lawyer working for the sheriff’s office partially responded to some requests, then ceased responding when our attorneys asked him to provide records we were still owed. 

Our attorneys asked for mediation, but the county’s primary attorney disregarded that request too.

The complaint filed September 13 in Columbus County Superior Court argues that the county government’s response “evinces a pattern of ongoing and willful defiance of our state’s transparency laws in Columbus County.” 

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.

Our attorneys, Bradley Kutrow and Joanna Johnson from McGuireWoods and Beth Soja from Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, have asked that a judge declare that the requested information is indeed public under state law and order county officials to release information “now and going forward as promptly as possible.” 

Additionally, they asked the judge to award court fees, paid by either the responsible agency or “any public employee or public official found by the Court to have knowingly or intentionally committed, caused, permitted, suborned, or participated in a violation of North Carolina’s Public Records Law.”

Carli Brosseau is a reporter at The Assembly. She joined us  from The News & Observer, where she was an investigative reporter. Her work has been honored by the Online News Association and Investigative Reporters and Editors, and published by ProPublica and The New York Times.