Legal expert says video would be ‘critical’ for court dispute. Decatur Police chief cites purge policy – but timeline doesn’t hold
By Johnny Edwards | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – Decatur police visited the home of Municipal Court Chief Judge Rhathelia Stroud on the same day a disputed will is dated that gave her control over her dying brother’s estate, but the department says no bodycam footage of the visit exists.
Department policy says officers must activate their body-worn cameras on “all calls for service.” A family member challenging the will’s validity, claiming “forgery,” says any footage showing the state of her father on his deathbed that day would be vital to her case in DeKalb County Probate Court.
“That would be proof in and of itself right there,” the judge’s niece, Gemina Stroud, told The Center Square. “You would be able to see his frail face. You would be able to see how he was on that Friday … I just don’t think he was of a sound mind.”
But the police department says no video exists of the Sept. 5 welfare check, which the niece requested amid a dispute with her aunt over her father’s care. Nor can Decatur Police produce an incident report documenting officers entering the judge’s home or what they observed about the late Johnny Stroud.
The only police record provided to The Center Square is a one-page dispatch log listing the judge’s last name and address, with officer arrival and departure times.
Johnny Stroud died of colon cancer twelve days later, on Sept. 17, at age 68. His sister, the judge, filed the will in DeKalb County Probate Court in November.
The will, dated Sept. 5, named the judge executrix of her brother’s estate. It authorized her to sell his home, valued at $244,000 by the county tax appraiser’s office, and use proceeds to compensate herself for assisting him during his illness. It left nothing to his two adult children beyond asking his sisters to share his personal belongings with them “at their discretion” and to divvy up remaining house sale proceeds “as determined by my Executrix.”
The Center Square reported last month that, in a court action, Judge Stroud’s niece alleges her father was too “physically debilitated and cognitively impaired” to execute a will, and that someone else wrote his signature.
She hired a forensic document examiner to compare the signatures on the will to seven other documents signed by Johnny Stroud while he was alive. The examiner concluded in her written report that “someone did indeed forge the signatures of Johnny Stroud.” That report has not been filed in Probate Court.
The filed challenge of the will notes the daughter’s call for a police welfare check, citing “the likelihood of undue influence, coercion, or manipulation” of her father. Her court filing says Judge Stroud “refused to allow the Decedent – her own brother – to see his children and close friends. The family was forced to request and obtain a welfare check due to concerns for the Decedent’s well-being and possible isolation.”
Gemina Stroud is asking a Probate Court judge to declare the will invalid, in a case that has the entire DeKalb County judiciary recused because of her aunt’s position as a DeKalb judge herself. The county’s Superior Court chief judge has asked the neighboring Atlanta Judicial Circuit to assign a replacement judge.
‘The bodycam would be critical’
Law professor and former DeKalb County District Attorney J. Tom Morgan said that, even with a signature expert’s testimony, invalidating the will in court will be difficult since one of her father’s signatures is notarized and two witnesses also signed. And handwriting examination is an art, not a science, he said, so expert testimony alone would not disprove the will’s validity.
“She would have to show that he’s not competent to sign it,” Morgan said of the daughter. “It’s a tough burden to overcome.”
That means any police video recorded Sept. 5 would be essential to the case, he said.
“The bodycam would be critical, for either side,” Morgan, a criminal law professor at Western Carolina University, said.
Judge Stroud has not responded to repeated messages from The Center Square over the past four weeks – left on her personal phone, at both of her judicial offices, and by personal and county email. The attorney representing her in the Probate case, Dana Ashford, also has not responded to phone and email messages sent to her law office.
Through her attorney in correspondence obtained by The Center Square, Judge Stroud called her niece’s allegations “unsupported” and “factually and legally deficient.” In letters between attorneys in the case, provided by the niece, Ashford said the witnesses will testify they saw Johnny Stroud “willingly execute his Will on September 5, 2025, and that he appeared to be of sound mind at the time.” Gemina Stroud alleges in her court challenge that the notary and two witnesses are “close personal friends or long-standing acquaintances” of Judge Stroud and were not impartial.
Neither Judge Stroud nor her attorney responded to messages last week asking to speak about the welfare check that same day.
After trying for days to reach Decatur Police Chief Scott Richards by phone and email, The Center Square found him outside a City Commission meeting last week, where he refused to answer questions about the case in person – only in writing.
“We’re looking into it, and I’ll have you a reply,” he said.
In an email the next day, Richards said the welfare check didn’t warrant an incident report with a detailed narrative “as there was no crime committed.” He said because the bodycam videos of the incident were deemed “non-evidentiary,” they only had to be retained by the department for six months, which expired March 4.
However, The Center Square filed an Open Records Act request for the footage on February 2 – more than a month before the stated expiration date. The department responded at the time that, aside from the dispatch log, “there are no other reports or videos.”
The dispatch log references bodyworn footage, saying within seconds of officers departing the scene, “Incident Data Sent to Utility BodyWorn Service for agency DECATUR PD.”
Gemina Stroud filed her own records request for the footage on February 5. The department responded in writing: “A search of our video management system was conducted; however, no body-worn camera footage was located.”
Asked why the footage wasn’t produced before the retention date expired, Chief Richards said his open records officer was out of the office.
“Once I have time to investigate, I will get back with you,” he said.
The chief declined to identify the responding officers or make the lead officer available for an interview.
Calls for outside investigation
Rhathelia Stroud holds dual government roles. She has served as a Decatur Municipal Court judge since 1999 and as its chief judge since 2016 – a position appointed by the City Commission to preside over traffic offenses, parking tickets, local ordinance violations, and misdemeanors.
She also serves as a DeKalb County Magistrate Court judge – appointed by the county’s chief magistrate – presiding over Misdemeanor Mental Health Court, a diversion program for low-level offenders.
Ed Williams, a local government accountability advocate who chairs the group Concerned Citizens for Effective Government, reviewed Decatur Police’s policies on bodycams and incident reports, as well as the existing documentation of the Sept. 5 welfare check. He said the department’s only record of the call, the dispatch log, isn’t sufficient.
Williams said the department has created the appearance of a conflict of interest by straying from its own policies on a matter personally involving the city’s chief judge. He said the DeKalb County District Attorney should request a Georgia Bureau of Investigation probe into the missing video and the handling of the welfare check.
Williams also called on the City Commission, city attorney and city manager to open their own administrative inquiry.
“It seems like they’re not being transparent,” Williams said. “The only way to get beyond that is to get someone with the authority, from outside, to investigate the incident.”
Morgan, the former DeKalb DA, also said the case raises questions warranting a criminal investigation.
The welfare check
Johnny “Pokey” Stroud, an Army veteran and retired bus driver, had been discharged from Atlanta’s VA hospital in late August under hospice care.
In his daughter’s account, she feuded with her aunt during her father’s final days. She had agreed, though, to allow his two sisters to move him to their home in Decatur, she said.
She said other family members informed her she was banned from entering the judge’s home, where her father was bedridden and heavily medicated. She said she called her father on his cell phone on Sept. 5 and told him she wasn’t allowed to visit.
“And he just started crying,” Stroud said. “I heard him in the background saying, ‘Please let her see me. Y’all know I’m hurting. Y’all are making me hurt worse. Do this for me.'”
She requested police meet her at the judge’s home. She said she recalls three officers being on the scene. They went inside and exited less than 10 minutes later, she said, and she spoke with the lead officer.
“I asked them how my dad was doing, how he was looking,” Stroud said. “He was just like, ‘He’s just kind of out of it’ … I guess he was asleep and not alert.”
Stroud said she and the officer also talked about her aunt holding medical power of attorney for her father, and the officer suggested the daughter hire a family law attorney.
The Decatur Police policy on storing body-worn camera footage says it follows the state’s records retention schedule for local governments. That policy says six months for bodycam, but if the footage “can reasonably be anticipated to be necessary for pending litigation” it should be kept for 30 months.
The Center Square has asked Police Chief Richards why, given that reported conversation about hiring a family law attorney, the bodycam footage wasn’t preserved as evidence for potential litigation. He has not answered that question.
