BCA extracts video from Winston Smith Jr.’s cellphone of task force fatally shooting him in 2021

By unlocking his cellphone, state investigators say they have independently corroborated that an armed Winston Smith Jr. filmed members of a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force surrounding his car at an Uptown Minneapolis parking ramp before they fatally shot him nearly 3½ years ago.

The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) announced Tuesday that its digital evidence examiners took a second run at the phone and retrieved the video after software tried more than 780,000 possible passwords before hitting the right one on Nov. 21.

The BCA’s announcement is the first time it has corroborated the video’s existence, more than a year after the Minnesota Star Tribune reported that a private forensic expert hired as part of a civil case had recovered the footage. The agency began its digital password guesswork in October 2023, or about five weeks after the Star Tribune’s report, said BCA spokeswoman Jill Oliveira.

The 35-second video could have been a critical piece of evidence in the direct aftermath, as conflicting accounts of what precipitated the shooting fueled claims from protesters that Smith was “assassinated” and raised questions on whether Smith pulled a gun or was just raising his phone and whether the undercover task force announced itself. There was no bodycam or dashcam footage to answer these questions.

The BCA said it “can now independently confirm that [the video] captures the incident” in south Minneapolis on June 3, 2021, when Smith was killed. Crow Wing County Attorney Donald F. Ryan evaluated the BCA’s case file and in October 2021 ruled that the shooting was justified and decided no charges would be filed.

The video from Smith’s phone and related reports are now under review by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, which has custody of the case file, the BCA said. The office is declining to say what might come of its review or whether it considers the case formally reopened.

In a statement issued moments after the BCA’s on Tuesday, County Attorney Mary Moriarty said, “We appreciate the BCA’s due diligence and promptness in sharing the video after it was recovered. We will communicate further updates as available.”

Neither the BCA nor Moriarty disclosed any specifics about what the video shows other than the encounter in general, although sources detailed its contents to the Star Tribune last year.

During their investigation soon after Smith’s death, BCA agents “using the best technology at the time ... could not unlock the phone and could not confirm that the video existed,” the agency’s statement on Tuesday read.

The BCA said it took another run at accessing the recording “after learning that another entity may have accessed the phone and found video.”

Sources told the Star Tribune last year that the entity was Mark Lanterman, a private forensic expert hired as part of a civil case. Smith’s family hired civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump and asked for an independent investigation of the case. In the summer of 2023, the lawyers for Smith’s family and Norhan Askar, the passenger in Smith’s car, requested a private analyst examine the phone one more time to try to find evidence, leading to the video’s discovery.

The sources said the video captured the 32-year-old Smith ignoring his passenger as she pleaded for him to go with the agents. “Just shoot,” he said, according to sources, and after a brief pause he pulled a handgun from the vehicle’s center console and began to raise it. Then gunfire and broken glass filled the car.

The BCA said last year it “wasn’t aware” of any video and instead turned to the public for help finding footage. Though the BCA took possession of Smith’s phone after his death, sources say the state agency never found the video Smith had recorded. That is, until last month.

The agency declined a request for an interview at the time of the private forensic expert’s discovery, but in a statement, spokesperson Bonney Bowman said: “If ... someone has additional evidence relevant to our investigation, we would appreciate it if they could contact us directly to provide us with that evidence.”

In April, Bowman, who later left the BCA, did not acknowledge the video’s existence and explained to the Star Tribune that in general there could be “a number of reasons that a private party could extract digital evidence that we are unable to, including that they were provided with the phone’s passcode or they have access to technology we are not allowed to use.”

Bowman also pointed out that “technology is constantly evolving and will continue to do so. These sorts of challenges will continue indefinitely as companies change encryption, their technologies, extraction technologies, etc. This is one of the serious challenges we face as law enforcement when it comes to lawful access to devices that is thwarted based on encryption.”

Smith was wanted on a warrant for skipping a sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty to illegal firearm possession. On May 24, 2021, the mother of his then-7-year-old daughter reported his location to Minneapolis police and said he was armed. She later told the Star Tribune that she exaggerated the danger Smith posed to get police to show up faster, but that they never arrived.

On the day of the shooting, a sheriff’s deputy monitoring Smith’s social media saw him post from a lunch date at Stella’s Fish Cafe on Lake Street. Agents with the U.S. Marshals Service’s North Star Violent Offender Task Force surveilled Smith as he finished eating and rode the elevator to the top of the parking ramp.

When he got into the Maserati, the agents boxed him in with their vehicles. The confrontation lasted only a few moments. When it was over, Smith was pronounced dead on the scene.