Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard and Rolfe Garrett, one of the two police officers charged in the Rayshard Brooks shooting death.

Defense lawyers who secured a $500,000 bond Tuesday for the fired Atlanta police officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks said the shooting was justified based on an earlier determination by District Attorney Paul Howard that a taser is a deadly weapon.

The defense also criticized Howard during Tuesday's hearing for previously making two stunning allegations when announcing felony charges against officers Garrett Rolfe and Devin Bronson at June 17 news conference. Rolfe attorney Noah Pines said his client never kicked Brooks as he lay dying on the pavement and never uttered the phrase, "I got him," after shooting Brooks twice in the back, as Howard claimed.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jane Barwick set bond on Rolfe, who faces charges including felony murder, aggravated assault, criminal damage to property, violating his oath of office, and failing to render medical aid. Prosecutors contend that while both officers did render medical aid to Brooks, they waited about two minutes before doing so.

At the DA's request, Rolfe has been held without bond since the charges were filed.

Brosnan, who is free on a $50,000 signature bond, also faces multiple felony charges, including aggravated assault, violating his oath of office, and failure to render medical aid.

But the legal debate at the heart of the charges against the two officers over whether or not the deadly shooting was justified that surfaced at Rolfe's bond hearing also highlight contradictory positions that Howard has taken on whether a taser is a deadly weapon in pursuing felony charges against a total of eight Atlanta police officers since George Floyd was asphyxiated by Minneapolis police in May.

Pines cited a felony warrant that Howard's investigator obtained against one of six police officers currently facing aggravated assault and other felony charges in a case that sprang from demonstrations in Atlanta following Floyd's death.

Howard filed multiple felonies against the officers after two college students—Messiah Young and Taniyah Pilgrim—were tasered and dragged from their car during demonstrations in downtown Atlanta on May 30 as police sought to enforce a curfew. Young also suffered a broken wrist and a gash that required stitches, and both students were handcuffed for hours in a police van while being denied protective masks. The warrant justified the felony charges in those cases by describing the taser as a deadly weapon.

But in announcing charges against Rolfe and Brosnan, Howard said the taser Brooks took from Brosnan was inoperative because it had already been fired twice and so posed no threat to the officers.

Executive Assistant DA Clint Rucker fought throughout the hearing to prevent Rolfe's release, calling the late-night shooting that began as a report of a man passed out in his car in a fast-food drive-thru "excessive" and "unnecessary."

Rucker said Brooks was not an immediate threat to Rolfe because he was running away, and that the shooting was unjustified—an argument he sought to use to question Rolfe's good character and whether he could be trusted not to flee if free on bond.

But Pines said Brooks was shot after he committed multiple felonies as he fought the officers after Rolfe attempted to handcuff him for being too intoxicated to drive. Brooks punched Rolfe in the face, knocked Brosnan to the pavement so hard he suffered a concussion, wrested away Brosnan's taser and tasered the officer, then fired the taser at Rolfe as he ran, Pines said. Brooks was shot just after turning and firing the taser at Rolfe in what Pines contended was an aggravated assault.

In a brief filed with the court prior to the bond hearing, Pines argued that Rolfe was justified in using deadly force if he reasonably believed that Brooks possessed a deadly weapon. And, he added, Howard's office has already determined in bringing felony aggravated assault charges against six other Atlanta police that a taser fits that description and that firing it is an assault.

Rolfe's bond also included a number of conditions, among them a requirement that Rolfe wear an ankle monitor, abide by a curfew and not have contact with any Atlanta police. But Barwick rejected one unorthodox request from by Rucker that as a condition of bond, Rolfe be forced to provide prosecutors with the passcode to his cell phone, which prosecutors have so far been unable to unlock.

Barwick agreed with Pines and co-counsel Lance LoRusso that prosecutors' search and seizure of evidence was a matter for another hearing and that ordering him to surrender his passcode in order to secure a bond would violate his rights.