Video showing face-biting suspect to be released

STUART, FLA. – Video showing face-biting suspect Austin Harrouff battling his restraints while being treated at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach should be released to the public, a judge in Martin County ruled on Monday.

The video may bolster the defense’s claim that Harrouff, now 22, was insane in the Aug. 15, 2016 attacks in which he is accused in the deaths of John Stevens and his wife, Michelle Miscon at their home near Tequesta.

Arriving deputies said they found Harrouff growling and biting at Stevens’ face.

Harrouff entered a courtroom on Monday in Stuart wearing a red-striped jail jump suit as his attorneys argued for inclusion of all videos of the defendant fighting hospital restraints.

“The defense is allowed to disclose the video,” ruled Circuit Court Judge Sherwood Bauer.

The hearing centered on a video — described in a defense motion as 1:14 seconds of Harrouff in his hospital bed “fighting against his restraints.”

The filing said, “both hospital staff and a Sheriff ’s Deputy had to use force.”

In court, an attorney representing St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, objected to hospital employees being shown in the potential evidence. Harrouff ’s attorneys had signed an agreement with the hospital, in conducting the video recording.

Judge Bauer ordered hospital staffers be obscured in the form of the video shared for the court case.

“We do have other video clips, but they show only Mr. Harrouff in the clip,” Robert Watson, one of Harrouff’s attorneys, told the judge.

In their motion, defense attorneys said they raised the issue involving the video with hospital employees because Harrouff ’s “behavior in the hospital in the time period after the incident has come into dispute.”

The motion included an email from a deputy assigned to the Harrouff hospital guard detail.

The deputy wrote in the email, Harrouff “keeps waking up from full sedation and trying to kick and get his hands loose.”

The deputy cited a nurse who reportedly said “a normal person should never wake up with the amount of sedation he is on.”

Harrouff is currently set for trial in November.