BATON ROUGE - Attorneys for three former Baton Rouge police officers say a body camera recording of a plan to destroy another - potentially incriminating - body camera recording should not be used against them in court, where the officers are charged with obstruction of justice and malfeasance.

Prosecutors disagree, saying the recording in question was triggered by the officers' actions and that officers who are issued body cameras shouldn't expect privacy in a police station parking lot.

The case against former Street Crimes Unit members Douglas Chutz, Todd Thomas and Troy Lawrence Sr. is scheduled for a motion hearing Wednesday. It stems from allegations that the officers roughed up someone during a 2020 strip search and then disposed of a body camera video that documented the encounter.

In early April, defense attorneys asked the court to throw out a body camera recording of Chutz talking with Thomas about the strip search and alleged beating, and referencing a plan to dispose of a body camera video that was triggered by Lawrence pulling a TASER on a man who officers said was not cooperating in a strip search. That man had been arrested in 2020 along with NBA YoungBoy and more than a dozen other people who were allegedly caught with guns and drugs and were said to be making a music video on Chippewa Street.

During the strip search in a bathroom at the Baton Rouge Police Joint Sex Offender Registry Office, prosecutors say Lawrence pulled his TASER and pointed it at the man being searched before Thomas delivered "one or more blows."

The TASER being "armed" activated the recording function of nearby body cameras, including those issued to Chutz and to Officer Martele Jackson.

Jackson's body camera recorded the bathroom encounter, but his camera was never docked, uploaded to the BRPD server or returned to him. His camera was never recovered, prosecutors said in a memorandum filed Thursday.

Chutz's body camera was attached to his vest in the trunk of his patrol car. It was close enough to Lawrence's TASER that it was activated, and recorded the interior of the trunk for more than an hour before it captured the exchange defense attorneys are now trying to have suppressed.

The two men were near the trunk of the police car, talking about disposing of Jackson's camera.

The footage from inside the trunk caught Chutz saying "Cameras don't cost but $80" with Thomas agreeing to a plan to dispose of the evidence. Thomas said "I'm going to stay and f***ing smash it and scoop it up... and take it to the Mississippi River."

When Chutz later placed that camera into the docking station, it automatically uploaded the video and audio content to BRPD's server.

The defense argued that the conversation was intended to be between Chutz and Thomas and they had no idea a BRPD camera was "listening." The defense said the recording occurred without their consent in a circumstance in which they had a reasonable expectation of privacy.

"They were by themselves talking quietly, with no one else in earshot," the memo said.

The prosecution, however, argued that the parking lot of a police precinct had minimal privacy rights and that the footage could be used because no government actor captured the recording. It was Chutz's own body camera that recorded his conversation, and the officers obviously knew about the TASER triggering cameras to record because they knew Jackson's camera was activated that way.

Additionally, Chutz docked his own body camera and uploaded the content to the BRPD server, which prosecutors say was transferred to the state rather than being recovered during a search.

"Seldom do you see the person in charge of video equipment blame that very equipment as the basis for its non-use," said the prosecutor's memo opposing the video's suppression. "It has happened here and it turns all logic on its ear. Defendants now seek to exclude evidence from their own cameras because they decided to talk."