Prosecutors seek earlier murder trial for ex-Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean
The Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office has filed a motion objecting to a May trial date for the former Fort Worth police officer charged with murder in a 2019 killing and suggested that it would be sensible to try the case in March.
Defense attorneys who represent Aaron Dean sought and were granted a new, later trial date because two experts were unavailable in January, when the trial was most recently scheduled.
In 297th District Court in Tarrant County, Judge David Hagerman found at a December hearing that proceeding without the expert witnesses would deny a fair trial to Dean, who was indicted in December 2019 in the death of Atatiana Jefferson.
Hagerman tentatively scheduled opening statements in Dean’s trial for May 16.
In determining the new date, Hagerman said that he had also considered the professional commitments of Miles Brissette, one of Dean’s attorneys.
Prosecutors described the continuance as excessive in the motion filed on Wednesday. “A witness’s unavailability in January does not warrant a four month continuance, pushing the present case to May 2022. While counsel for [Dean] are involved in other matters during this time, such obligations similarly do not justify a four month continuance.”
In the Dean case, “justice mandates balancing defendant’s need for his expert witnesses, while also minimizing the length of any further delay,” the prosecutors wrote. “The four month continuance granted by this court exceeds that which was required by defendant’s motion for continuance and unduly delays justice.”
Brissette is to be involved in jury selection and trial in a capital murder case in which the district attorney’s office is seeking the death penalty. Opening statements are scheduled for March 21.
Judge George Gallagher, citing Brissette’s technology skills, deviated in July 2020 from a rotation and appointed Brissette to serve as a standby counsel to James Floyd Jr., who will represent himself at trial in 396th District Court.
Floyd is charged in the death of John Porter, who police have said was beaten with a metal table and shot in the head during a robbery in March 2017. Floyd is also accused of shooting Porter’s wife, who survived.
The district attorney’s office proposed in the motion that Hagerman schedule Dean’s trial for March 21, the date on which the Floyd trial will be underway. The district attorney’s office wrote that date “more appropriately balances the interests of justice in this case than the present settings.”
The office requested that Hagerman schedule a hearing on its motion objecting to the May trial date.
Assistant Criminal District Attorney Dale Smith argued at the December hearing on the defense continuance motion that it was insufficient under an element of Texas criminal code because the motion did not describe material facts about which the two expert witnesses would testify.
Dean attorney Bob Gill said he would offer an account of the expected testimony to Hagerman in his chambers, an arrangement that Hagerman said that he approved in order for the defense to be able to discuss a portion of its strategy. A court reporter was present for the session, and Hagerman sealed the record.
A grand jury indicted Dean, who is white, on murder after he shot to death Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, through a window while responding on Oct. 12, 2019, to a call about doors being open at her house. Jefferson was playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew, Zion Carr, when she thought she heard a prowler in the back yard, grabbed a handgun from her purse and pointed it toward the window, Zion told a forensic interviewer, according to an arrest warrant affidavit supporting Dean’s arrest.
In the continuance motion, Dean’s attorneys suggested that the testimony of the unavailable witnesses, Aaron Pierce and Grant Fredericks, was a vital element of their case.
Pierce is an expert in forensic mental health matters and offers testimony on, among other topics, forensic interviewing protocols and eyewitness credibility, according to his website.
Zion described the circumstances of the shooting to an Alliance for Children forensic interviewer on the day it occurred and is on a witness list.
Fredericks is a certified forensic video analyst.
This story was originally published January 13, 2022 at 5:09 PM.
