Ex-Fort Worth officer’s murder trial delayed again while request for new judge is weighed
State District Judge David Hagerman has demonstrated in a series of rulings in the case of a former Fort Worth police officer indicted on murder that his impartiality may reasonably be questioned, according to an assessment contained in a motion filed by the defendant’s attorneys that seeks the judge’s recusal.
Hagerman declined on Monday to recuse himself, and the decision on whether to grant or deny the motion and either thrust the case into the domain of another judge or to keep it in Hagerman’s 297th District Court will be left to the presiding judge of the Eighth Administrative Judicial Region of Texas.
The recusal motion, filed on Friday afternoon, cites several steps that it alleges Hagerman has taken in an improper rush to trial. The judge has departed from criminal procedure code in scheduling the trial and in one instance did not enforce a gag order in the case, the motion alleges.
The case, in which jury selection was scheduled for next week, was on Monday again shelved. Scheduling matters have bedeviled the case.
Dean was indicted in the October 2019 shooting death of Atatiana Jefferson in Fort Worth. The trial has previously been delayed by the unavailability of two defense expert witness, other defense counsel schedule conflicts, the illness of a Dean attorney and, first, by a logjam of trials caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Tarrant County administrative Judge George Gallagher was to consider another defense motion seeking the resolution of trial scheduling conflicts between the Dean case and two other cases in which the former officer’s attorneys, Miles Brissette and Bob Gill, represent defendants.
Gallagher ruled Monday that the other cases, a sexual assault of a child indictment and a robbery indictment, should be tried before Dean.
At Monday’s hearing, Gallagher began to explore on what dates the Dean case may be tried.
When the discussion of the schedules of expert witnesses, attorney vacations and other professional commitments with prosecutors Dale Smith and Ashlea Deener and Brissette and Gill entered fall months, Gallagher halted the calendar conversation and proposed another path.
A ruling on the recusal motion should come first, Gallagher said. If a new judge is assigned, the state and defense should begin a discussion on the trial schedule. If the case remains in Hagerman’s court, Gallagher urged the attorneys to hold a formal scheduling conference to reach an agreement on a trial date.
The Monday motion hearing, held during a lunch break in a capital murder of a peace officer trial, drew observers that included attorneys uninvolved in the case. Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Sharen Wilson also was in the gallery.
Dean was not present. He waived his right to appear.
A hearing on the allegations in the recusal motion has not been scheduled, but Gallagher said that in a discussion, Judge David Evans suggested that it could occur in the last week of June. Evans, the presiding judge of the Eighth Administrative Judicial Region of Texas, will rule on the recusal motion.
Brissette and Gill wrote in the motion that Hagerman “has grown increasingly hostile, overbearing and rude to counsel for Mr. Dean.”
“This conduct was especially evident at a hearing held on June 3, 2022, in Judge Hagerman’s court during a hearing on the defense motion to resolve scheduling conflicts,” the recusal motion states. “At that hearing Judge Hagerman acknowledged but refused to follow long-standing local rules, dictated that the case would proceed to trial without lead counsel, Jim Lane, dictated that the case would proceed to trial without a key defense expert witness, and ignored scheduling conflicts that present a clear conflict under state law and local rules.”
Dean’s attorneys wrote they have other cases that were previously set for trial in other courts during the period in which Hagerman later scheduled the Dean trial.
Scheduling in conflicting cases must be resolved by applying Texas criminal procedure code, government code and local rules, Gill and Brissette wrote in a separate motion. The other cases should be prioritized, according to the motion, under the codes and rules that elevate them because the other defendants were indicted before Dean or because of the age of the victim or the nature of the offense.
Dean was released on a bond, another consideration under the local rules. The defendants in the conflicting cases remain in custody.
“While this case has been pending for a while, the court does have more than 500 other cases more than a year old and more than 1500 total cases pending. What’s more, none of the others have the ramifications of this case, nor will they get the press attention,” Gill and Brissette wrote in the recusal motion.
Hagerman has at times expressed irritation at the snags that have led him to a continuance. On May 4, Hagerman rescheduled the case because Lane has been ill and unable to prepare for the trial.
Dean’s other attorneys have said that Lane has been sick since mid-March and has been unable to help with pretrial preparation. Gill said that neither he nor Lane’s doctors know when Lane will be well enough to help with the trial.
Hagerman scheduled jury selection to begin June 21 and opening statements for June 23.
Hagerman said the court “will not be held hostage indefinitely” by unknown factors such as how long Lane’s illness will last. He said Lane’s illness appears to be “serious, debilitating and possibly even dire.” Hagerman said the trial was delayed for 18 months due to COVID-19 and described moving the trial as a “monumental inconvenience.”
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 to a call connected to doors 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.
Dean, 37, did not identify himself as a police officer and shot Jefferson within seconds of seeing her through the window, according to body-worn camera video. He resigned from the police department on the same day he was arrested, two days after the shooting.
This story was originally published June 13, 2022 at 12:16 PM.
