Recap: Jury finds ex-Fort Worth cop Aaron Dean guilty of manslaughter

BREAKING NEWS: The jury has found former Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean guilty of manslaughter in the death of Atatiana Jefferson, who he shot through a window at her home while responding to a call on Oct. 12, 2019.

The trial will enter a second phase Friday morning for the jury to determine Dean’s sentence, which could range from two to 20 years in prison. Jurors could choose to recommend probation.

This is believed to be the first time an officer or former officer in Tarrant County has been convicted of a killing committed while on duty.

Dean appeared to show no emotion as the verdict was read. He sat by himself in the courtroom as others walked out. The Tarrant County Jail log shows he has been taken into custody.

Dean was indicted on a charge of murder but the jury was given the option of convicting on the lesser charge of manslaughter, which is a killing resulting from recklessness. The jury deliberated for about 13 hours before announcing its verdict just after 2:30 p.m. Thursday.

Chants of “Black women matter!” could be heard in the hallway outside the courtroom just before the verdict was read.

Supporters of Jefferson’s family gathered in the hallway were upset that the verdict wasn’t murder. Some began chanting, “No justice, no peace!” and someone yelled out, “What is wrong with Fort Worth?”

Family friend and activist Olinka Green yelled, “This is murder!”

“If I had killed a cat I’d’ve been locked up for the rest of my life,” Green told the Star-Telegram. “I probably [would] get the chair. It means white privilege. This is Texas. Everyone expected him to go home. They let a murderer walk free, a white man walk free. This is a token. No one is happy.”

Jefferson’s siblings left the courtroom right after the jury was dismissed.

Dean’s family hugged him and also left the courtroom without commenting.

A small group gathered on the street outside the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center continued to chant, “No justice, no peace,” shortly after the verdict was read.

In a statement Thursday afternoon, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker said, “Today’s verdict provides a measure of justice, though it does not change the fact that a tragedy occurred that should have never happened. This tragedy for me has always been about Atatiana Jefferson – about her life as a daughter, sister, and aunt, and her lasting legacy. Many people in our community are hurting, and we must come together with compassion and grace. Our prayers are with the jury as they continue their service in the sentencing phase. May God bless Atatiana’s memory and continue to be with her family.”

An unidentified activist group left a casket — painted with the names of Jefferson and other people killed by Fort Worth police — on the lawn outside Parker’s home on Saturday.

Parker was elected mayor in June 2021. and served as chief of staff for the previous mayor, Betsy Price. Last month, Parker joined four members of the city council in voting against the formation of a community police advisory board.

PREVIOUS STORY: Jurors in former Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean’s murder trial have reached a verdict Thursday afternoon after conferring for about eight hours on Wednesday and more than five hours on Thursday.

The verdict will be read at 2:30 p.m.

The jury began deliberating about 11:15 a.m. Wednesday on a verdict to decide whether Dean is guilty of a crime after he shot Atatiana Jefferson through a window at her home on Oct. 12, 2019.. Jurors left for the night just before 7 p.m. Wednesday and were sequestered. They resumed deliberations about 8:30 a.m. Thursday and had been weighing the case for a total of more than 13 hours as of about 2 p.m.

If Dean is convicted of murder or a lesser charge, a second phase of the trial would begin to determine his punishment.

In his instructions to the jurors, Judge George Gallagher said they will be allowed to consider the lesser offense of manslaughter as an option.

Just before 2 p.m. Wednesday, the jurors asked the judge for sticky notes and another look at some of the photographic evidence, but the judge didn’t disclose what that evidence was.

Dean was responding to a neighbor’s call about open doors at Jefferson’s home on East Allen Avenue about 2:30 a.m. and has said he thought a burglary might have been in progress. Dean testified this week that he saw Jefferson point a gun directly at him through the window before he shot her, and his attorneys have tried to show that he acted in self-defense. Prosecutors have presented evidence, including body-camera video, to show that Dean never said he saw a gun, didn’t verbally identify himself as an officer and didn’t give Jefferson time to respond to his commands to put her hands up.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys made their closing arguments Wednesday morning

Prosecutor: ‘It’s murder’

Assistant Criminal District Attorney Ashlea Deener began the prosecution’s closing arguments by talking about the home as a sacred place and reminding the jury of the life that Dean took. She showed photos of Jefferson at her college graduation, on a family vacation and with the young nephew who witnessed her death.

“If you can’t feel safe in your own home, where can you feel safe?” Deener asked

“The safety of our homes has been compromised by what he did,” she said of Dean. “He took her away — 28 years old.”

She argued that Dean had preconceived ideas about Jefferson’s Hillside Morningside neighborhood being a dangerous area and that he didn’t serve and protect all citizens equally, like the many good Fort Worth police officers she knows.

Other officers investigated the shooting and “determined it’s murder,” Deener said.

She told jurors they can’t just take a defendant’s word that it was self-defense and he was in fear for his life, or else no defendant would ever be held accountable. It’s only self-defense if to a reasonable person, it would have been immediately necessary to use deadly force and if Jefferson’s actions were unlawful, she said.

“We have not seen one shred of evidence that anything Atatiana did was unlawful,” Deener said, adding that Jefferson had a fundamental right to have a gun in her home and to protect herself and her 8-year-old nephew.

She argued that Dean was corrupted by power and that there were “many, many, many, many things” he did wrong in his response to the call. “You can’t create the danger and then claim self-defense,” Deener said.

Defense: ‘What Aaron said is truthful’

Defense attorney Bob Gill was up next and showed jurors a photo of Dean in uniform during his closing arguments.

Gill called the shooting a tragedy but said, “A tragedy doesn’t always equal a crime.”

Gill emphasized that Dean also had fundamental rights to self-defense and to protect his partner, Officer Carol Darch. He said Jefferson had those rights up until the moment that she pointed a gun at a police officer.

“We never under the law, ever have the right to point a firearm at a uniformed police officer. The rights stop there,” Gill said. “Because that conduct is a first-degree felony under the laws of the state of Texas.”

Gill said it was the state’s burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dean did not act in self-defense and reminded jurors of their instructions not to be swayed by sympathy or public opinion.

Dean “took the witness stand because he wanted you to hear everything,” Gill said. “And he told you what happened.”

The jurors should know that “what Aaron said is correct and truthful because it was the same thing that was said by the other two eyewitnesses to what happened there that day,” Gill said. Those other two witnesses were Jefferson’s nephew, Zion Carr, and Dean’s body-camera video, he said.

Gill replayed for the jury video from Zion’s conversation with a forensic interviewer trained to talk to children, filmed hours after the shooting. In the interview, Zion said his aunt heard noises in their back yard, grabbed her handgun from her purse, made sure there was a round in the chamber, and pointed it at the window. Zion said he thought he could see the officer’s badge, gun and flashlight through the window, that the male officer shouted at his aunt to put her hands up and that he shot her when “she didn’t do that.”

When Zion answered attorneys’ questions in court last week, he said his aunt held the gun down by her side and didn’t point it at the window. Zion’s “testimony took a real different turn from the truth,” Gill said, adding that he believes Zion succumbed to outside pressure to change his testimony.

A video analyst who testified for the defense said the bodycam video showed Jefferson’s hand extended with a dark object in it.

“You recall during jury selection, we asked you, does an officer have to wait until he’s dead before he exercises his right of self-defense? Of course not,” Gill said.

Gill emphasized that police work is inherently dangerous and officers have to make split-second decisions. He said that prosecutors and their witnesses did “a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking about how Aaron handled that call.” He said Dean followed the police department’s general orders for an open structure call by trying to make a complete inspection of the house from all sides before doing anything else, like calling for backup.

“It’s simple, you go out there and do the best you can,” Gill said.

Gill said that the neighbor who made the call, James Smith, didn’t go knock on the door himself because he didn’t have a weapon. It was dark on the street, and Smith said he had never seen the front door open before. Zion has said he and Jefferson opened the doors to let out smoke after burning hamburgers.

Prosecutors have emphasized that Dean did not perform CPR and waited a full minute after entering Jefferson’s bedroom before he pressed an afghan to her chest to try to stop the bleeding.

Gill referred to the medical examiner’s testimony, saying that the wound would have killed Jefferson no matter what Dean did. “No one was going to be able to save her out there in that house,” Gill said. “That’s a tragic fact, but it’s a fact.”

Dean reacted “reasonably ... tragically ... but correctly under the law,” Gill concluded.

‘Looks like we have a weapon here’

The prosecution is allowed to split its arguments and have the first and last word. Assistant District Attorney Dale Smith made the final arguments to the jury, frequently pointing his finger at Dean as he attacked the officer’s actions. Dean appeared to be taking notes and did not look up at the prosecutor.

Smith said what Dean did and said on the body-camera video proves he did not see a gun and he “didn’t know what he saw” when he shot Jefferson.

Dean continued to stand in front of the window after firing a single shot and didn’t warn Darch that he had seen a gun “because he wasn’t sure what was on the other side of that window where he just shot,” Smith said.

When the officers entered the house, Dean didn’t try to help Jefferson “as she’s dying in front of him,” but instead looked between her feet and said, “Looks like we have a weapon here,” Smith said.

Dean sighed in relief, he said.

“That’s not the declaration of a person who was sure of what they saw,” Smith said. “Because he didn’t know when he pulled that trigger.”

No witnesses testified that Dean saw the green laser on Jefferson’s gun hit his chest, despite the defense mentioning that in opening statements, Smith said, “because he didn’t see it.”

Jefferson would still be alive if Dean had knocked on the door or announced his presence, Smith said.

The prosecutor said Dean didn’t care about his partner’s safety or the safety of anyone in the house. “He’s a hard charger. He is gung ho. He was going to get in that back yard,” Smith said.

Jefferson was the one who had no choices in the situation, he said. “Her only crime was love and protection of her nephew,” Smith said.

“This defendant is making life-ending decisions and she can’t do anything about it because she has no idea,” he said. Jefferson saw somebody in her back yard and didn’t know who it was, he said.

Only half a second passed between Dean shouting his command of, “Put your hands up” and firing the fatal shot, Smith said. “She never had a chance.”

Smith argued that the medical examiner’s testimony indicated that Jefferson was leaning forward. She didn’t have her hands in front of her because her hands weren’t hit by the flying glass, he said, while laying autopsy photos in front of the jurors.

“An accident — that’s spilling your milk at breakfast. This is murder,” Smith said.

Dean “was hard charging. He was gung ho. He finally got some action and he was going to pull his weapon and because of that Atatiana will never breathe again, because of that Zion no longer has an aunt, because of that two sisters and a brother no longer have a sister, and that’s not OK, ” the prosecutor concluded.

During the arguments, the jurors seemed attentive, looking at the attorneys speaking. One appeared to glance over at Jefferson’s family. Members of Jefferson’s and Dean’s families were sitting on opposite sides of the courtroom and were quiet throughout the arguments.

Jury instructions

If the jury convicts Dean of murder, meaning he intentionally or knowingly killed Jefferson and did not reasonably act in self-defense or defense of another person, Dean could spend anywhere from five years to life in prison.

Manslaughter is a crime in which the defendant caused a person’s death by acting recklessly, and it carries a prison sentence between two and 20 years. Self-defense also is a legal justification for manslaughter.

To find that Dean’s actions were justified by self-defense or defense of another person, the jurors would have to believe that it was immediately necessary for him to shoot Jefferson to protect himself or someone else from deadly force.

Extra security, including deputies and Texas state troopers, is in place at the courthouse.

The case so far

Both sides rested their case Tuesday in Tarrant County’s 396th District Court after the testimony of use-of-force experts who gave their opinions on whether Dean acted reasonably when he and Darch responded to the neighbor’s call.

Jefferson’s then-8-year-old nephew, Zion, was playing video games with his aunt in her bedroom and was the only witness inside the house at the time of the shooting.

Dean and Darch testified that they mistakenly believed a burglary might be in progress at the house because when they looked through the open front and side doors, they saw items strewn on the floor and several cabinets and drawers left open. They said they did not hear anything or see any signs of forced entry at the doors, and the glass storm doors were closed. The officers also looked inside the residents’ cars, which were in the driveway. Dean testified that they opened the gate to the back yard to continue investigating.

In cross-examination, Smith, the prosecutor, repeatedly pressed Dean on whether his actions that night were “good police work.” Dean admitted there were some things he could have done better but gave himself a B when Smith asked him to grade his performance.

In the three years since the shooting, Jefferson’s family and many in the community have called for justice and criticized delays in the case of a white officer who killed a Black woman.

None of the jurors in the case are Black, though a few are people of color. In the selection process, the jury pool is numbered and the court accepts the first 12, plus two alternates, who attorneys believe can decide the case fairly.

Jefferson, 28, had moved in to her mother’s home to care for her while she was ill. Her mother, Yolanda Carr, was in the hospital the night of the shooting and died a few months later.

Jefferson was saving money to attend medical school and helping raise Zion while his mother also was in the hospital, one of her sisters, Ashley Carr, testified last week.

Dean, 38, resigned from the police department two days after the shooting and was arrested later that night.

This story was originally published December 14, 2022 at 8:09 AM.

Amy McDaniel

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Amy McDaniel edits stories about criminal justice, breaking news and education for the Star-Telegram.