After 7 hours of jury deliberation, Aaron Dean must wait another day to learn his fate
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Murder Trial of Aaron Dean
The case against Aaron Dean in the shooting of Atatiana Jefferson finally began to unfold Nov. 28, 2022, with jury selection. Dean was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison Dec. 20 after he was convicted of manslaughter. Read the trial coverage here.
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Jurors deliberated for more than seven hours Monday without reaching a decision on the sentence for Aaron Dean in the shooting death of Atatiana Jefferson.
Jurors will be sequestered overnight and return to court Tuesday morning.
Dean, the former Fort Worth police officer who shot Jefferson through a window at the back of her mother’s home on Oct. 12, 2019, was found guilty of manslaughter Thursday. Manslaughter carries a prison term between two and 20 years, but jurors could recommend probation if they sentence Dean to 10 years or less.
During their closing arguments in the punishment phase of the trial Monday morning, prosecutors asked the jury to give Dean the maximum sentence, while the defense attorneys encouraged jurors to recommend probation. By law, the court will have to follow the jury’s recommendation.
The closing arguments ended shortly before 10 a.m. and the jurors began their deliberation. Around 2 p.m. the jury asked to review Dean’s body-camera video and the Fort Worth Police Department’s general orders again. Jurors apparently hadn’t sent any other notes to ask questions by the time they stopped deliberations about 5:30 p.m.
Jurors deliberated for about 13 hours last week on the guilty verdict. A mistrial during the punishment phase would be very rare, according to legal experts, but if jurors eventually say that they are deadlocked, a new jury would have to be selected to decide the sentence.
Prosecutor Ashlea Deener began closing arguments with an emotional appeal to the jury, saying that Jefferson’s family received a life sentence the day of the shooting.
“They received their life sentence without her,” Deener said. “They’ll never get her back.”
Deener showed the jury a PowerPoint presentation of the findings of psychologist Dr. Kyle Clayton, who evaluated Dean in 2017 prior to his being hired by the Fort Worth Police Department.
Clayton testified in court Friday that Dean had a narcissistic personality and was not psychologically suitable to serve as a police officer. Dean appealed Clayton’s decision and a panel of three other psychologists later declared he was fit to serve.
Deener said those narcissistic characteristics don’t change and are like “a road map to how we ended up here.”
During his testimony last week, when asked by the prosecution to grade his response to the call at Jefferson’s home, Dean gave himself a B.
“A 28-year-old woman is dead and he thinks he did a fine job,” Deener said. “This is not somebody who thinks he has done anything wrong.”
She encouraged the jury to think about the witnesses they had not heard from. If Dean’s colleagues in the Fort Worth Police Department and the three psychologists who later evaluated Dean had things to say in his defense, Deener said, they would have testified in court. Instead the jury only heard from Dean’s family, members of his church, and one field training officer who worked with him for about a month, she said.
Deener stated that mercy has already been shown to Dean through the jury finding him guilty of manslaughter instead of murder, and Jefferson’s death is worth “so much more than a probation sentence.”
“That’s not even a slap on the wrist,” she said.
“The only just verdict is 20 years,” she said “Anything else is a travesty of justice.”
Defense attorney Bob Gill told the jury that the prosecution wanted them to make a decision based on emotion.
“If you take the emotion out of their remarks, there is very little left,” he said.
He called Jefferson’s death “a tragedy that will never be changed” and told the jury that their decision on how to sentence Dean won’t bring her back.
Gill stressed that the jury found Dean guilty of manslaughter, which indicates he acted recklessly and not with malice or intention. The defense has argued that Dean, who was responding to a concerned neighbor’s call about open doors at the house on East Allen Avenue, thought a burglary might be in progress and that he saw Jefferson point a gun at him through the window before he shot her.
“Aaron Dean is literally being judged for a second of his life today,” Gill told the jury.
He emphasized that Dean was working in the line of duty when he made a split-second decision to shoot Jefferson and was trying to protect himself and his partner, Carol Darch.
“So what are we going to punish him for?” Gill asked, adding that Dean had been trained by the Fort Worth police academy to eliminate a threat.
Dean, 38, was booked into the Tarrant County Jail on Thursday after the guilty verdict was read.
“There is nothing to gain by sending this man to the penitentiary,” Gill said. “No one can punish him more than he’s already punished himself.”
Gill said that Clayton’s opinion of Dean during his evaluation was “isolated” and the discipline of psychology “subjective” and that Dean was “probably the person least in need of rehabilitation that’s ever sat in a defendant’s chair.”
He told the jurors that they needed to be very careful about the message their verdict sends, saying police officers and their families need to know they can follow their training and defend themselves when the need arises without legal repercussions.
Many in the community have expressed outrage over the case of a white police officer killing a Black woman. Gill emphasized that Dean did not know who was on the other side of the window, just that they were armed and posed a threat to him.
“As much as people want to make this a racial issue, it’s not,” Gill said.
Before closing, Gill had Dean stand up and face the jury.
“He’s a good man, a very good man,” Gill said.
Dean could be seen wiping his eyes with a tissue as Gill finished his arguments.
Prosecutor Dale Smith told the jury that if Dean gets probation instead of prison time, that would mean only about 15 minutes a month, or three hours a year, that he would have to meet with a probation officer.
“Probation’s not appropriate and you know it,” Smith said.
He said Jefferson’s death wasn’t just a tragic accident — it was an event that could have been avoided had Dean made different decisions. Prosecutors have said Dean never said he saw a gun, didn’t announce himself as a police officer, didn’t give Jefferson time to respond to his command to put her hands up, didn’t attempt CPR and made many other wrong decisions in his response to the call.
“He’s the one who set everything in motion,” Smith said, gesturing toward where Dean sat by his attorneys.
Smith finished by showing the jury two photos of Jefferson — one with her siblings on a trip to San Diego and the other with her young nephew Zion, who was with her during the shooting.
“This is the person who lost her life,” he said, reminding the jury that Jefferson was planning to be a doctor and contribute to society.
“She deserved better and she deserves a sentence from you,” Smith said. “... Give him the 20 years.”
This story was originally published December 19, 2022 at 6:03 PM.
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