The former Fort Worth police officer who fatally shot 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson in her home in 2019 didn’t see her holding a gun for the split second before he fired at her through the back window, prosecutors said in his opening statements. murder trial on Monday.
“This is not a situation where they’re staring down the barrel of a gun and had to defend themselves against that person or protect their partner,” said Tarrant County District Attorney Ashlea Deener. “The evidence will support that she did not see the gun in her hand. This is no excuse. This is not a case of self-defense. This is murder.”
But the former officer’s defense barrister Aaron Dean said he had seen an armed figure with a green laser pointed at him and later found a firearm next to her body.
“In that window he sees a silhouette,” said attorney Miles Brissette. “It doesn’t know if it’s male or female, it doesn’t know the racial makeup of the silhouette. He sees it, sees the green laser and the gun coming up at him. He takes half a step back, gives an order and fires his weapon.’
The opposing opening statements come at the start of a trial that will involve heated issues of race, police brutality, gun rights and body camera footage.
Dean, who is white, has pleaded not guilty to murder in the slaying of Jefferson, who is black, after he opened fire in her home in October 2019 in front of her young nephew. The charge carries a possible sentence of 5 to 99 years in prison.
Jury selection was completed on Friday. Eight men and six women were selected, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Judge George Gallagher issued a gag order for the trial, which is expected to last two weeks.
Opening statements are scheduled during an abbreviated court day Monday so people can attend the funeral of lead defense attorney Jim Lane, who died suddenly in late November.
Police responded to Jefferson’s home around 2:25 a.m. on October 12, 2019, after a neighbor reported her doors open in the middle of the night. The neighbor called a non-emergency police number to request a security check at Jefferson’s home.
Diener, the prosecutor, stressed that Dean and his partner at no point identified themselves as police when they left the Jefferson home. Jefferson drew her own gun because she heard noises outside and saw a flashlight in her yard.
“He had no idea he was someone he was supposed to serve and protect,” Diener said.
Brissette, the defense attorney, said the officers were treating the situation as a possible robbery in progress and not, as previously reported, a welfare check, so they did not announce their presence. He described the shooting as a “tragic accident,” but a “reasonable one” for a person in Dean’s position.
The heavily edited body camera footage shows an officer peering through two open doors, but did not knock or announce his presence. Instead, he walked home for about a minute.
Finally, the officer approached a window and shined a flashlight into what appeared to be a dark room.
“Raise your hands! Show me your hands!” the officer yelled before shooting, according to the body camera footage.He did not identify himself as a police officer at any point in the video.
In the video, the glare from the officer’s flashlight makes it hard to see anyone in the window.
Jefferson was pronounced dead a few minutes later.
Her nephew would later tell an investigator that his aunt, after hearing noises outside, pulled a gun from her purse and pointed it at the window, police said.
The shooting was widely condemned, with the National Association of Black Police Officers saying in a statement that the killings of black civilians by white officers had “reached a critical mass.”
Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price at the time said Jefferson’s killing was unjustified and “unacceptable.”
Police initially said the officer fired his weapon after “perceiving a threat.” The officers provided medical attention after the shooting, according to police.
Police said officers found a firearm when they entered the room where Jefferson died. Video released by police showed two mostly blurry clips, which appeared to show a firearm inside the home.
Dean, 34 at the time of the shooting, was hired in August 2017 and commissioned as a licensed officer in April 2018, police said.
Two days after the shooting, Dean resigned from the police and was arrested and charged with murder, the crime he was charged with in December 2019.
The day after Dean’s arrest, Lane told CNN his client was “sorry and his family is shocked.”
Jefferson was trying to protect her nephew from what they both believed was a lover, according to a lawyer for Jefferson’s family.
She had moved into her ailing mother’s home in Fort Worth a few months earlier to care for her, family attorney S. Lee Merritt said at the time. She also took care of her nephews.
The night of the shooting, Jefferson stayed up to play video games with her nephew. They played Call of Duty until the wee hours of the morning and left the door open to enjoy the fresh fall air after weeks of scorching heat, according to Merritt.
Jefferson graduated from Xavier University in Louisiana in 2014 with a degree in biology and worked in pharmaceutical equipment sales, according to her family’s attorney.
The precocious graduate, known as ‘Tay’, was praised as a loving, caring and reliable aunt who achieved many things in life.
Her nephew, Zion Carr, who witnessed the shooting, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, Merritt said. Since her death, family members said they have had a hard time watching videos of other police killings.
Jefferson’s father, Marquis Jefferson, suffered a cardiac arrest and died in November 2019, just weeks after Dean fatally shot his daughter. It was 59.
Jefferson’s mother, Yolanda Carr, died at her home in Fort Worth in January 2020 after falling ill, according to Merritt. Carr was ill and unable to attend her daughter’s funeral.
Instead, the Rev. Jaime Kowlessar read a letter from Carr at the service.
“You often said you were going to change the world,” Carr wrote. “I think you still will.”
