Mark Davis: Here’s how the Aaron Dean jury got it right with manslaughter conviction

The jury in the trial of former Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean was surely aware of the three years of calls for justice for the woman he shot. But in undertaking their solemn duty, the jurors’ obligation was not to avenge Atatiana Jefferson’s death any more than it was to back an officer’s impassioned assertion of self-defense. Justice is not “for” anyone in particular; it is simply justice, and if applied objectively and fairly, it serves us all.

The verdict they reached Thursday meets that standard.

Some who followed the trial saw clear evidence of murder. Others saw a cop who reacted to save his own life. In either event, Dean’s actions unfolded in a matter of seconds, a snap decision the jury decided amounted to manslaughter.

It is not a murder conviction, and it is not an acquittal. After hours of what must have been detailed and emotional deliberation, jurors walked a middle ground that said there must be a consequence, but the bar for murder was not met.

Both conclusions are within the window of reason.

While activists have been calling for a murder conviction since the October 2019 shooting, the jury was tasked with weighing actual facts and the law. Judge George Gallagher deserves credit for providing an option other than absence of guilt or a conviction on a charge not supported by the evidence.

Under the Texas penal code, murder requires proof of intent to cause death. While Dean surely fired in the direction of what he says was the barrel of a gun, his expressed wish to defend himself does not rise to the state of mind required for a murder conviction.

Manslaughter applies to a reckless act that causes death. The jury clearly did not buy Dean’s assertion of a fully appropriate response to a perceived danger. His attorneys argued that he was completely within his rights to react to a deadly threat. The jury, with fateful body-camera images in mind, clearly found that his haste in discharging his weapon demanded consequences.

While the jury did not accept the defense assertion of innocence, it also appears they did not buy into the character smear leveled by prosecutor Dale Smith, who offered himself up as a mind reader.

Dean “was hard-charging,” Smith told the jury. “He was gung ho. He finally got some action.”

That presumptuous defamation buys into every stereotype of the evil, marauding cop just itching to take out that next Black citizen. That caricature is common on the streets; it has no place in a courtroom.

But give the district attorney’s office its due: It sought to put Dean behind bars, and it appears likely to succeed. Police departments and their supporters will always properly ask citizens to consider the lightning-fast decisions that officers sometimes have to make. There’s no reason to believe this jury lacked appreciation for that. But in this case, they found the officer’s use of deadly force to be beyond the realm of the excusable.

While the jury pondered whether it was acceptable for Dean to use his gun, there should be no doubt as to Jefferson’s right to reach for hers. The same community that offers the benefit of the doubt to police can usually be found standing up for our right to protect ourselves in our homes.

Since Dean did not identify himself as a police officer when he encountered Jefferson, she had no idea who was outside her window. For his part, Dean had no idea what precise danger was presented to him looking through that window at her. The difference was, he was the one who fired. Jurors were asked whether his response was justified, and they have said no. But they did not consider him a murderer.

While issues of race predictably sprang from every corner of this story in the three years since that fateful night, there remains no reason to believe Dean acted with any element of racial animus. Also, let the record show that a jury with no Black members held a white cop accountable for the shooting of a Black woman.

While some are expressing dissatisfaction with any verdict short of murder, one hopes the community will find satisfaction that a jury was guided by evidence rather than political and social pressures. The Fort Worth Tarrant County Branch of the NAACP surely harbors heightened suspicions about police forces locally and around the country, but its leaders nonetheless expressed “relief that justice was served.”

Nothing can undo the tragedy of Atatiana Jefferson’s death. But when such terrible things happen, all we can hope for is a system that allows for a vigorous prosecution and defense, followed by a jury that embraces its duty to reach a verdict driven not by agendas but by evidence and the law.

It appears the system worked.

This story was originally published December 16, 2022 at 12:17 PM with the headline "Mark Davis: Here’s how the Aaron Dean jury got it right with manslaughter conviction."