Harrell found not guilty of top charges
Man who fired shots in drug raid convicted of aggravated assault.
A Travis County jury found no proof that an 18-year-old man knew he was shooting at police when he opened fire during a surprise drug raid at his home in the middle of the night in 2016. But the jury also determined that Tyler Harrell should not have pulled the trigger and convicted him of a felony aggravated assault charge.
Reaching a verdict Monday after more than 14 hours of deliberations, the jury cleared Harrell of the most serious charge against him, attempted capital murder of a police officer, as well as lesser charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault of a public servant.
But Harrell still faces significant prison time for aggravated assault — a charge that makes no distinction between whether he shot at a police officer or an intruder. Harrell, armed with an AK-47 style rifle, fired at police 23 times.
Harrell, 20, is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday morning. He faces two to 20 years in prison.
Lawyers for both sides declined to comment until sentencing is completed.
Officer Jason Pittman, the lone member of the SWAT team who was injured after breaking into the Central Austin home where
Harrell lived with his parents, also declined to com- ment. Pittman, who was in the courtroom when the verdict was read, walks with a limp from injuries sustained in the shooting and expects to need knee replacement surgeries for the rest of his life.
Jurors in the Harrell case grappled with some of the issues that have caused groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union to oppose “no-knock” drug raids in residential neigh- borhoods.
A Supreme Court ruling in the 1980s said officers may forcibly enter a home with- out announcing themselves when they have “reasonable suspicion that knock- ing and announcing their presence ... would be dangerous or futile or that it would inhibit the effective investigation of a crime.”
At the time of Harrell’s arrest, Austin police SWAT team members, on average, were forcing their way into homes more than once a week to help build cases. Most of the cases involved suspicion of narcotics.
Police secretly combed through the Harrell fami- ly’s trash and discovered evidence that he had rifle ammunition as well as plas- tic baggies with marijuana residue and “a black con- tainer labeled ‘Ground Swell Cannabis Boutique,’ ” court records show.
The package casings were associated with an AK-47 rifle, prompting authorities to seek a search warrant that would permit them to break into the home and catch Harrell off guard. Harrell, who got out of bed in his boxer shorts, began firing down the steps from the second floor. Police returned fire, but Harrell was not hit.
A search of the home yielded 1.2 ounces of mar- ijuana — enough to substan- tiate a misdemeanor possession charge. Harrell was not charged with drug possession. Jurors never heard what
police found at the home, after state District Judge Karen Sage ruled that it was immaterial to the attempted murder and assault charges Harrell faced.
The trial began April 18 with Harrell’s lawyer, Skip Davis, stomping his feet in
the courtroom to simulate the sound he said Harrell heard when he was awakened by police entering
the home. Davis suggested that Harrell’s hearing was impaired by a series of flashbang grenades the police used in combination with announcing their arrival over a loudspeaker.
Prosecutors, however, said Harrell and his parents knew it was the police. The loudspeaker announcement was audible, they said, noting that Harrell’s mother had identified the police from a nearby bedroom.
Austin Police Association President Ken Casady said
the not-guilty verdict on the attempted murder charge suggests “we need to be a little more discretionary in the way we use” no-knock searches. But he declined to say whether one was needed in the Harrell raid, saying he did not know enough about the case.
Casady said he’s hoping for a maximum sentence, saying that in recorded jail phone conversations Harrell “has shown no remorse for what he did.”