Officer accused in killing to call on expert witness to go over video
The fate of a former Milwaukee police officer hangs on a tale of the tape.
Last week, jurors saw dramatic body camera video of Sylville Smith being chased, then fatally shot by Milwaukee police, a death that set off two days of violent unrest in parts of the Sherman Park neighborhood that made national news.
Prosecutors say the videos clearly show Dominique Heaggan-Brown, 25, had reason to shoot Smith once, while he was holding a gun, but acted criminally when he fired a second, fatal round while Smith lay unarmed on the ground.
Heaggan-Brown is on trial for charges of first-degree reckless homicide. He chose not to testify, so the jury will hear his claim that he acted in self-defense largely through an expert witness scheduled to start off the defense case on Monday.
Robert Willis has helped officers accused of using excessive force overcome apparently incriminating video before in Milwaukee.
In 2013, Detective Rodolfo Gomez was interrogating Deron Love, suspected of killing his infant son. The suspect had one arm handcuffed to the wall of a police interview room, and the exchange was being recorded, per department policy.
At one point, Love angrily stood up and yelled at Gomez, who then appears to punch Love in the head and upper body repeatedly until another officer enters the room. Gomez was suspended and fired after department officials watched the video and conducted an internal investigation.
Gomez also was charged with abusing a prisoner and misconduct in office. Prosecutors showed the disturbing video to the jury.
The defense called Willis, who broke down key sequences frame-by-frame to suggest some blows were really open-handed grabs or pushes and justified Gomez’s overall actions as self-defense. The jury found Gomez not guilty. Willis has worked extensively in law enforcement and now teaches at the Northeast
Wisconsin Technical College Tactical Training Complex. He also wrote the State of Wisconsin’s Defensive and Arrest Tactics Manual, and has testified as an expert in courts around the country.
He is likely to explain that Heaggan-Brown acted in accordance with his training when he found himself facing a man with a gun and did not have enough time to wait and confirm that his first shot had completely disarmed Smith.
The body cam videos from the defendant and a second officer who chased Smith show him being shot in the arm as he’s holding a gun, which he was throwing over a four-foot chainlink fence. Smith then falls to the ground on his back and is shot a second time, in the chest, from about 4 feet away.
Robert Willis has helped officers accused of using excessive force overcome apparently incriminating video before in Milwaukee.
Less than two seconds elapses between the shots.
Heaggan-Brown gave a statement to state investigators two days later, with police union attorneys present. One of the state agents who did the interview read his entire report of it, which HeagganBrown had approved, to the jury Friday.
In it, Heaggan-Brown said that after Smith fell to the ground from the first shot, Heaggan-Brown demanded that Smith show his hands, but sensed Smith was instead moving his hands toward his waistband. Fearing Smith might have a second gun, Heaggan-Brown said, he shot Smith a second time.
Prosecution witnesses noted that in the videos, neither Heaggan-Brown nor the second officer ever handcuffed Smith, searched him or patted him down to check for a second gun.
Fourteen jurors are being sequestered during the slow-moving trial. They had an extended weekend together at an undisclosed hotel after the state rested before lunch Friday.
Anticipated crowds have not materialized in the gallery. At the peak, about 16 of Smith’s family and friends have been spectators, but often there were only three or four, plus several sheriff’s deputies, some reporters and interested courthouse staff.
Watching the trial has been more difficult because Circuit Judge Jeffrey Conen has ordered no one may bring a cellphone into the courtroom, even if is turned off, and that anyone who leaves may not reenter until a break in the trial. Anyone entering must also pass through a metal detector in the hallway.