Jury begins deliberations in Sherman Park officer shooting trial
Lawyers’ closings focus on body camera video
Sylville Smith wasn’t reaching for a weapon after he had been shot in the arm and fallen to the ground, “he was signaling complete surrender,” a prosecutor argued Tuesday in his summation of the case against a former police officer charged with reckless homicide for killing the man with a second shot.
The two shots, 1.7 seconds apart, ended a short foot chase that took a total of 12 seconds. The incident last August set off two days of violence in Sherman Park.
District Attorney John Chisholm said any other reasonable, prudent police officer would have seen that Sylville Smith, 23, no longer had the intent or means to threaten great harm or death to officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown or his partner.
Body camera videos showed that Sylville Smith had thrown his own gun over a fence that blocked his escape between two houses on N. 44th St.
Chisholm said the cameras were an accountability tool that showed HeagganBrown’s first shot was entirely justified, but the second was a felony.
“Is this case charged, is it provable, without the body cameras? Absolutely not,” Chisholm said.
The jury saw the videos repeatedly, in real time, slow motion and frame by frame.
In his closing, defense attorney Jonathan Smith told jurors, “This didn’t happen on pause, rewind or in stills.”
He argued the justification for the first shot, as Sylville Smith was holding a gun and looking toward the officers, “didn’t change over 1.7 seconds” and noted that Heaggan-Brown’s decision to shoot the second time was made in about half that time. Attorney Jonathan Smith also said that Sylville Smith’s position, described by the prosecutor as one of surrender, was actually one of continuous motion.
Jonathan Smith said his client “wasn’t looking for a gunfight” that day, but working overtime in a high-crime area. He followed training and procedures, the attorney argued, and shouldn’t be second-guessed. He reminded the jury they must decide if Heaggan-Brown’s actions were justified self-defense based on his perceptions at the time.
Chisholm suggested the defense’s only witness, use of force and police training expert Robert Willis, is biased toward always finding an out for officers in trouble. “He might as well have walked in here with a ‘I back the badge’ sign,” Chisholm said.
The jury — which has been sequestered for seven days —- deliberated about five hours Tuesday before deputies announced the court-
room was closing and there would be no verdict Tuesday night. Neither the lawyers nor Circuit Judge Jeffrey Conen appeared in the courtroom to end the day or make a record.
The jurors could find Heaggan-Brown, 25, guilty of first- or second-degree reckless homicide, or homicide by negligent operation of a firearm. The most serious charge carries a 40-year maximum prison term, the second-degree reckless a 15-year prison sentence and the negligent charge a 5-year maximum.
Heaggan-Brown was fired in October after being charged in an unrelated sexual assault case that remains pending. He faces two counts of felony second-degree sexual assault and two counts of misdemeanor prostitution. He also is charged with one felony count of possessing or distributing a recording of nudity without consent.
Prosecutors have filed a motion for a video clip from Heaggan-Brown’s phone to be entered as “other acts” evidence because even though it is not tied to a criminal charge, it establishes his “modus operandi.”
The 77-second video clip shows Heaggan-Brown having a sexual encounter with an unknown man who realizes Heaggan-Brown is recording with his cellphone and confronts him about it, according to court documents.
The video was created Oct. 14, 2016, two months after the fatal shooting of Smith.
A ruling on the motion is expected in late June, after the homicide trial, and a jury trial in the sexual assault case is scheduled for late August.
Heaggan-Brown’s personnel file was released in April — eight months after a records request was filed — and did not include any internal affairs reports related to the sexual assault investigation or the shooting of Smith.
The allegations against Heaggan-Brown in his file were fairly minor, such as two instances of off-duty speeding.
He was counseled about who to associate with after his superiors received reports he was living with a felon, who was a relative, and after officers were called to a loud house party when someone had reported possibly hearing a gunshot.
Heaggan-Brown admitted his party created a “disturbance,” but officers found no evidence that gunshots were fired, the records show.
The records did not include any details of an alleged excessive force incident that’s now the subject of a federal lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed in December, alleges HeagganBrown tasered a man unnecessarily after another officer, Peter Hauser, pulled him out of a car and threw him to the ground, causing him to briefly black out, during an incident in April 2016. Hauser also was named as a defendant.