Texas officer convicted in the killing of Atatiana Jefferson
A former Texas police officer was convicted of manslaughter Thursday for fatally shooting Atatiana Jefferson through a rear window of her home in 2019, a rare conviction of an officer for killing someone who was also armed with a gun.
Jurors also considered a murder charge against Aaron Dean but instead convicted him of manslaughter. The conviction comes more than three years after the white Fort Worth officer shot the 28-year-old Black woman while responding to a call about an open front door.
Dean, 38, faces up to 20 years in prison, with the sentencing phase of his trial set to begin Friday. He had faced up to life in prison if convicted of murder. Dean, who had been free on bond, was booked into the Tarrant County jail following the verdict.
Jurors deliberated for more than 13 hours over two days before finding him guilty of manslaughter. The primary dispute during the six days of testimony and arguments was whether Dean knew Jefferson was armed when he shot her. Dean testified that he saw her weapon; prosecutors alleged the evidence showed otherwise.
Lesa Pamplin, an attorney and friend of the Jefferson family, said she was glad that jurors took their time.
“These folks gave a good,
hard look at the evidence and they didn’t rush it. And I’m happy, not pleased, but I’m happy that they got the manslaughter,” Pamplin said.
Another friend of the Jefferson family, Cliff Sparks, told The Dallas Morning News that he thinks the verdict will give other officers the message that they “can shoot and kill somebody in his own backyard and get the lesser charge.”
“It’s not right,” Sparks said. “None of this is right.”
Family members of both Jefferson and Dean left the courtroom without commenting.
Dean shot Jefferson on Oct. 12, 2019, after a neighbor called a nonemergency police line to report that the front door to Jefferson’s Fort Worth home was open. She had been playing video games that night with her nephew and it emerged at trial that they left the doors open to vent smoke from hamburgers the boy burned.
The case was unusual for the relative speed with which, amid public outrage, the Fort Worth Police Department
released video of the shooting and arrested Dean. He’d completed the police academy the year before and quit the force without speaking to investigators.
Since then, the case had been repeatedly postponed amid lawyerly wrangling, the terminal illness of Dean’s lead attorney and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Body camera footage showed that Dean and a second officer who responded to the call didn’t identify themselves as police at the house. Dean and Officer Carol Darch testified that they thought the house might have been burglarized and quietly moved into the fenced-off backyard looking for signs of forced entry.