White Cop Guilty of Manslaughter after Murdering Atatiana Jefferson. Shot Black Woman as She Played Video Games w/Her 8 yr Old Nephew in Her Home. Liar Cop Gave No First Aid. What Will White Judge Do?

From [HERE] A white 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 were also considering 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. 

Mr. Dean, 38, faces up to 20 years in prison on the manslaughter conviction. The sentencing phase of his trial is set to begin Friday before Judge George Gallagher, who is also a white man. Mr. Dean had faced up to life in prison if convicted of murder. 

The Tarrant County jury deliberated for more than 13 hours over two days before returning the verdict. The primary dispute during the six days of testimony and arguments was whether Mr. Dean knew Ms. Jefferson was armed when he shot her. Mr. Dean testified that he saw her weapon. Prosecutors alleged the evidence showed otherwise. The jury apparently did not find him to be credible.

Lesa Pamplin, a lawyer and friend of the Jefferson family, said she was glad that jurors took their time. 

Many of those who came to watch the verdict condemned the jury's decision. Carolyn J. Ruff traveled from Chicago to hear the verdict, she said. She went out into the hallway of the courthouse and shouted: "She was murdered. She was murdered.” [MORE]

Trice Jones was a fixture at Fort Worth's racial justice protests in 2020, and she crowdfunded an effort to paint a mural to memorialize Jefferson near the home where Jefferson lived and died. Progress is not moving fast enough, she told reporters at the courthouse.

"Black people are not safe in Fort Worth," Jones said. "Black people are not safe."

Mr. Dean shot Ms. Jefferson on Oct. 12, 2019, after a neighbor called a nonemergency police line to report that the front door to Ms. Jefferson’s home was open. She had been playing videogames 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 Mr. Dean. He had 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 Mr. Dean’s lead attorney and the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Police body camera footage showed that Mr. Dean and a second officer who responded to the call didn’t identify themselves as police at the house. Mr. Dean and Officer Carol Darchtestified that they thought the house might have been burglarized and quietly moved into the fenced-off backyard looking for signs of forced entry. 

There, Mr. Dean, whose gun was drawn, fired a single shot through the window a split-second after shouting at Ms. Jefferson, who was inside, to show her hands. 

Mr. Dean testified that he had no choice but to shoot when he saw Ms. Jefferson pointing the barrel of a gun directly at him. But under questioning from prosecutors he acknowledged numerous errors, repeatedly conceding that actions he took before and after the shooting were “more bad police work.” 

Ms. Darch’s back was to the window when Mr. Dean shot, but she testified that he never mentioned seeing a gun before he pulled the trigger and didn’t say anything about the weapon as they rushed in to search the house. 

Mr. Dean acknowledged on the witness stand that he only said something about the gun after seeing it on the floor inside the house and that he never gave Ms. Jefferson first aid. 

Ms. Jefferson’s 8-year-old nephew, Zion Carr, was in the room with his aunt when she was shot. Zion testified that Ms. Jefferson took out her gun believing there was an intruder in the backyard, but he offered contradictory accounts of whether she pointed the pistol out the window.