Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean’s defense team argued again Tuesday that it was impossible for him to get a fair trial in Tarrant County, and his conviction should be thrown out.
Texas’ 2nd Criminal Court of Appeals held oral arguments in Dean’s case Tuesday in downtown Fort Worth.
Last year, Dean was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison for the manslaughter of Atatiana Jefferson. He shot and killed her through her bedroom window in 2019, while he was on duty. The killing gained national attention as Jefferson’s name joined the list of Black Americans killed by police.
On Tuesday, Dean’s attorney, Bob Gill, argued that media attention biased potential jurors, either consciously or subconsciously.
“I don’t remember a time where I saw oral arguments in a case make the front page of the Star-Telegram,” Gill said.
Dean’s attorneys have made similar arguments in the past.
Two separate judges denied their requests to move the trial out of Tarrant County before it began.
Comments from local elected officials condemning Dean’s actions “quickly turned this case into a racial matter,” Gill said.
The state, represented by Victoria Oblon from the Tarrant County DA’s office, argued there’s no evidence to prove that pre-trial publicity prejudiced potential jurors.
Besides, there were plenty of news events between the killing in 2019 and the trial in 2022 to put this case out of people’s minds, she said.
“We had COVID-19. We had a hotly contested presidential election, and state elections, for that matter,” Oblon said.
Out of the 191 potential jurors for this case, 43% said they had never heard of it, Oblon pointed out. That’s a higher proportion than other cases, she said.
The case is now in the hands of the appeals court.
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