Appeal hearing set to argue trial errors cited by ex-Fort Worth cop Aaron Dean’s attorneys

An appeal hearing for a former Fort Worth police officer who was convicted of manslaughter last year in the shooting death of Atatiana Jefferson has been set for Dec. 5, according to court records.

Oral arguments in the Aaron Dean case will be heard by three justices in the Court of Appeals for the Second District of Texas, which is located in the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center.

In a brief filed in August, Dean’s attorneys appealed his manslaughter conviction on the basis of trial errors.

Defense attorney Bob Gill wrote in the brief that Judge George Gallagher, who presides in 396th District Court in Tarrant County, erred at Aaron Dean’s trial by instructing the jury on the lesser included offense of manslaughter, by not changing venue for the trial under either of two legal standards and by providing to jurors an erroneous definition of reasonable belief.

On Dec. 20, a jury sentenced Dean to 11 years, 10 months and 12 days in prison. Dean will be eligible for parole on Nov. 18, 2028, the date on which he will have served half of the sentence.

A grand jury indicted Dean for murder after he fatally shot Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, in October 2019 through a window at her mother’s house, where Jefferson was living on East Allen Avenue.

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Jefferson’s neighbor had called a police non-emergency number to report doors open at the home, and Dean and another officer were sent to investigate.

The officers walked to the back yard. Inside the house, Jefferson was playing video games with her her 8-year-old nephew. Hearing a sound in the yard, Jefferson grabbed a handgun from her purse and moved toward the window.

From opposite sides of the house’s outer wall at night, Dean and Jefferson stood facing one another. The direction Jefferson pointed the gun at the time that Dean fired was disputed. Her nephew testified at trial that she was holding the gun by her side. In the hours after the shooting, the boy told a civilian forensic interviewer trained to question children who may have knowledge of crimes that Jefferson raised the gun and pointed it toward the window.

Dean shouted, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!”

“As I started to get that second phrase out, ‘Show me your hands,’ I saw the silhouette ... I was looking right down the barrel of a gun,” Dean testified at trial. “When I saw the barrel of that gun pointed at me, I fired a single shot from my duty weapon.”

Dean, who is white, did not identify himself as a police officer and shot Jefferson within seconds of seeing a silhouette in a window, according to his body-camera video recording. Prosecutors argued Dean did not see the gun until he went inside the house after he shot Jefferson.

Gill said in the appellate brief that there was no evidence to justify the addition of manslaughter as a lesser included offense in Gallagher’s jury instructions. The state had requested the manslaughter instruction. Gallagher overruled the defense’s objections and allowed the manslaughter option to be added to the document that guided the jury’s deliberation.

Gill also argued that the venue for the trial should have been changed from Tarrant County to another location where the case was not as well known. There was sufficient evidence, Gill wrote in the brief, that influential people in the area wanted Dean convicted. Gallagher denied the defense’s motion for a venue change on Dec. 5, 2022.

Gill and Miles Brissette will represent Dean at the hearing and Victoria Ford Oblon, an assistant criminal district attorney, will represent the state.

This article includes information from the Star-Telegram’s archives.