Jury says Dallas cop who shot and killed mentally ill man did not use excessive force

The answer was not straightforward despite about 10 days of evidence presented during the trial before U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay.

The jury arrived at its decision on Friday. Lindsay formally dismissed the claims on Monday. Attorneys could not immediately be reached for their reaction to the verdict.

Officers arrived on the scene after a resident called 911 to report that “Bert” Davis, 43, had tried to rob him and set his house on fire. Police tried to take Davis into custody, but he resisted and was hit more than once with a stun gun before ending up in the passenger seat of his Mercedes SUV.

Terry fired twice at Davis after his partner reportedly yelled, “Gun, gun, gun, gun!”

Terry and his partner testified they were “certain” they saw Davis holding a gun, according to defense attorneys.

However, a gun was not found until later. And it was inside a closed container under the passenger seat. Also, a different officer who was standing near Davis at the time testified that he could see Davis’ hands but never saw a gun.

“Mr. Davis deserved help, he didn’t deserve death,” Daryl Washington, the Davis family’s lead attorney, told jurors during closing arguments Friday morning.

The defense noted that Davis’ blood was found on the gun — an air pistol made to look and feel like the real thing — which they said was evidence that Davis was holding it when he was shot.

The trial comes at a time when police shootings in the U.S. have come under greater scrutiny than ever before, particularly in cases like this involving white police officers shooting Black men. Some officers have been convicted of crimes for the shootings while others were acquitted or never charged.

The eight-person jury hearing the Dallas case included one Black member and at least four whites.

Lawyers for the Davis family said Terry unnecessarily escalated the encounter. The defense argued that it was Davis who did so.

Defense attorney Thomas Brandt told jurors his client arrived at a volatile and “chaotic” scene involving a “combative,” “hostile” and belligerent” suspect who was thought to have just robbed someone and set their home ablaze.

“It happened in a split second; a life or death decision,” Brandt said. “Do not fault Sgt. Terry for running towards the danger to help his fellow officer.”

Washington said the first officers on the scene had matters under control until Terry and his partner showed up. They were the last ones to respond and first to use force against Davis, he said, by deploying their stun guns at him.

“There was no need to make a split-second decision,” Washington said.

Terry has not been charged with a crime in connection with the shooting. The case went before a grand jury, which decided not to bring charges, court records show.

The Davis family sued Terry and the city of Dallas in 2016, arguing that Terry violated Davis’ Fourth Amendment right to be free from excessive and deadly force. Davis’ parents, Otis Davis Sr. and Dorothy Jackson, and his wife, Lasanda Travis-Davis, dropped the city from their suit in late 2019.

Davis suffered from bipolar disorder and depression, they said. Just three days before his death, he left a hospital where he had been receiving mental health treatment, as he had throughout his life, according to the lawsuit.

The deadly encounter began when Davis went into a house near Fair Park while his wife waited in the Mercedes.

The occupant called 911 to report that Davis had entered and told him to get on his knees, according to trial evidence. The first officer to arrive tried talking to Davis, who was wandering “erratically” through a vacant lot next door, defense attorneys said.

As more officers arrived, a struggle ensued as they tried to take him into custody. Davis was momentarily immobilized with police stun guns, but managed to get into the SUV.

James Marks, an attorney for the Davis family, told the jury during closing arguments Friday that Davis could not have been holding the gun when he was shot because his right hand was “heavily wrapped” with a T-shirt to stop the bleeding from a knife wound.

Someone had slashed his hand earlier that day during a different confrontation at an apartment complex, he said.

Marks said Terry, a senior corporal at the time with nine years on the force, did not tell anyone that day that he saw Davis holding a gun. When asked why not, Terry responded, “No one asked,” according to Marks.

“Really?” Marks said to the jury, adding that such a detail surely would have been the first thing out of his mouth.

Terry and his partner did not report seeing a gun until six days after the fatal shooting, he said, and “only after they talked to their lawyers.”

Marks called the blood on the gun a “red herring” because he said it had been transferred to the weapon earlier when Davis was looking for something to treat his cut.

“He shot an unarmed man,” Marks said about the officer.

Brandt called the shooting a “tragedy plain and simple.” But Terry’s partner would not have yelled “gun” had he not seen one, he said. Other officers as well as a firefighter also reported hearing the word, “gun,” shouted loudly, Brandt said. And Davis was ignoring officers’ commands to show them his hands, he said.

“They were scared for their lives,” he said.

Brandt called the blood on Davis’ gun a “huge problem for their case.”

As for how Davis’ air gun ended up inside a closed container in the SUV, Brandt offered this scenario: As police and paramedics removed the mortally wounded man from the vehicle, someone could have inadvertently closed the container into which Davis had dropped his pistol after being shot.