Ex-officer who beat Black man with gun goes on trial in Colorado

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Ex-officer who beat Black man with gun goes on trial in Colorado

2024-04-03 02:50 Last Updated At：03:00

CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado police officer used excessive and unreasonable force in the 2021 arrest of a Black man, pointing his gun at his head, repeatedly hitting the man with a gun and strangling him for 39 seconds, a prosecutor said Tuesday during opening statements in the ex-officer's trial.

“You can see the fear on his face,” Jade Hoisington told jurors after playing body camera footage showing the violent arrest of Kyle Vinson by John Haubert, who at the time was a police officer in the Denver suburb of Aurora. Hoisington also showed photos of the welts left on Vinson's head.

One of Haubert's lawyers, Kristen Frost, said Haubert had the right to use his gun like he would use a baton against Vinson because he tried to grab Haubert's gun — an act that prosecutors denied. Haubert would have been justified in shooting Vinson, she said.

Hoisington said Vinson, who had a warrant for his arrest, remained in a defensive stance during the encounter and put his hands up to try to protect himself from Haubert’s gun.

Frost told jurors that Haubert did not have his fingers wrapped around Vinson's neck and he was only using his hand to restrain Vinson, not strangle him.

Haubert, who resigned after being charged, has pleaded not guilty to assault and other charges. His trial follows the convictions last year of a police officer and two paramedics from the city’s fire department in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, who was put in a neckhold by police before being injected with the sedative ketamine by paramedics.

His arrest of Kyle Vinson in July 2021 renewed anger about misconduct by the city's police department. The department's then-chief, Vanessa Wilson, who had vowed to try to restore trust, announced Haubert's arrest four days later, calling the handling of Vinson's arrest a “very despicable act."

Vinson was taken to a hospital for the welts as well as a cut on his head that required six stitches, police said.

The body camera footage shows Vinson and two other men sitting under some trees in a parking after police responded to a report of trespassing. Two of the men got away from police, but Vinson was ordered to get on his stomach and put his hands out. He complied but repeatedly protested, saying he had not done anything wrong and police did not have a warrant.

In 2021, Vinson told The Associated Press he was a homeless Army veteran who was trying to take a break from the midday heat when police approached. When the arrest turned violent, he said he thought about never being able to see his brother or his friends, ride his bicycle or eat again.

Vinson said he tried to comply with the officers’ orders as best he could and control his emotions so he would not be killed, noting the deaths of George Floyd and McClain.

“If someone was even not compliant just a little bit, they could have lost their life,” he said.

Another former officer, Francine Martinez, was found guilty of failing to intervene to stop Haubert, a misdemeanor crime created by state lawmakers as part of a police reform law passed shortly after the killing of Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. She was sentenced to six months of house arrest.

Closing arguments begin in Lori Vallow Daybell’s trial on charge she conspired to kill husband

2025-04-22 04:53 Last Updated At：05:01

PHOENIX (AP) — Closing arguments began Monday afternoon at the Arizona trial for Lori Vallow Daybell, the Idaho woman with doomsday religious beliefs who’s charged with conspiring to murder her estranged husband in suburban Phoenix.

Vallow Daybell, who isn’t a lawyer but has chosen to defend herself, didn't call any witnesses or put on any evidence in her defense. Jurors heard testimony from prosecution witnesses for seven days.

She is accused of conspiring with her brother, Alex Cox, to kill Charles Vallow at her home in Chandler in 2019 so she could collect money from his life insurance policy and marry her then-boyfriend Chad Daybell, an Idaho author who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.

Prosecutor Treena Kay told the jury in her closing argument that was the motive behind the crime: “Chad and money."

“What we see is a very planned out, premeditated murder,” Kay said.

Cox, who claimed he acted in self-defense when he fatally shot Vallow, died five months later from what medical examiners said was a blood clot in his lungs. Cox’s account was later called into question.

Kay said Cox waited 47 minutes before calling 911 after the shooting “to stage the scene." The jury on Monday also listened to a recorded conversation between Vallow Daybell and the life insurance company.

Vallow Daybell believed she was the beneficiary of Vallow's $1 million policy, Kay said. In the recording, she is heard saying that Vallow had been shot and that “it was an accident.”

She has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, she would face a life sentence without the possibility of release until serving at least 25 years.

In her opening statement, Vallow Daybell had said during the encounter inside the house, Vallow chased her with a bat, and Alex shot Vallow in self-defense after she left the house.

Kay reminded the jury Monday that “anything the defendant said in her opening statement was not presented at trial through a witness.”

As Kay addressed the jury, Vallow Daybell kept glancing at the jurors. She is expected to deliver her closing argument later Monday.

She has already been convicted in Idaho of killing her two youngest children and conspiring to murder a romantic rival, for which she was sentenced to life in prison.

Last week at the Arizona trial, Adam Cox, another brother of Vallow Daybell, testified on behalf of the prosecution, telling jurors that he had no doubt that her siblings were behind Vallow's death.

Adam Cox said Vallow’s killing occurred just before he and Vallow were planning an intervention to bring Vallow Daybell back into the mainstream of their shared faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He testified that before Vallow’s death, his sister had told people her husband was no longer living and that a zombie was living inside his body.

Four months before he died, Charles Vallow filed for divorce from Vallow Daybell, saying she had become infatuated with near-death experiences and had claimed to have lived numerous lives on other planets. He alleged she threatened to ruin him financially and kill him. He sought a voluntary mental health evaluation of his wife.

The trial over Vallow’s death will mark the first of two criminal trials in Arizona for Vallow Daybell. She’s scheduled to go on trial again in early June on a charge of conspiring to murder Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece, Melani Pawlowski.