Police Sergeant Acquitted in Killing of Mentally Ill Woman

NEW YORK — A New York City police sergeant was acquitted of murder by a judge Thursday in the fatal 2016 shooting of a bat-wielding, mentally ill, 66-year-old woman in the bedroom of her Bronx apartment.

The death of the woman, Deborah Danner, became a flash point in the national debate over whether police officers are too quick to shoot people and whether they are adequately trained and sufficiently conscientious in their dealings with people suffering from severe mental illness.

The sergeant, Hugh Barry, 32, had also been charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide and was acquitted on all counts by Justice Robert A. Neary of state Supreme Court.

Barry’s trial often focused on the New York Police Department’s protocols for dealing with what the department calls “EDPs,” or “emotionally disturbed persons.” Prosecutors argued that it was Barry’s actions that escalated the encounter with Danner to its fatal conclusion when he failed to proceed as cautiously as departmental guidelines and his training demanded.

Barry’s lawyer, Andrew C. Quinn, however, sought to show how the department’s training set few hard-and-fast rules, often leaving the decision-making to experienced field supervisors, such as Barry, a nine-year veteran, who Quinn noted had successfully handled a multitude of emergency calls involving the emotionally disturbed.

Barry chose to have his case decided by a judge instead of a jury.

Given that the sergeant had raised a self-defense claim, Neary said that the prosecution had the burden of proving that he was “not justified in the use of deadly physical force.”

“The prosecution’s evidence has failed to meet that burden of proof,” he said.

Barry fatally shot Danner at about 6:30 p.m. Oct. 18, 2016, in the bedroom of her seventh-floor apartment in the Bronx. From the start, he maintained he had acted in self-defense. He said Danner had refused an order to drop a baseball bat and then had begun to swing it at his head.

Police had been called to the apartment by a building security guard because Danner, a paranoid schizophrenic with a history of hospitalizations, had been ranting in a hallway and tearing posters off the wall.

It was the third time in two years police had been called in to help emergency medical technicians take Danner to a hospital. The previous two times police had had to break down her door to extricate her.

Though police have wide leeway under state law to use lethal force to protect their own lives, Danner’s death came amid a national debate over police shootings and prompted protests in New York led by elected officials and others. For many, it echoed the 1984 death of Eleanor Bumpurs, another mentally ill woman killed by police in her Bronx apartment.

The shooting of Danner drew swift condemnations from Mayor Bill de Blasio and James P. O’Neill, the police commissioner, who said Barry had failed to follow police protocols.

The Bronx district attorney’s office persuaded a grand jury to indict Barry on charges of murder and the lesser offenses of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

The trial, which began on Jan. 30, focused attention on police procedures for handling the mentally ill. Prosecutors argued that Barry had ignored his training and had rushed to subdue Danner, forcing the confrontation that led to her death. He had only spent five minutes at the apartment when he fired his weapon.

But Quinn, Barry’s lawyer, argued that whatever mistakes Barry may have made in the minutes leading up to the shooting, he had an absolute right to defend himself the minute Danner decided to swing the bat at him.

The five other police officers and two emergency medical technicians who were present gave conflicting testimony about what happened.

Barry chose to testify in his own defense. He said he arrived at the apartment at about 6:22 p.m. and learned from one of the police that Danner was in her bedroom with a pair of scissors and refusing to come out. He said he started talking to the distraught woman, coaxing her to speak to the medics.

After a few minutes, he said, Danner slammed the scissors down on a nightstand and came just outside her bedroom door.

Barry said he soon decided Danner would not come any farther and made a decision to grab her before she could return to the bedroom and rearm. He signaled with his head to the other officers and rushed her.

But Danner moved too quickly for him. As he followed her into her bedroom, she jumped on the bed and pulled a baseball bat from the bedclothes. He ordered her to drop it. She stood up quickly in a right-handed batter’s stance and moved her front left foot toward him to start a swing. He fired twice into her torso.

“I just see the bat swinging and that’s when I fired,” he said.

Barry acknowledged that Danner never completed the swing. He also said he could not back up because the other five officers were crowded close behind him.

Only one of the other officers, Camilo Rosario, had a clear view of the shooting. He was standing next to Barry and a half step behind. He said the two bullets hit Danner before she swung the bat, though he added on cross-examination that he believed she was about to swing when Barry fired.

Barry conceded that he had not followed the department’s guidelines for dealing with the mentally ill. Since the killing of Bumpurs, officers have been trained to isolate and contain emotionally disturbed people, taking time and continuing to talk to them in an effort to persuade them to comply. Patrol sergeants are also trained to call officers from the Emergency Service Unit, if necessary, because they have special equipment and training.

Barry, however, never called for help. He said he decided he had to act quickly to subdue Danner before she picked up the scissors again, and he was unaware she had a baseball bat.

His account differed in many small but significant ways from the accounts of the other officers and two emergency medical technicians. Rosario, for instance, recalled it was he who persuaded Danner to put down her scissors and come to the door of her bedroom.

And one of the EMTs, Brittney Mullings, testified that Barry never spoke to Danner. She said she was speaking to Danner when Barry advanced toward her.

Every day of the trial, members of the Sergeants Benevolent Association union sat in the front row in a show of support. Several said they thought the prosecution was politically motivated.

Members of Danner’s Episcopal church also filled the benches, sitting with Danner’s sister and a handful of Black Lives Matter activists.