Police Sergeant Who Killed Mentally Ill Woman Goes on Trial

NEW YORK — A police officer who shoots a person wielding a baseball bat is rarely prosecuted in the United States. Most states allow officers to use lethal force to counter an attack with a deadly weapon, like a knife, an ax or a club.

But after Deborah Danner, 66, a schizophrenic woman, was shot and killed by a police sergeant after picking up a bat, the mayor and police commissioner condemned the shooting, saying the officer failed to follow police protocols. Seven months later, the Bronx district attorney, Darcel D. Clark, persuaded a grand jury to indict the sergeant, Hugh Barry, on murder and manslaughter charges.

On Tuesday, Barry goes on trial in state Supreme Court in the Bronx, and a judge will have to determine if his actions were justified when he fired twice at Danner as she warded him off with the bat during a psychotic episode.

The pivotal question facing the judge will be whether Barry had exhausted other options for safely containing Danner before he fired his pistol.

The death of Danner came amid a national debate over police shootings. It prompted protests in New York, led by elected leaders, including the former City Council speaker. These critics complained that mentally ill people too often die at the hands of the New York police and raised questions about how well officers are trained to deal with emotionally disturbed people.

Mayor Bill de Blasio called the shooting “tragic and unacceptable” and the police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, said flatly: “We failed.”

Danner’s family has sued the city in U.S. District Court, claiming her civil rights were violated. Barry has been suspended from the police force and faces the prospect of departmental charges after the criminal case against him is concluded.

For many New Yorkers, Danner’s death echoed the 1984 death of Eleanor Bumpurs, another mentally ill woman killed by police during a confrontation in her Bronx apartment building.

Bumpurs’ shooting forced a reckoning within the Police Department that led to new rules for dealing with emotionally disturbed people, requiring officers, among other things, to try to contain them in a safe space and wait for a supervisor to arrive.

Police had been called at least twice before to Danner’s apartment in the Bronx. One time she had barricaded herself inside, forcing authorities to break down the door. Another time she had threatened to jump out a window.

She feared death at the hands of police, her relatives said. She had even written a six-page essay about her illness to a lawyer that mentioned Bumpurs. “We are all aware of the all too frequent news stories about the mentally ill who come up against law enforcement instead of mental heath professionals and end up dead,” she wrote.

The street protests and publicity surrounding the shooting prompted Barry to ask a judge to move the trial to another town, but the motion was denied. Now he has waived his right to a jury and put his fate in the hands of Justice Robert A. Neary.

Barry’s lawyers plan to argue he acted in self-defense. According to his account related in court papers, he arrived at the apartment on Pugsley Avenue on Oct. 18, 2016, to find four officers standing in the living room and Danner, who was 5-foot-7 and 233 pounds, sitting on a bed in her room, snapping a pair of scissors and cutting paper. Police had learned from a 911 caller and from Danner’s sister that she was a paranoid schizophrenic.

Barry maintains he talked Danner into putting the scissors on a nightstand and coaxed her to the doorway of the room. But she refused to come further.

Then, he motioned to another officer and together they tried to grab her. She retreated into her room and pulled a baseball bat from under the blankets on her bed, according to his account. The sergeant and a second officer went into the room after her. She raised the bat as if she were stepping to the plate. Barry pulled his gun and told her more than once to drop the bat. She swung it at his head. He fired twice into her torso.

For Barry’s lawyer, Andrew C. Quinn, the officer’s narrative is a cut-and-dried case of self-defense under state law. Quinn has argued in court papers that seek to dismiss the indictment that the sergeant was trying to prevent Danner from grabbing the scissors again when he entered her bedroom. He could not retreat once she picked up the bat, the lawyer has argued.

Prosecutors do not agree with the sergeant’s version of events, though Darcel A. Clark, the Bronx district attorney, has so far kept her cards close to her vest about what her investigators believe happened. The accounts the other officers who were with Barry gave to the grand jury have not been made public, and their testimony is expected to be critical to the prosecution’s case.

The lead prosecutor, Wanda Perez-Maldonado, has said in court papers that Barry, 32, a nine-year veteran in the 43rd Precinct, was impatient to take Danner into custody and failed to devise a plan with the other officers for keeping her corralled.

Within minutes of arriving, he signaled to the other officers to rush Danner, the prosecutor wrote. Indeed he was only in the apartment eight minutes before he fired the fatal shots. “It is telling that out of the six officers who were present in Ms. Danner’s apartment, only the defendant drew and fired his weapon,” she said. Perez-Maldonado, who is the chief of office’s Public Integrity Bureau, also has said in court papers that Barry ignored his training. He failed to isolate Danner until officers from the specially trained Emergency Service Unit could arrive.

“Defendant’s own testimony confirms that, without making or communicating any kind of plan, defendant rushed a paranoid schizophrenic who obviously did not want to leave her house and who in response grabbed a baseball bat,” she wrote in one filing. “Contrary to defendant’s assertions, it was eminently foreseeable that Ms. Danner might grab another weapon, as Ms. Danner had already brandished a pair of scissors.”

Barry faces a top charge of murder, but the jury will also consider the lesser charges of manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, each with slightly different elements to prove.

Whatever the outcome for Barry, the three-week trial will cast a harsh light on the police department’s protocols, training and methods, said civil rights lawyers and advocates for other victims of police shootings.

“It should put police policies and practices under the microscope,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “This isn’t the first case that someone has died at the hands of the police for suffering a mental illness.” Lieberman said a conviction would not address the underlying need for better practices. The city should consider having social workers team up with police to help pacify mentally disturbed people, a practice other cities have adopted. “It’s really not fair to expect the police to go it alone,” she said.

The charges against Barry have infuriated the Sergeants Benevolent Association and other police unions, who have accused the district attorney of caving to pressure from politicians and activists riding a national wave of outrage over police shootings of minorities. (Danner was black; Barry is white.) The union has mounted a public-relations campaign in support of Barry and has plans to pack the court with police officers.

The union president, Ed Mullins, has insisted that Barry did follow long-standing police procedures: He calmed Danner down and got her to drop the scissors before moving to subdue her.

“This was a political decision,” he said. “Everyone is afraid of protesters.”