Dover cop case to jury

Saranac Hale Spencer | The News Journal

The jury did not immediately agree on a verdict in the assault trial of a white Dover police officer charged after a police dashcam video captured him kicking a black man in the head and knocking him out cold during a 2013 arrest.

The 12 member jury deliberated for about four hours before being sent home for the weekend at 4:30 p.m. on Friday.

Cpl. Thomas Webster IV was on trial all week for a felony second-degree assault charge, which carries a maximum sentence of up to eight years in prison if he is found guilty.

The jury has the option, though, to find him guilty of a lesser misdemeanor assault charge. Whatever decision they come to, it has to be unanimous.

If he walks, "I think the African-American community would be outraged," said Roy Sudler Jr., a city councilman who represents a district of primarily minority neighborhoods.

Sudler has been attending the trial regularly and said that, having watched Webster throughout the week, he believes he's genuinely sorry for what he did. "He may not know how to express it," Sudler said, but, "Webster did something that I believe he is sorry for."

If he had apologized at the time, Sudler said, the community would have forgiven him. "We're very forgiving – if we can get past slavery...I think we would forgive him. It's all about accountability – saying 'sorry' goes a long way."

Webster included in his defense for the first time on Thursday the notion that he didn't mean to kick Dickerson in the head when he was taking him into custody during a high intensity situation – Dickerson had run from another officer moments before – in August of 2013. Until then, his defense had argued primarily that Webster was justified to act as he did since Dickerson hadn't been cooperative and officers believed that he had a gun. No weapon was ever found.

When Webster took the stand on Thursday afternoon, he said he had been aiming to kick Dickerson's torso as the man was getting on the ground.

During closing arguments on Friday morning, Deputy Attorney General Danielle Brennan paraphrased that argument as, "Oops – didn't mean to kick him in the head."

She asked the jury, "is it reasonable to believe, at this point, this was a mistake?"

The kicking incident – which took only slightly more than 10 seconds from the time police encountered Dickerson to the time he was lying face-down, knocked-out on the ground – was captured on video by a police car dashcam. The video was shown over a dozen times during the trial as both sides parsed it for the jury. The blow broke Dickerson's jaw.

Brennan emphasized that two experts, one paid for by the prosecution and the other paid for by the defense, said that an intentional kick to the head would be an excessive use of force, which the jury would have to agree with in order to find Webster guilty of assault.

However, the defense expert, Philip Hayden, testified that Webster didn't intend to hit Dickerson's head since that would be a poor tactical decision because the head is a smaller target than the body. A kick to the body in that situation was warranted, Hayden said, but an intentional kick to the head would have been excessive.

That's what Webster's defense attorney, James Liguori, highlighted for the jury – the kick was an appropriate response by Webster, aimed at the body and where it landed was "the unintended consequence."

He told jurors that they must account for the fact that police officers have to make split-second decisions in tense situations when they consider the reasonableness of an action.

Not only was Webster's action reasonable, it was necessary, he said, reminding jurors that Webster believed that Dickerson had a gun.

Brennan tried to convince jurors that Webster couldn't have been too concerned about the prospect of Dickerson having a gun since he didn't immediately search his body after cuffing him.

"You get into the mind of Tom by asking Tom: what were you thinking, what were you doing?" Liguori said.

Webster had testified that he was scared and on high-alert going into a tense situation.

It was important to see Webster take a deep breath in the video after he had cuffed Dickerson, Liguori said, telling the jury that he was thinking, "glad I didn't have to do anything more. Glad I didn't have to shoot him."

His last words to the jury were, "stick to your guns in there and bring back a not guilty verdict.

The jury is due back in court on Monday at 9 a.m. to continue deliberations.

Anticipating that the verdict would come down on Friday, the NAACP had a permit to demonstrate in front of the court building in Dover, said La Mar Gunn, the president of the NAACP in Kent County. They are planning something for Monday.

Contact Saranac Hale Spencer at (302) 324-2909, sspencer@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @SSpencerTNJ.