Javier Ambler death trial: State rests, defense begins on Day 7
WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas - After a week of witness testimony in the manslaughter trial of two former Williamson County deputies, the state rests. The defense picked up its case with opening statements to the jury.
"This was a tragedy, but it wasn't a crime," said O’Connell during opening statements.
O’Connell is one of the defense attorneys representing James Johnson and Zachary Camden. Both are charged in the 2019 in custody death of Javier Ambler.
O’Connell told the jury his clients’ actions that day were reasonable and in line with their training.
"Given the totality of circumstances, everything these men did was reasonable, not reckless, and when you hear all the evidence, we're confident you'll return a verdict of not guilty," he said.
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The first witness called to the stand by the defense was Mark Sawa, their expert witness on law enforcement use of force and procedures. He told the jury he analyzed several pieces of evidence, and found Johnson and Camden's actions were reasonable because Ambler was not compliant with the officers.
"There were six seconds of the first command. For the last command, there were four commands given for Mr. Ambler to get to the ground and Mr. Ambler was noncompliant to all those commands," said Sawa.
State attorney Dexter Gilford followed up by showing Sawa dash cam video of Johnson's from that day.
The second expert defense witness called to the stand was Jason Evans, a project engineer for Knott Laboratory, who created a digital demonstration of a portion of the pursuit using Google Earth.
He also used body cam video to point out three instances where items were thrown out of Ambler’s vehicle during the pursuit.
The judge says the defense could rest sometime on Wednesday with closing arguments and deliberations beginning as early as Thursday.
Before the end of the trial, the defense will do a live tasing demonstration on defense attorney Ken Ervin in front of the jury.