Jury deliberations begin in manslaughter trial for CT state trooper

Closing arguments were delivered Wednesday in the trial of Connecticut State Police trooper Brian North, who is charged with manslaughter in the deadly shooting of 19-year-old Mubarak Soulemane in 2020.

North’s attorney painted the case of a police officer being prosecuted for following his training and doing his job, and the prosecution insisted that the trooper “jumped the gun” and fired seven shots at the teen upon seeing he had a knife.

“This young man is dead and he shouldn’t be,” Inspector General Robert Devlin Jr. said while speaking to the jury at  Ansonia-Milford Judicial District Courthouse in what marked the eighth day of the trial against North — who faces one count of first-degree manslaughter with a firearm.

“You can’t kill someone unless they’re posing a lethal threat against someone else,” Devlin continued, insisting that no officers intended to enter the Hyundai Sonata the 19-year-old Soulemane stole in Norwalk and crashed in West Haven after pursuits with two different agencies on Jan. 15, 2020. “That’s against the law.”

In his arguments to the jury, Frank Riccio, North’s attorney, told the jurors they needed to determine if what North did was “objectively reasonable” given what he knew at the time and the series of events that unfolded over about 35 seconds once he and other police got out of their vehicles on Campbell Avenue.

“Is what he did reasonable and is it objectively reasonable?” Riccio asked while speaking to the jury.

“So the state wants you to believe he’s being reckless by simply doing his job,” Riccio said, arguing his client made a “split-second decision” and followed his extensive training by firing at a suspect armed with a knife who could have seriously injured or killed other police at the scene.

According to previous testimony, Soulemane had his first psychiatric episode at 15 and was in and out of hospitals for years during subsequent episodes as he struggled to take prescribed medications after being diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. His sister and girlfriend previously testified that he appeared to be undergoing another episode before going to an AT&T store in Norwalk, where an employee testified that he acted erratically and displayed a knife before leaving in a Sonata driven by a Lyft driver.

Soulemane later stole the Sonata and was pursued briefly by Norwalk police before the pursuit was called off. Having been incorrectly told the Sonata was taken during a carjacking, state police pursued the vehicle on Interstate 95, where Soulemane drove between 80 and 100 mph and struck multiple vehicles, including state police cruisers, as troopers tried to box him in.

The pursuit ended when Soulemane got off the highway at Exit 43 in West Haven and crashed into a Chevrolet Trailblazer, at which point North and other troopers partially boxed him in and approached the vehicle on foot along with West Haven police officers.

“Lord knows what he would have done had he not hit that civilian,” Riccio told the jury, adding that West Haven Officer Anthony Rappa changed the dynamic of the situation when he used a baton to smash out the passenger side window of the Hyundai.

Soulemane appeared unconscious until the window was broken when he came to and began reaching toward his waist before raising a knife. Riccio told the jury that North, who was at the driver side of the vehicle, believed Rappa had begun entering the Sonata to extricate Soulemane and that he and Trooper Joshua Jackson were in danger when he saw Soulemane “look,” “turn” and “move” to his right.

“Trooper North was defending Trooper Jackson and Officer Rappa,” Riccio said.

Devlin told the jurors police made it impossible for Soulemane to open the driver-side door and that he was likely scared and confused. Devlin also said the teen probably never heard Jackson yell “Get out of the car,” the only verbal commands given to Soulemane under the noisy I-95 overpass. The key to the case, Devlin asserted, was the body-worn camera and cruiser footage from police at the scene that showed no one was in the process of entering the Sonata when North fired.

“It was unreasonable to think someone would enter the car under these circumstances,” Devlin said in his closing arguments. “He posed no threat to anyone.”

Devlin encouraged the jurors to look closely at what North told a supervisor at the scene when asked for a “synopsis” of what happened.

“This is a white trooper who shot and killed a Black teenager,” Devlin said. “This is a big, big deal.”

At that point, the trooper did not mention firing his weapon to save Rappa or Jackson or that he believed either man was in the process of entering the Sonata.

“You know why?” Devlin asked. “He never thought they were going into the car in the first place. He jumped the gun.

“If you look at the video, he fired because he saw the knife,” Devlin added.

Riccio encouraged the jury not to judge his client based on hindsight, but on his perception and what he saw and knew at the time. He insisted that any reasonable officer would have fired based on the actions of Soulemane.

“He made a series of very bad decisions starting in Norwalk,” Riccio said, adding that he did not mean to “cast any aspersions” on the dead teen.

“He thinks about that every day,” Riccio said of North. “This is a terrible event. Someone lost their life. But the question is, is Trooper North criminally responsible for that? The answer is he is not.

“Brian North is not guilty of manslaughter with a firearm,” Riccio said. “He has not committed a crime.”

Closing arguments began just before noon Wednesday after the state called an expert witness to the stand to rebut testimony from two law enforcement experts called a day earlier by the defense. Darrin Porcher, who served for 20 years with the New York Police Department as an officer, detective and in the internal affairs division, took the stand and said he disagreed with many of the actions taken by police once Soulemane crashed on Campbell Avenue.

Porcher said he believes police should have taken a tactical pause and remained back after the crash and radioed for a supervisor to respond to the scene. He testified that police could have used a PA system to communicate with Soulemane to try to get him to come out of the Sonata on his own, which he said is much safer than extrication. He also said deploying a Taser toward a driver while a vehicle is clearly still in drive is prohibited under state police policies.

During his testimony, Porcher also said police are supposed to reassess the situation after each time they pull the trigger on their firearm.

“Every shot that you fire must be justified,” he said.

Given that North told investigators he was experiencing “tunnel vision” once he saw that Soulemane had a knife, Porcher testified that it “would appear unlikely” that he would be able to see if another officer was entering the vehicle.

During cross-examination, Porcher agreed with Riccio’s notion that police policies are not “black-letter law,” though he insisted that officers should not deviate from them despite different situations presenting different circumstances.

“When we deviate, it creates a problem,” Porcher testified. “I believe we should follow the policies.”

Porcher agreed with Riccio when he asked if things could have played out differently had Rappa not broken the window of the car.

“That’s hypothetical, but I’ll agree with you,” Porcher said.

When asked about the “tactical pause” Porcher said police could have taken, he said it would have given investigators a chance to say, “Guys, let’s just take a step back, let’s wait for the boss to get here.”

“How do you communicate with someone who is unconscious?” Riccio asked.

“If you don’t give someone instruction, how do they respond?” Porcher said.

Porcher’s testimony came a day after two experts took the stand after initially being consulted about the shooting in 2021 by then-investigator Middlesex State’s Attorney Michael Gailor. Devlin later assumed the investigation following his appointment in 2021 when the Office of Inspector General was created and tasked with investigating all police uses of deadly force and in-custody deaths.

When they were asked to analyze the shooting in 2021, former police officers Paul Taylor and James Borden — who each do private consulting in use-of-force cases — authored reports that concluded North’s actions were justified. Devlin’s investigation, which did not involve consultation with any experts, concluded North was not justified.

Following closing arguments, Judge H. Gordon Hall provided jury instructions on what elements each juror would need to consider before finding a verdict. The jury was taken to the jury room at 3:12 p.m. to begin deliberations. About an hour later, they asked for a copy of the instructions Hall had read.

Jurors were excused for the day at 4:24 p.m. and will begin deliberations again at 9 a.m. on Thursday.