A jury began deliberating Friday in the murder trial of a man charged with fatally shooting a Tulsa police sergeant and with wounding an officer.
Deliberations began about 5:30 p.m. in the trial of David Anthony Ware, 34, who is accused of killing Sgt. Craig Johnson and wounding Officer Aurash Zarkeshan. The death-penalty trial is Tulsa County's first in more than a decade.
In closing arguments, Ware’s attorney again showed jurors a still from a police video in which Johnson is seen kicking Ware during the traffic stop early on June 29, 2020. Defense attorney Kevin Adams told jurors that Ware feared for his life because the officers beat, kicked, pepper-sprayed and shot him with a stun gun.
“You guys have done something that most members of the Tulsa Police Department haven’t. You watched the video,” defense attorney Kevin Adams told jurors. By such actions, police "stop being a law enforcement officer and become a lawbreaker.”
“All lives matter, and you should support law enforcement — when they’re upholding the Constitution of the United States,” Adams said.
However, prosecutor Kevin Gray told jurors that Ware brought the violence on himself by refusing to comply with Johnson’s instructions and resisting.
“He deprived Sgt. Johnson of his unalienable right to life,” Gray told the jury.
Gray had told jurors during opening statements that Zarkeshan pulled Ware over about 3 a.m. after he saw him run a stop sign and take a wide turn into another lane of traffic. Ware then failed to produce a driver’s license or proof of insurance when Zarkeshan asked him to provide those documents, Gray said.
Matthew Hall was convicted of being an accessory to a felony for driving Ware from the scene after the shooting.
