Man ordered to pay $500K for assaulting officer who killed himself after Capitol riot
Washington – A federal jury granted $ 500,000 on Monday 500,000 to the widow and to the succession of a police officer who committed suicide nine days after helping to defend the American capitol against a crowd of rioters, including a man who escaped the officer during the attack.
The eight-member jury ordered the 69-year-old chiropractor man David Walls-Kaufman, paying $ 380,000 in punitive damages and $ 60,000 in compensatory damages to Erin Smith for having assaulted her husband, the metropolitan police officer Jeffrey Smith, inside the capitol on January 6, 2021.
The judge presiding over the civil trial rejected Erin Smith’s unjustified death request against Walls-Kaufman before the jurors began to deliberate last week. American district judge Ana Reyes said that no reasonable juror could conclude that Walls-Kaufman’s actions were able to cause traumatic brain injury leading to Smith’s death.
Friday, the jury ranked on the side of Erin Smith and held Walls -Kaufman responsible for having attacked her 35 -year -old husband – a meeting captured on the officer’s body camera.
“Erin is grateful to receive some justice,” said David P. Weber, one of his lawyers.
Walls-Kaufman said that the result of the trial is “absolutely ridiculous”.
“No crime has occurred. I have never struck the officer. I never intended to hit the officer,” he said. “I’m just amazed.”
After the jury left the courtroom, Reyes encouraged the parties to confer and discuss a possible settlement to avoid time and appeal costs and for “finality”.
“You sit down, you can continue your life,” said the judge.
Walls-Kaufman’s lawyer Hughie Hunt described the jury prize as “shocking”.
“We are talking about a three-second event,” he told the judge.
“It’s not shocking, Mr. Hunt. Many things can happen in three seconds,” replied Reyes.
Jeffrey Smith led to work for the first time after the riot of the Capitol when he fired and killed with his service weapon. His family said he had no history of mental health problems before the January 6 riot. Erin Smith claims that Walls-Kaufman hit her husband at the head with his own police stick, giving her a concussion and causing psychological and physical trauma that led to his suicide.
Walls-Kaufman, who lived a few pies of the Capitol houses, denied having attacked Smith. He says that any injury that the officer suffered on January 6 took place later in the day, when another riot launched a post that struck Smith around his head.
The police department medically evaluated Smith and erased it to return to the full service before committing suicide. In 2022, the Board of Directors of Police and Rescue of police and firefighters from the Columbia district determined that Smith had been injured in the exercise of his functions and that the injury was the “unique and direct cause of his death,” said the trial.
Walls-Kaufman served a 60-day prison sentence after pleading guilty to an offense linked to the riots of the Capitol in January 2023, but it was pardoned in January. On his first day of return to the White House, President Donald Trump pardoned, commissioned prison sentences or ordered the dismissal of business for all almost 1,600 people charged in the attack.
More than 100 law enforcement officers were injured during the riot. The Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick collapsed and died one day after having started with the rioters. A medical examiner later determined that he had undergone a stroke and died of natural causes. Howard Liebengood, a police officer from the Capitol who responded to the riot, also died by suicide after the attack.
