AUSTIN, Texas — The Christopher Taylor murder trial has entered its second week. Taylor is the Austin Police Department (APD) officer who shot and killed Michael Ramos after responding to a 911 call in April of 2020.
Two witnesses testified on Monday. The defense kicked off Day 6 of testimony questioning a witness who took the stand on Friday: Sgt. Daniel Mireles, the lead detective in the case.
The defense cross-examined Mireles, asking him to walk through the Travis County District Attorney's involvement when it comes to officer-involved shootings. One of Taylor's attorneys, Doug O'Connell, also asked Mireles what he thought about releasing videos from his case to the community, with Mireles saying he was hesitant as an investigator. He said he would have preferred to preserve the integrity of the case rather than releasing the information to the public too early.
In their cross-examination, the defense asked Mireles about his take on how officers should handle situations where a suspect may or may not have a gun.
"Just because a suspect says, 'I don't have a gun,' that doesn't mean the police should assume he's telling the truth, right?" O'Connell asked.
"Correct, sir," Mireles said.
"And when a subject the police have been told is armed and has a gun, when a subject like that tells the police put down their guns, you'd agree an officer putting their gun down would be a bad idea?" O'Connell asked.
"Yes, sir," Mireles said.
The next witness the state brought up was Cpl. Michael Decker with APD, who has taught a course on high-risk traffic stops. The state questioned Decker about training officers on the use of commands.
The state also asked Decker what officers should do to verbally de-escalate a situation. Decker said officers can use a person's name and be transparent about what is happening.
"You don't always, based on the situation, get a perfect-world scenario. In law enforcement, you very rarely get that. In teaching a class, in brainstorming with it, we have to recognize that there's times where it's not going to be on a highway where we have four lanes of traffic and traffic is stopped and everything is fine and safe. We have to deal with parking lots and cul-de-sacs and things like that, and based on the diagram that I've seen, their positioning was within the way it was trained," Decker said.
The defense did not question Decker on Monday. Since the state has advanced the theory that Ramos was scared of the police and feared they would shoot him if he complied, the defense argued this should open the door for Ramos' criminal history. Judge Dayna Blazey initially made a ruling against that.
However, she allowed the defense to ask these questions: Was he arrested before? And in those previous arrests, was he injured by the police or was there a special investigations unit investigation? The questions could only be answered "yes" or "no."
Day 7 of testimony starts back up on Tuesday morning.