Two consultants with experience reviewing police shootings testified on Tuesday in the ongoing trial of Brian North, a Connecticut state trooper who was charged with manslaughter for killing Mubarak Soulemane, a 19-year-old Black man who led police on a high-speed chase in January 2020.
The consultants, both of whom are former police officers, were called to the stand by North’s defense attorneys because they previously produced reports that concluded North acted “reasonably” when he fired seven bullets out of his handgun killing Soulemane, who remained in the driver’s seat of the vehicle that he crashed under a highway overpass in West Haven.
But in a win for the prosecution, the two witnesses — Paul Taylor and James Borden — were banned from mentioning to the jury who initially asked them to review the police shooting and Frank Riccio, North’s lead defense attorney, was also blocked from submitting the reports they authored as evidence in the ongoing trial.
Both men were brought onto the case by State’s Attorney Michael Gailor, the local prosecutor who was initially chosen to investigate the police shooting and to decide whether North should be charged in relation to his actions that day.
The consultants’ reports were requested by Gailor as part of his review of the shooting and to help inform him whether he should criminally prosecute North for his decision to fire his weapon through the driver-side window of the car that Soulemane was sitting in.
The reports from Taylor and Borden were delivered to Gailor in March and September of 2021, just before state officials appointed Robert Devlin as inspector general, a new position that was created to determine when police officers should be prosecuted for their actions.
Devlin, who eventually filed the manslaughter charges against North, chose to dismiss Taylor and Borden’s opinions on the shooting after he took control of the case.
Throughout the criminal trial last week, Devlin attempted to persuade the jury that North acted recklessly when he fired his service weapon at Soulemane, who had a history of mental illness and was armed with a knife in the vehicle.
Devlin aggressively questioned North and other officers who were at the scene about their decision to rush the car with their weapons drawn. He asked why a West Haven officer chose to smash out the passenger-side window of the vehicle and he probed into whether any officer was attempting to enter the locked vehicle when North fired off his handgun into Soulemane’s chest.
North, who testified in his own defense, told the jury that he pulled the trigger because he believed one of the West Haven officers on scene was attempting to enter the vehicle through the broken passenger-side window of the car head first and that he was afraid Soulemane would use the knife to cut the officer’s neck or throat.
On Tuesday, both Taylor and Borden effectively argued that North and the other officers responded as expected given the chaotic nature under the overpass that day.
Taylor told jurors that North likely experienced “tunnel vision” after he saw Soulemane pull the knife from his pocket while he was sitting in the locked vehicle.
Borden also told the jury that Soulemane presented a “probable” threat to officers and that the officers were only responding to Soulemane’s actions.
“The officers did not have a crystal ball, and could not predict the outcome,” Borden said.
At another point, Borden also attempted to give his opinion that North’s use of force was “appropriate” given the circumstances.
But Devlin, who is a former judge, objected to Borden delivering that opinion to jurors.
The main question in the trial is whether North was justified in shooting and killing Soulemane and that hinges largely on whether the jury believes North reasonably believed that the other officers’ lives were in danger.
Superior Court Judge H. Gordon Hall ultimately agreed with Devlin that those types of statements should not be allowed because the question of whether North acted reasonably was something the jury needed to decide.
“That part of it, I think, is for the jury only,” Hall said. “Their perspectives will be overcome by the pronouncements of experts.”
Hall used the same rationale to block North’s defense team from filing Borden and Taylor’s reports as evidence in the trial.
Riccio, North’s defense attorney, voiced his objections to that decision, but it didn’t sway Hall.