A Travis County jury on Friday acquitted a Laredo police officer who had been on trial for injuring a Cedar Park man in a fight two years ago while the cop and two other off-duty officers were barhopping in downtown Austin.
Juan Leal, 32, had faced a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for beating the man to the point of unconsciousness in the Sixth Street entertainment district after another officer had knocked the man to the pavement with a punch to the head.
Leal, during his trial testimony, admitted he participated in the fight but argued it was justified because he was defending himself and the other officers when the man pursued the group for about 50 feet after a verbal altercation in February 2018.
In his final comments to the jury Friday morning, Leal’s attorney, Jorge Vela, repeatedly called his client’s accuser — who is 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighs about 250 pounds — “the bully.” The accuser, Vela reminded the jury, had been drinking in a downtown bar that night while playing the arcade game “Street Fighter.”
“Now he was on the street looking for a fight,” Vela said.
The jury returned the verdict after less than two hours of deliberations, acquitting Leal of the felony and of a misdemeanor charge of simple assault. Their swift response did not go unnoticed by prosecutors who now must decide if they will continue to pursue cases against the two other officers involved in the incident, who also face charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
“We’re going to reevaluate those cases very quickly, and we’ll make a decision very quickly,” said Guillermo Gonzalez, head of the trial division with the Travis County district attorney’s office. “We’ll of course take into account what the jury told us. I think the verdict certainly was emphatic.”
Austin attorney Sam Bassett, who is representing the two other officers, Julio Solis and Pedro Escamilla, encouraged prosecutors to dismiss the cases.
“The relative speed with which the jury returned its verdict indicates these cases should not move forward,” Bassett said.
Leal has been suspended without pay from the Laredo Police Department since he was indicted in December 2018. He likely would have had to surrender his police officer’s license if the jury had convicted him.
Leal waited outside the courtroom with his wife for more than an hour to thank the jury, greeting the male jurors with handshakes and the women with hugs. One juror implored Leal to stay away from Sixth Street, which Leal testified he had visited roughly 100 times.
“Never again!” he replied.
Prosecutor Anna Lee McNelis argued Friday morning that Leal’s actions were not justified because the accuser was already being beaten up by the two other officers when Leal joined the fracas and delivered seven or eight punches. The man suffered broken bones in his nose and eye.
“There was no one he needed to protect at that point,” he said.
Another prosecutor, Jean Sullivan, agreed.
“There was no need for self-defense when Juan got involved,” she said.
The fight began, the man said, when Leal took exception to the man and his friend chatting with a woman in Leal’s group.
Leal’s accuser testified earlier in the week that the fight began when Leal took exception to the man and his friend chatting with a woman in Leal’s group. Before the encounter turned physical, the man said, Leal had called him the n-word and other derogatory terms. His friend gave similar testimony.
Vela, Leal’s defense attorney, said the men’s testimony was untrue. Neither of them had told Austin police officers who responded to the incident about the accusations, and they didn’t bring them up until several months after the fight, Vela said.
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