This article first appeared on Texas Tribune
When Austin police responded to a 911 call in a downtown high rise in 2019, they confronted Mauris DeSilva a few feet away from the elevator, in a mental health crisis holding a knife.
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Christopher Taylor, an on-duty officer, shot and killed DeSilva that night. DeSilva’s father has said his son was not a threat to the police, only to himself. Prosecutors agreed.
Taylor last year was sentenced to two years in a prison for deadly conduct, a charge only a handful of officers have been convicted of in recent history. Lawyers for Taylor after the sentencing have called the prosecution an abuse of power.
Texas lawmakers are now working to make that kind of sentence impossible. House Bill 2436 would exempt law enforcement officers from being charged with deadly conduct for actions taken in the line of duty. The lower chamber is expected to vote on the bill Monday. The Senate approved a nearly identical bill, Senate Bill 1637, earlier this month.
The bill aims to strengthen protections for law enforcement officers. But critics say the bill gives officers unfettered authority to act recklessly and use an unjustifiable amount of force while on duty.
It’s one of several pieces of legislation this session that aim to increase protections for police officers five years after Texans took to the streets to protest police violence. The legislation aligns with the priorities of Gov. Greg Abbott and other GOP leaders who have been firm in maintaining local police budgets and have pushed Texas political candidates to sign pledges to “back the blue.”
Texas created the deadly conduct charge to help prosecutors around the state combat the rise of gang violence such as drive-by shootings in Texas. In recent years, a handful of police officers around the state like Taylor have been on trial for deadly conduct.
Officers in Dallas were indicted on deadly conduct charges over how they launched rubber bullets against demonstrators in 2020. An ongoing case in Austin, where officer Daniel Sanchez shot Rajan Moonesinghe in his home while responding to a 911 call, hinges on the statute.
“It wasn’t intended for that at all,” Rep. Cole Hefner, the Mount Pleasant Republican who authored the bill, said in a committee hearing this month. “We want to protect [police officers] in doing the official duties of their job from these prosecutors that may be a little bit politically motivated sometimes.”
Republican lawmakers have clashed with local left-leaning prosecutors in recent years over their interpretations of the law and how they have used their discretion over which cases to pursue.
Jerry Staton was an Austin police officer for 25 years and now trains police officers in how and when to use firearms. Law enforcement officers regularly have to point and fire guns as part of the job. Staton said that means that officers are at risk of violating the deadly conduct statute everytime they go out and do their job.
Staton sat through much of Taylor’s trial, during which a grand jury went through 30 hours of deliberations before sentencing.
“I was in awe that this particular charge could be brought to a police officer … who did exactly what he was trained to do in a situation that he had very little flexibility in how to deal with it,” said Staton in committee testimony. “This has got to be fixed.”
Earlier versions of the House and Senate bills were written to be applied retroactively to cases like Taylor’s but that provision has since been removed.
Critics of HB 2436 argue an exemption like this shields police officers from accountability for recklessly discharging firearms. They worry the bill removes a mechanism for holding law enforcement accountable for misconduct or excessive use of force.
“Allowing police to shoot at people without justification will make our community and our law enforcement officers less safe,” said Travis County District Attorney José Garza.
“Bad actors and mistakes do happen in every profession and our police officers, our police force, is not an exception to that,” said Yasmine Smith, a vice president of justice and advocacy for the nonprofit Austin Area Urban League. “We must hold those bad actors accountable.”
Multiple critics raised concerns the legislation may have unintended consequences: Prosecutors may end up pursuing more severe charges against police officers, which come with harsher penalties.
The range of punishment is five to 99 years for murder, and two to 20 years for aggravated assault, compared to two to 10 years for deadly conduct. Taylor, the Austin officer, was initially indicted for murder over DeSilva’s death but that charge was later downgraded to deadly misconduct.
“If a police officer gets charged with murder now because he or she is a police officer, they don’t get the benefit of that very lesser offense because of this statute,” said John Creuzot, the Dallas County district attorney and a former judge. “That doesn’t make sense.”
