Latest hung jury once again demonstrates challenges of prosecuting Texas police officers

The Christopher Taylor saga may not be over, with court records revealing the Austin Police officer is due back in court on December 13th for a hearing.

with a hung jury, with the split among the jurors in favor of acquittal.

says there have been more than 20 shootings of unarmed suspects by police in Texas since 2020. During that time, only one officer has been convicted; two were acquitted and there have been six instances of a district attorney or grand jury declining to move forward with charges.

"Whether or not they're taken to trial, I think is again, I think there are a lot of different factors that come into play there," Executive Director of the Texas Municipal Police Association Kevin Lawrence said. "We don't believe that politics should be one of those factors."

Lawrence says since the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, there's been a rise in the number of officers being prosecuted in Texas - but not a rise in convictions.

"They go through this entire process and wind up getting acquitted, they're cleared, but their careers had been permanently irreparably damaged." Lawrence said

Since 2020, there has only been one conviction of a police officer in Texas.

In December 2022, for the 2019 death of 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson. Dean shot and killed her while she babysat her nephew in her mother's home.

"If someone is dead at the hands of an officer, we're going to want to know what happened, exactly what happened." Defense attorney and former prosecutor Ty Cardenas Wittenstein said.

Proving murder is much more difficult since the burden of proof must be 'beyond a reasonable doubt.'

just earlier this year, while grand juries issued "no bills" in the cases of:

With many recent cases against Texas officers ending in acquittal or never making it past a grand jury, Wittenstein says there's also how police are perceived by those who may serve on a jury.

"There is an inherent belief that police officers are doing the right thing, that police officers are the good guys," Wittenstein said. "That police officers know what they're doing that they wouldn't act in an illegal way."

She says a District Attorney must also consider their working relationship with area law enforcement before putting forward a case at all...

"You need them to cooperate with the rest of your cases, you need them to keep the community safe," Wittenstein said. "And so if you're just going to go around, attempting to indict any officer that shoots his weapon, that's not going to help you in any of your other cases."

Lawrence believes going forward, police can continue building trust by being more transparent, to hopefully avoid deaths and the courtroom altogether.

"We need our citizens need to know that we are what we are doing, is in fact, serving them," Lawrence said. "I think it's bad legal advice [leadership is] being given to just not say anything whatsoever. And I think the information needs to be put out as quickly as we possibly can."