FAIRFAX, Va. — Prosecutors will be allowed to tell jurors that a former Fairfax County police officer charged with murder for shooting an unarmed man during a 2013 domestic standoff had questioned whether he had acted out of anger over a deteriorating marriage.
Former Fairfax County police officer Adam Torres is charged with shooting and killing John Geer at his home in Springfield, Virginia. He is being held without bail pending the start of his trial, which is scheduled to begin April 18.
During a pretrial hearing Thursday, defense attorney John Carroll argued that statements Torres made after the shooting, in which he mentioned marital problems, were not relevant to the case and should be barred from the trial.
But Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Robert Smith denied the motion, permitting them to be heard.
According to court records, Torres told another officer just moments after the shooting that he had been arguing with his wife earlier that day.
He repeated the statement to detectives in an interview several days later, telling them that he “wondered” if he had fired the gun out of anger, the court records state.
Though the judge denied the defense’s motion to exclude the remarks at Thursday’s hearing, the court did rule that statements Torres had made back in 2012 about marital problems could be excluded from the trial because they were too far removed from the shooting.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
