A judge upheld the firearm conviction of a former Fairfax County, Virginia, police officer, who shot and killed a suspected shoplifter outside Tysons Corner Center in February 2023.
Wesley Shifflett, 36, was convicted in October of recklessly handling a firearm, resulting in the death of 37-year-old Timothy McCree Johnson, but was found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
Shifflett’s defense team filed a motion to set aside the firearm conviction, a motion Judge Randy Bellows denied on Tuesday.
“I’m grateful that the verdict in this case will stand. This case is about Timothy Johnson, a member of our community who lost his life on Feb. 22, 2023. But this case is also about fairness, who the law protects, and who the justice system works for,” Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said in a news release.
Shifflett testified in court that he had fatally shot Johnson in an act of self-defense, after Johnson, who’d been accused of shoplifting, had led police on a short foot chase outside the Tysons Corner Center mall.
Johnson was shot after running through the parking garage and outside the mall, and died from a gunshot wound to the chest.
Surveillance video footage and body camera footage showed Johnson taking a pair of sunglasses from Nordstrom, then exiting the store toward the parking garage. Plainclothes officers could be seen following Johnson out of the store and near Route 7, yelling commands to get on the ground and stop reaching for his pants.
Soon after, Johnson can be heard saying: “I’m not reaching for nothing. I don’t have nothing.”
When he did not comply and ran further into a wooded area off the site of the mall, officers opened fire, striking him once in the chest.
The Fairfax County Police Department fired Shifflett the following month for what Chief Kevin Davis called “a failure to live up to the expectations of our agency, in particular use of force policies.”
A jury convicted Shifflett on one of the two charges against him and he will be sentenced Feb. 28, two years after Johnson’s death. He faces up to five years in prison.
“We anticipated that a case like this would face challenges because we sought accountability from a system that is designed to protect people in positions of power — people like the defendant. But they were wrong, and the verdict will stand. Now, the judge has confirmed what the jury in this case has already decided: that no one is above the law,” Descano said in a news release.
WTOP’s Ciara Wells contributed to this report.
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