A Pierce County jury acquitted a fired Tacoma police officer of felony child assault last week but found he committed official misconduct, a gross misdemeanor, during an incident where he and his partner instructed a woman to discipline her live-in grandson with a belt nearly five years ago.
"This went beyond parental discipline when (the grandmother) says, 'I don't want to do this,'" Thurston County deputy prosecuting attorney Olivia Zhou told the jury during closing arguments. She added later, "While his partner was saying, 'Beat the demons out of him, beat him for every window he broke,' he was holding (the boy) down so (the grandmother) can keep beating him with a belt."
Relief on Jesse Jahner's face quickly turned to disappointment Thursday as Pierce County Superior Court Judge Philip Sorensen read the split verdict. Fired in 2018 for violating department policy, the ex-officer hoped to persuade the jury that the physical punishment was within the bounds of state law and he acted in the family's best interest.
Jahner was tried under the theory that he acted as an accomplice to an assault on the child and intended to violate the family members' rights through his position as a public servant. The jury returned a special verdict on the official misconduct charge after less than a day of deliberations, finding Jahner intentionally refrained from performing a lawful duty.
"An officer's illegal misconduct violates the oath they are sworn to uphold and the trust placed in them by the community," the Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney's Office wrote in a statement to The News Tribune. "Though most law enforcement officers perform their duties with integrity and professionalism, as prosecutors, we have a responsibility to ensure officers are held accountable for misconduct while performing their duties. We thank the jury for their service and respect their verdicts in this case."
Defense attorney Bryan Hershman decried Jahner's prosecution as "sickening" during closing arguments last week and said in court that his client hopes to put the case behind him. Jahner remains out of custody and faces up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $5,000.
Hershman interviewed the jury after the verdict. He told The News Tribune their deliberations focused on whether Jahner had a duty to de-escalate the child.
"He didn't de-escalate? That's nowhere in the statute," Hershman said during a phone interview.
Jahner's previous attorney argued the state's official misconduct statute is unconstitutionally vague in a 2019 motion to dismiss charges, citing a lack of evidence, according to court documents. A state appellate court disagreed and reopened the case in 2021.
Jahner was scheduled to be sentenced during a fast-tracked hearing on Monday morning, but the attorneys later requested to postpone the proceeding to May — after the trial of Jahner's former partner, Damion Birge, scheduled for March.
The grandmother, who testified during the trial, was not charged in connection with the case. Last fall, she was granted a domestic-violence protection order against the boy, now 15 and under the care of the state, court records show. The teenager did not appear in court during the trial.
"She thought she was going to get murdered after the police left," Hershman said during closing arguments. He added later, "Shame on this system."
Jahner's conviction stems from a June 2017 incident where he and Birge responded to a Central Tacoma home to find an ornery 9-year-old, his grandmother and two social workers surrounded by the wreckage from the boy's fit of rage, according to court testimony. An inch-and-a-half of glass covered the floor and the boy had cut himself on the knives he'd reportedly threatened the adults with.
The boy sat on the couch and smirked, according to court testimony. The grandmother reported the damage cost $11,000.
Police documents show the officers had responded to the home before and had the boy involuntarily committed for mental health treatment.
The ex-officers advised the grandmother it was lawful to physically discipline the boy — who had a host of mental health diagnoses — and use a belt due to her physical limitations, according to court testimony.
"She kept saying that's not what I do," one of the social workers, Meluleki Ncube, testified during the trial.
The grandmother told the officers she promised the boy she'd never hit him and said Catholic Communities Services social workers advised against physical discipline, according to court testimony. She asked the police to take the boy to Remann Hall Juvenile Detention Center — where the officers said he was too young to stay — or Mary Bridge Children's Hospital. The boy also said he wanted to go to juvenile detention.
Birge insisted his own children behaved properly because he used physical discipline at home, according to court testimony. He folded a synthetic leather belt the grandmother took from the boy's Sunday best and slapped it on the coffee table three or four times to demonstrate.
Ultimately, Birge pressed the grandmother to hit the 9-year-old more than 10 times over about half an hour, according to court testimony. At some point, the boy began to struggle and kick out at the grandmother, prompting Jahner to restrain the boy by the shoulders and back of his neck.
The boy was "yelling and screaming and cussing and saying, 'I'm going to kill you, Grandma,'" deputy prosecuting attorney Zhou said during closing arguments.
Eventually, the boy stopped struggling and screaming, according to court testimony.
"He was behaving," said Hershman, the defense attorney, during closing arguments. Then he pointed to Jahner: "That's one of the last two chances he had, and now he sits here pleading for his innocence."
Hershman minimized his client's involvement and called Birge's conduct "forceful encouragement," an allusion to a social worker's testimony about the incident. He said grandmother wielded the belt and Birge uttered the troublesome remarks. Jahner put hands on the boy but might have been protecting the grandmother.
"That is worse than words," Zhou said during her rebuttal to Hershman.
Several minutes after the beating stopped, an ambulance arrived and the boy was admitted to Mary Bridge for mental health reasons, according to court testimony. The next day, hospital staff discovered markings on the boy's arms and torso that a doctor recorded as consistent with strikes from a belt. He also said parts of his back were painful to touch.
After initial follow-up by Tacoma police, the Washington State Patrol completed a criminal investigation in September 2017. Former Tacoma Police Chief Don Ramsdell fired both officers more than a year later, in October 2018, following a report by The News Tribune and an internal investigation.
The Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney's Office reviewed the case to avoid conflicts of interest with local prosecutors and filed charges in January 2019.
"They took the law into their own hands," Zhou told the jury in court last week. "They didn't like being disrespected."
