A federal jury on Monday ordered a man who was charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to pay $500,000 to the family of a D.C. police officer who was assaulted during the riot and later killed himself.
A lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia claimed that the officer, Jeffrey Smith, of the Metropolitan Police, was hit with a hard object during the clashes, and that he became depressed in the days that followed. He killed himself a little over a week later.
The man who was sued, David Walls-Kaufman, a chiropractor, was also charged criminally with parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. In 2023, he pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge and served a two-month jail sentence, but he was pardoned earlier this year by President Trump. Mr. Walls-Kaufman has denied assaulting the officer.
Officer Smith was hit in the head with a metal pole during the melee and seemed to slip into a deep depression, his wife, Erin Smith, said in 2021.
According to The Associated Press, Ms. Smith claimed that Mr. Walls-Kaufman “struck her husband in the head with his own police baton, giving him a concussion and causing psychological and physical trauma that led to his See Stylebook entry update of April 2023.”
The Police and Firefighters Retirement and Relief Board in Washington found in March 2022 that his death had been the direct result of an injury that he had sustained during the riot.
According to court records, Mr. Walls-Kaufman, 68, must pay Ms. Smith, the officer’s widow, $380,000 in punitive damages and $60,000 in compensatory damages for the assault on her husband on that day. The jury also ordered Mr. Walls-Kaufman to pay an additional $60,000 to Officer Smith’s estate for his pain and suffering.
David P. Weber, a lawyer for Ms. Smith, said in a statement that the verdict provided his client with “a measure of justice that she has long sought for her husband.”
Mr. Walls-Kaufman said in a statement on Tuesday that he had waited “five years while my name has been dragged through infamy for a crime I simply did not commit.”
“It is profoundly shocking to receive a blow like this where your peers, fellow human beings, choose to align in a mind-set that does not care what reality is — and are even proud of it,” he said.
The case is one of many related to the violent storming of the Capitol that are still making their way through the courts.
Four years later, civil lawsuits are still emerging from the Jan. 6 assault, including the Ashli Babbitt case. Ms. Babbitt was an Air Force veteran who was killed by the police during the storming of the Capitol. Just last month, the Justice Department agreed to pay her family nearly $5 million.
Another lawsuit suing the government for $100 million was recently filed by Enrique Tarrio and four other members of the Proud Boys who were convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges in connection with the violent assault on the Capitol.
The Associated Press reported that before jurors begin deliberating in the lawsuit filed by Ms. Smith in her husband’s death, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes threw out Ms. Smith’s wrongful-death claim against Mr. Walls-Kaufman because “no reasonable juror” could conclude that his actions “were capable of causing a traumatic brain injury leading to Smith’s death.”
Dr. Weber, the lawyer for Ms. Smith, said that the family was considering an appeal of the judge’s decision not to allow the wrongful-death claim to go to the jury.
After Mr. Trump took office in January, there have been several attempts to re-litigate and rewrite the history of the riot. Mr. Trump has called it a “day of love” despite the fact that more than 140 police officers were injured by the mob. On his first day back in the White House, Mr. Trump issued a sweeping grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack.
A smattering of lawsuits have been filed by Jan. 6 defendants — or discussed by lawyers representing them — over the past several months represent a turn from prosecutions that happened in the aftermath of the riot. These filings often seek to to wrest financial damages from the government over claims of mistreatment or abuse of power.
Mr. Trump himself is also still facing civil lawsuits brought by Capitol Police officers and members of Congress, seeking to hold him accountable for the violence on Jan. 6. But those cases, also being heard in Washington, are bogged down at the moment in arguments over whether to allow the federal government to substituted for Mr. Trump as the defendant.
In Officer Smith’s case, the family is also seeking recognition for his paying the ultimate price in defending the Capitol.
Dr. Weber said that Officer Smith’s family is calling for his name to be added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial.
“He has twice been ruled to have died in the line of duty, and we now have a jury verdict confirming that he was seriously injured during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Insurrection,” he said.
Alan Feuer contributed reporting.
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