Family slams subpoena of John
Geer’s teen daughter to Fairfax grand jury
By Tom Jackman July 13
As the special grand jury
investigating the Fairfax County police shooting death of an unarmed Fairfax
County man in 2013 prepares to meet later this month, prosecutors have
subpoenaed one of the man’s teenage daughters, prompting fears from her family
that her testimony will be used to disparage John Geer in front of the jury.
The teen did not witness the shooting but made comments about her father’s
temper and drinking immediately afterward that her mother says were irrelevant
and untrue.
The officer who killed Geer,
Adam D. Torres, remains on the job and has not faced internal discipline or
criminal charges since the shooting 22 months ago. Commonwealth’s Attorney
Raymond F. Morrogh launched the special grand jury to determine whether Torres
should be charged with a crime.
A police internal affairs
investigation that began in September 2014 is not complete, and Chief Edwin C.
Roessler Jr. said he could not comment on when it would be concluded.
Geer’s longtime girlfriend,
Maura Harrington, with whom Geer had two daughters, said she was not surprised
to receive her subpoena to the grand jury but was stunned when a detective presented
one for her now 19-year-old daughter, Haylea Geer.
“Why does she have to relive
this in front of the grand jury?” Harrington asked in an interview last week.
“What purpose does it serve?”
Undated photo of John B. Geer
with his daughters Haylea and Morgan. (Photo by Maura Harrington)
Harrington and her daughters
were in a neighboring townhouse in the Springfield section of Fairfax County
when Geer was shot and killed. After he was shot, Geer stumbled into his home
and closed the front door. When a SWAT team found Geer dead nearly an hour
later, homicide detective Robert Bond was assigned to speak to Harrington and
the girls and make formal notification of Geer’s death.
The younger daughter, Morgan,
was too upset, but Haylea agreed to go with Bond, Harrington said. “I thought
they were just going to tell her what happened,” Harrington said. “It just did
not occur to me that they were actually questioning her. She didn’t know she
was being tape-recorded. I didn’t know they were doing that.” It wasn’t until
more than halfway through the conversation, attorney Michael Lieberman said,
that Bond told Haylea that her father was dead.
According to Bond’s report,
Haylea told him that “her dad is mean to her mother” and that Geer had once put
a gun to her mother’s head. Haylea also said that her father “drinks a lot,”
but “she didn’t think her dad was drinking today,” Bond wrote.
Harrington said the claim about
the gun to her head was false. She said that she, too, did not think Geer had
been drinking that day.
“Whatever happened in their
house,” Lieberman said, “how is that relevant
to why Torres pulled the
trigger over an hour later? Is this going to be a fair replay of that day, or
are they just going to be in there trying to destroy John?”
Morrogh said that Haylea Geer
had witnessed events prior to the arrival of police. “As far as the information
regarding Mr. Geer’s background goes,” Morrogh said, “under Virginia law
evidence of the turbulent character of a decedent is admissible in evidence
whether the defendant is aware of the decedent’s turbulent character or not.
The rationale is that the prior character of the decedent is admissible to show
who was the aggressor in the situation.”
Morrogh noted that in many
cases he has tried, “defense attorneys spend a good part of their efforts
trashing decedents on all sorts of background information which is considered
exculpatory material.”
John B. Geer. Killed by Fairfax Officer Adam
D. Torres in August 2013. No charges or internal discipline have been filed
against Torres but a special grand jury is about to begin investigating. (Photo
by Jeff Stewart)
Last month, Morrogh said that
he had subpoenaed about 20 witnesses to the special grand jury. Fairfax police
declined to discuss which officers had been called to testify, and whether
Torres will appear before the grand jury could not be determined. His attorney,
John F. Carroll, did not return a message seeking comment.
[John B. Geer had hands up when
shot by police, four officers say in documents]
Fairfax prosecutors rarely use
special grand juries, which are empaneled to hear evidence on one case only,
and prosecutors typically do not invite the subject of a grand jury
investigation to testify.
On the afternoon of Aug. 29,
2013, Harrington came home to the family’s townhouse on Pebble Brook Court to
find Geer tossing her belongings out of the house, in response to the news that
Harrington was moving out.
Torres and Officer David Neil
were dispatched to the domestic disturbance call. When they arrived, Geer and
Harrington were speaking in front of the house with their daughters, then 17
and 13, nearby. Geer knew Harrington had called the police, and when he saw the
officers he turned and walked into the house.
Harrington said she never saw
Geer with a gun, as Torres has told investigators, and that she never told
police Geer was considering “suicide by cop,” as an officer radioed to
colleagues during the 42-minute showdown before Torres suddenly fired one fatal
shot. Police photos show a holstered gun on the landing near Geer’s body.
Harrington said she was told
that prosecutors wanted to review her daughter’s “taped statement” given
moments after her father’s death, and they were told the purpose of the
conversation was for Detective Bond to make notification of the death, not to
do an investigation of Geer’s background.
Harrington said: “I want to
have confidence in the commonwealth’s attorney. I want this to be done fairly.”
In April, Fairfax County agreed
to pay Haylea and Morgan Geer $2.95 million to settle their civil suit.
Tom Jackman is a native of
Northern Virginia and has been covering the region for The Post since 1998
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