Disclaimer: All persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
GRETNA, La. (WGNO) — Testimony began Tuesday in the trial of two former Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s deputies charged in the 2022 shooting of an unarmed man in Marrero.
Among the witnesses called to the stand were two of the five deputies who responded to the noise complaint in the early hours of Feb. 16, 2022, which resulted in the death of 34-year-old Daniel Valee.
The jury viewed body camera footage from those deputies. The video starts with the interaction between the deputies and Valee, who was in the driver’s seat of an SUV in front of what prosecutors described as a “crack house” on Wilson Street.
Valee’s hands are up while asking if the deputies are going to shoot him. “Deputy Beck” states they’re responding to a noise complaint, that Valee is at “a known crack house” and that they smell marijuana coming from the SUV.
Beck repeatedly tells Valee to exit the vehicle, but Valee says he doesn’t want to out of fear. Beck tells Valee he will break the window if Valee puts the car into drive. Valee then drops his hands to start the car and hits the horn. That’s when former deputies Isaac Hughes and Johnathan Louis reportedly fired shots toward Valee.
Under cross-examination, Beck testified he never drew his weapon, and that Valee dropped his hands repeatedly during the interaction, but Valee was only shot when Beck backed off the vehicle.
Defense attorneys say they acted in self-defense. Valee’s sister-in-law disagrees.
“He was asked to put his hands down, and they had an officer on the passenger side, as we just saw [in the body camera video], to properly show that there was no weapon,” said Valee’s sister-in-law Annie Valee.
WGNO also spoke with our legal analyst, attorney Cliff Cardone, about the challenges attorneys face in this case.
“Anytime you charge a police officer, especially in Jefferson parish, where police are still respected in Jefferson Parish, that’s going to be a difficult case for the prosecution to secure a conviction on,” explained Cardone.
Following the deputies’ testimony, the state called upon the owner of the house where the shooting occurred and the pathologist who performed the autopsy.
The pathologist testified that Valee was shot eight times and that several drugs were found within his system, but none of them were contributing factors to his death.
The trial resumes Wednesday at 9:15 a.m.
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