The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

He shot a man over tossed popcorn, prosecutors say. His defense: Stand-your-ground.

Former Tampa police captain Curtis Reeves at his second-degree murder trial on Feb. 7 in Dade City, Fla. (Douglas R. Clifford/AP)

Lawyers on both sides of Curtis Reeves’s murder trial agree: It all began with a man who left his phone on in the movie theater.

Reeves was so irked by the white light emanating from Chad Oulson’s device that he got up to notify a manager at a Tampa-area matinee. Oulson, 43, eventually threw popcorn at Reeves, authorities say. Then Reeves, a retired police officer, pulled out a handgun and fired into the other man’s chest.

Prosecutors said this was clearly murder — a violent overreaction to some tossed snacks. But Reeves argued that he was protecting himself and cited Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which famously removed the “duty to retreat” from a threat if possible before responding with deadly force.

On Monday, eight years after the fatal shooting in Wesley Chapel, Fla., lawyers gave opening statements in a long-delayed trial that will hinge on whether Reeves can claim self-defense. Reeves’s case has stretched on amid appeals, pandemic disruptions and a battle over stand-your-ground, as he tests the limits of a law that has spread around the country despite concerns that it enables reckless violence.

Reeves, who was 71 at the time of shooting, is charged with aggravated battery and murder in the second degree, which in Florida means an unlawful killing stemming from “an act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life.”

“Of course, in a perfect world, should Chad Oulson have grabbed a bag of popcorn and tossed it onto the defendant? Of course not,” Scott Rosenwasser, the Pinellas-Pasco assistant state attorney, told the jury Monday. “But … you can’t shoot and kill another person over that.”

Defense lawyer Dino Michaels disputed the idea that Oulson was killed over popcorn, arguing that Reeves’s age made him vulnerable and that he felt genuinely endangered. He told the jury that “something happened” to threaten Reeves before the popcorn toss — that he was punched or hit with Oulson’s cellphone, which prosecutors deny.

Michaels returned repeatedly to Reeves’s training in use-of-force over decades with the Tampa police department, where he started the SWAT team. He called the defendant a law enforcement “superstar” who “knows what a fist can do to somebody.”

Presiding Judge Susan Barthle, of the Florida 6th Circuit Court, has already rejected Reeves’s attempt to get his charges dismissed under Florida’s stand-your-ground statute. In pretrial hearings, Reeves testified that Oulson was “on top of” him, according to local news station Fox 13: “He hit me with his fist or with something. I think he had his cellphone in his hand because I saw the blur of the screen,” Reeves said.

But Barthle was skeptical and said that witnesses and physical evidence undercut Reeves’s testimony. She said she was “not willing to come to the conclusion” that stand-your-ground protected his actions.

Championed by the National Rifle Association, stand-your-ground policies have spread to most states despite intense scrutiny after the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, whose death in Florida helped to fuel the Black Lives Matter movement a decade ago.

George Zimmerman argued successfully that he shot Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, in self-defense. Zimmerman’s lawyers did not cite stand-your-ground at trial, but a juror said the law came up in deliberations.

Stand-your-ground laws have drawn opposition from activists as well as police and prosecutors who say they do more to escalate fights than protect reasonable self-defense. Researchers found a striking jump in firearm killings in Florida after stand-your-ground took effect.

Reeves appealed Barthle’s rejection of the stand-your-ground argument and redoubled his efforts when Florida lawmakers strengthened stand-your-ground in 2017. State lawmakers shifted the burden-of-proof for defendants seeking legal immunity under the statute, requiring prosecutors to prove why the law should not apply before going to trial.

Florida moves to bolster stand-your-ground

But the change in burden-of-proof was not applied retroactively to Reeves’s case, and this month, the trial finally arrived.

The whole interaction in the movie theater on Jan. 13, 2014, unfolded on surveillance video. But the silent footage is grainy and sometimes hard to make out, lawyers acknowledged. The prosecution and defense agree on some basic facts but painted very different pictures of Oulson and Reeves.

Rosenwasser, the prosecutor, said that when Reeves returned to his seat after speaking with the manager, he acknowledged that Oulson had put his phone away and said he had contacted the people in charge. Oulson told Reeves to mind his own business and may have used some profanity but did not pose a threat, the prosecutor said.

In Rosenwasser’s account, Oulson stood up, reached into Reeves’s lap, grabbed a bag of popcorn and flicked it at the defendant. Reeves was not cowering in fear of Oulson and lunged forward to shoot him, Rosenwasser said.

“The evidence will show you he was mad,” he told the jury.

Oulson’s wife, Nicole Oulson, screamed, he said — her finger was almost severed by the gunfire. Oulson stumbled toward the aisle but did not make it far.

“He takes a couple steps and he collapses,” Nicole Oulson testified Monday afternoon. “ … I knew he was way worse than me.”

Prosecutors deny that Oulson hit Reeves with the cellphone. An initial police report on the shooting said that witnesses did not observe punching and mentioned only the popcorn-throwing.

Michaels, the defense lawyer, said Monday that the investigation was flawed, with potential witnesses given forms to fill out and then let go “willy nilly.” He also gave a different version of events, with Oulson initiating the conversation when Reeves returned — “I see you turned me in” — and Reeves politely apologizing before things turned violent.

Prosecutors said that Reeves second-guessed his perceptions in a taped statement, wondering aloud, “did he hit me?”

At one point, they said, Reeves also swore and said, “This is stupid.”

Read more:

Florida man accused of killing iguana uses ‘stand your ground’ defense to try to get charge dropped

In opening statement in federal trial of Arbery’s killers, prosecutor says case ‘does not require proof of hate’

White father and son charged with shooting at Black FedEx driver in case echoing Arbery’s killing

Loading...