Utah K9 officer acquitted in prosecution that added to mistrust between police and Salt Lake County district attorney

It’s been nearly four years since prosecutors charged a Salt Lake City police officer with aggravated assault, accusing him of unnecessarily ordering his K9 to attack a man during an arrest.

With his freedom and law enforcement career on the line, the case loomed over Nickolas Pearce. It also deepened the longstanding rift and distrust between police and Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill.

But after all that time, a jury needed just an hour to make their decision Friday afternoon: Pearce was not guilty.

It was the first time a K9 officer had gone to trial in a use-of-force case at least since Gill became the district attorney 14 years ago. The district attorney has brought charges against officers in other police shooting cases, but none have ever gone to a jury.

Nathan Evershed, Pearce’s defense attorney, said Friday after the quick verdict that he felt the prosecution was political and that this charge was “just another in a line of cases” that Gill has filed and couldn’t get a conviction in. Evershed was a former prosecutor in Gill’s office, and unsuccessfully ran against him for district attorney in 2018.

“There is this anxious desire to charge cops — but what happens is these charges just don’t land,” Evershed said. “And the problem with this is that it just dismantles the trust between two institutions. We as a community want to have trust between police and prosecutors. When they [police officers] at least have the perception that this is all political, it just destroys that trust.”

Gill said in a statement Friday that he felt one of his “most important duties” as district attorney is to oversee police use of force.

“Although this case did not end in the way we had hoped, this office will continue in that duty of oversight,” Gill said. “I further appreciate all the hard work that everyone put into this very important case for our community.”

Pearce was acquitted of a second-degree felony — a charge that could have landed him in prison for up to 15 years and ended his law enforcement career. Prosecutors had argued that Pearce used unlawful force when he commanded his police dog to attack Jeffery Ryans, a man who officers were trying to arrest for violating a protective order.

Defense attorney Tara Isaacson told jurors Friday during her closing argument that Pearce did not start work that evening and decide he wanted to go out and hurt someone. But he needed to, she argued, because Ryans was not complying with the officers’ commands as they tried to arrest him.

“All he had to do was get down on the ground,” Isaacson said. “That’s all he had to do.”

This case only came to the attention of the district attorney’s office after The Salt Lake Tribune published body camera footage in April 2020 showing the K9 attack. Gill filed the criminal charge a month later, saying then that prosecutors believed Pearce used unlawful force and Ryans was not resisting arrest at the time Pearce ordered his dog, Tuco, to bite.

[Read more: Salt Lake City suspends use of police dogs after a Black man was bit while complying]

Isaacson said Friday that she has never had a jury return a verdict so quickly in her career. Isaacson and Evershed said the quick verdict showed that prosecutors had not properly investigated before filing the charge. Their client was never interviewed by investigators, they noted, and the officers who were there that night also were not spoken to.

“Consider four days of evidence, dozens of exhibits, three experts,” Evershed said. “And through all of that, the jury just saw the truth. And when you see the truth — as much as some people would try to smother it — it eventually emerges. And in this case, it did.”

Body camera footage

The central piece of evidence in the trial was the body camera footage from that early April morning. Jurors watched the darkly-lit, violent videos over and over through the weeklong trial — with attorneys on both sides at times painstakingly going through the footage frame by frame. They also heard testimony from both Pearce and Ryans, as well as two expert witnesses who took the stand and gave conflicting opinions on whether Pearce’s decision to order Tuco to attack was reasonable.

The videos showed officers, including Pearce, arriving at Ryans’ home to investigate a call of domestic violence. They were planning to arrest him because he had a protective order against him and had allegedly been violating that by being in the home where his wife lived.

When Pearce arrived, he ordered Ryans to the ground and yelled that he was “going to get bit.”

The footage shows that just a few seconds passed between the moment officers meet Ryans in the home’s backyard, the moment they command him to get on the ground, and the moment Pearce commands Tuco to attack.

When the dog bites, Ryans is on one knee with his hands raised in front of him, about as high as his shoulders, the footage shows. Pearce can also be heard saying “good boy” to his dog as he bites Ryans, who screams in pain.

Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Andrew Deesing noted to jurors that Tuco continued to tear at Ryans’ leg for 46 seconds as another officer struggled to get handcuffs on Ryans — a use of force, he argued, that was never necessary.

Deesing argued that Ryans was trying to comply with officers, but was given conflicting commands. The video shows that at certain points, he is told to get on the ground, while at other times he is told to “come here.” The prosecutor noted that, while Ryans was moving slowly, he did have his hands in that air prior to being bitten.

“He was doing the only thing a citizen can do to surrender,” he said.

‘I didn’t want to get shot’

Ryans testified that he was slow to react to officers’ commands to get on the ground because he was scared and confused. He conceded he had gotten into a verbal argument with his wife — an argument that got so heated their daughter called the police.

But by the time the officers arrived, the argument was over, and Ryans said he was in his backyard letting his dog out before going to work. His wife had let him come back to the home, he said, and he was not aware there was a protective order against him. (He was charged with violating his protective order, but he said the case was later dismissed because he could show he was never served with notice.)

Ryans said he was surprised when the police showed up, but put his hands in the air and tried to move slowly to their commands.

“I didn’t want to get shot,” he testified. “I didn’t want to cause any alarm. All of the stuff that’s been going on in the world today, I knew to stay put and keep my hands where they can see them.”

Pearce testified that state law required that he and the other responding officers arrest Ryans for allegedly violating his protective order. He knew that someone had called 911 to report domestic violence, and the officer testified that when they found Ryans in the backyard, he feared the man would jump a nearby fence and flee.

He recalled ordering Ryans to get on the ground, and that the man stood still with his hands in the air.

“He simply didn’t respond,” Pearce testified. “He didn’t move at all. He just stayed there and ignored the commands. … All I was hoping was to have happen was to arrest Jeffery Ryans. I didn’t want Tuco to have to bite him at any time.”

What happens next

Pearce remained stoic as the verdict was announced in court, as other law enforcement officers in the gallery were brought to tears after the words “not guilty” were read. In the courthouse parking lot later, the police officer’s supporters whooped in celebration.

Joe McBride, the president of the Salt Lake Police Association, said it was difficult to see a colleague and friend “potentially going to prison for protecting society and doing his job.”

“There’s a lot of emotion when someone you love has been forced to go through three-and-a-half years of excruciating discomfort, pain, fear and stress,” he said, “when there was no real effort to see if he was justified from the very beginning.”

Pearce isn’t entirely cleared yet. Salt Lake City police officials confirmed Friday that he remains on administrative leave, as he has been since the body camera video of the bite became public in 2020. The department still has to finish its internal investigation, and it’s possible Pearce could lose his job.

Chief Mike Brown announced in 2020 that his department would stop using K9s in arrests “indefinitely” after an internal review found widespread problems beyond the Ryans case. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall at that time said the review showed a “pattern of abuse.” Police officials said Friday that the apprehension K9 unit remains suspended, though noted they still use police dogs to sniff out drugs.

Ryans has also filed a civil lawsuit against Salt Lake City police and Pearce. That has been put on hold as this criminal case played out, but civil attorney Gabriel White said they plan to move forward now. The burden of proof is much lower in a civil case, White noted, and he said the jury’s verdict on Friday doesn’t affect their case.

But the verdict, White said, raises one question in his mind: “Can anyone get justice against the police in the state of Utah?”