By Alex Riggins
The San Diego Union-Tribune
SAN DIEGO — A federal jury on Tuesday convicted former San Diego County sheriff’s Deputy Aaron Richard Russell of a civil rights violation for the 2020 shooting death of Nicholas Bils, who was unarmed and running away from law enforcement officers outside the downtown jail when Russell shot him several times, including at least once in the back.
Russell, 29, was charged with depriving Bils of his rights under color of law and discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence. The jury convicted him on both counts.
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The jury deliberated for just a day before returning its verdict in what was Russell’s second trial; jurors last year deliberated for parts of six days before they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the same charges, prompting a judge to declare a mistrial.
Russell is the second former local deputy in the past three months to be convicted of a civil rights violation in U.S. District Court. In December, a San Diego federal jury convicted former Deputy Jeremiah Manuyag Flores on the same charge of deprivation of rights under the color of law, as well as a count of falsifying a record in a federal investigation, for forcefully shoving a heavily restrained man headfirst into a wall, resulting in serious injuries.
In both cases, initial trials ended with deadlocked juries and mistrials, but prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office secured convictions the second go-around in each case.
Russell shot and killed Bils, a 36-year-old San Diego resident, the evening of May 1, 2020, a little more than a month into the COVID-19 pandemic. Bils had been arrested by California State Park rangers for violating COVID restrictions at Old Town San Diego State Historic Park. As he was being transported to jail, he escaped from a ranger’s vehicle and began sprinting away from officers and deputies with handcuffs still attached to one wrist.
Russell, who was 23 at the time and had graduated from the San Diego Regional Training Academy about a year earlier, was walking to work at the jail when he saw Bils escape from across the street. He stepped into the roadway and quickly fired five shots from close range without warning. At least four of the shots struck Bils, including one that pierced his back.
Russell resigned from the Sheriff’s Office five days after the shooting, and a few weeks later, county prosecutors charged him with second-degree murder, making him the first San Diego -area law enforcement officer to face a murder charge in the shooting death of a suspect. He was also the first officer in the state to face a murder charge under stricter use-of-force standards that went into effect just months before the shooting.
He pleaded guilty in 2022 to a state charge of voluntary manslaughter and served about five months in jail. Technically, he now faces up to life in prison for the federal civil rights conviction, though he’s not expected to receive a sentence nearly that harsh.
Russell had sought early last month to delay his second trial, arguing that he couldn’t get a fair trial “given the current political climate” following the recent killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis . His attorneys had argued that those shootings had “dominated the news cycle,” and that given the similarities to Russell’s case, jurors likely would not be impartial toward him.
U.S. District Judge Todd Robinson rejected those arguments and ordered the trial to move forward as planned. It began Feb. 17 and lasted parts of seven days, wrapping up Monday morning. The jury deliberated Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning before returning the two-count guilty verdict.
“Mr. Russell is a good man who acted in a split second to stop an escaping prisoner with a shiny metal object in his hand that he thought was a gun,” defense attorney Jeremy Warren said Tuesday after the verdict was announced. “Mr. Russell accepted responsibility for his mistake years ago and we are disappointed the federal government wanted to punish him a second time.”
During the first trial, Russell testified that he believed the handcuffs around Bils’ wrist to be a gun. Footage of the shooting showed that while Bils was still stumbling after being shot, Russell put his gun back in its holster. Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Askins argued that by re-holstering so quickly, Russell showed he never truly believed Bils was armed with a gun or posed a deadly threat.
When Russell pleaded guilty to the voluntary manslaughter charge in state court, he admitted that he “unreasonably believed that I or someone else was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily injury,” according to the District Attorney’s Office. He also admitted in his plea that he “actually, but unreasonably believed that the immediate use of deadly force was necessary to defend against the danger.”
In 2022, the same year he pleaded guilty in the state case, the county agreed to pay $8.1 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by Bils’ family.
In May 2024 , more than four years after the shooting, a federal grand jury indicted Russell on the civil rights violation for which he was convicted Tuesday.
Robinson, the judge, allowed Russell on Tuesday to remain out of custody on bond. Sentencing is scheduled for May.
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