The former Fairfax County police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man in his doorway in 2013 was sentenced to a year in jail Friday for involuntary manslaughter, over the vehement objection of the victim’s mother. Having already served more than 10 months behind bars, the officer will be released next week, Fairfax sheriff’s officials said.
Adam Torres, 33, was facing trial for second-degree murder for the August 2013 killing of John Geer. But on the eve of trial in April, he and his lawyers reached a deal for a guilty plea to involuntary manslaughter and a 12-month sentence. Geer’s mother, Anne Geer, took the witness stand Friday morning and said it was “insulting to suggest that the crime of murder is only worth one year in a protected jail cell. . .John will spend forever in his grave. This is not justice for John.”
Torres did not speak during the hearing. His wife, Danielle Torres, and their newborn baby watched from the front row. Afterward, she said, “I love my husband. And he missed the birth of his son.” The Torres’s third child was born in April, but Torres and his lawyers did not seek permission for him to be present for the birth. He has been held without bond in the county jail since his indictment last August, which his lawyers did not appeal.
The Aug. 29, 2013, shooting remained largely under the radar for more than a year, until Fairfax police were forced to release information about it in January 2015. Then, the case erupted and the county formed a special commission to review the police policies and practices. This week the county announced revised use of force policies and Chairman Sharon Bulova said she would move forward with a civilian review commission.
Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond Morrogh said he wanted to try the case, but agreed to the plea deal in part because Geer’s longtime girlfriend and two children supported it and did not want to testify at trial. “I struggle with it, but I feel I did the right thing,” Morrogh said after the sentencing by Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Robert Smith. “I don’t know what was in his [Torres’s] mind that day but he should not have shot Mr. Geer.”
Geer, 46, was angry that his girlfriend of 24 years, Maura Harrington, was moving out of their Springfield townhouse and had thrown her belongings onto the front yard. Torres was one of the first two officers to arrive on the scene. Geer went back into the house, where Torres said he displayed a gun in a holster, then placed the gun on the floor and raised his hands onto the frame of his screen door and refused to come back outside, Torres told detectives in two statements.
After 45 minutes, while a third officer was speaking to Geer, Torres suddenly fired one shot into Geer’s chest from a distance of about 17 feet. Geer spun, closed the door and fell to the floor, fatally wounded. Torres later told investigators he saw Geer suddenly drop his hands to his waist and he feared that Geer might be going for another gun. Four other officers and two civilian witnesses – Geer’s father and his best friend – all said Geer’s hands were near his head or shoulders when Torres fired, their statements show.
But the details of the case, including the name of the officer who fired the shot, were withheld by Fairfax police for more than a year, and the case attracted scant attention throughout 2014, even as police shootings elsewhere in the country were prompting civil unrest. Behind the scenes, Fairfax police refused to cooperate with state and federal prosecutors who wanted to examine Torres’s personnel files, both prosecutors said. Finally, in January 2015, after Harrington filed a civil suit on behalf of their two teenaged daughters, a Fairfax judge ordered police to release the criminal case information to the family, to include the shooter’s name and the witness statements.
Though Torres did not speak Friday, Carroll said the former officer was remorseful and cited the officer’s remarks in the April plea hearing offering his sympathy to Geer’s family. He called the case “a terrible tragedy for the Geers” but also harmful to Torres’s family. “His wife has been raising two children and now he’s had a third child,” Carroll said, “so that was a big part of the decision” to plead guilty to the reduced charge.
