The three-day trial of a man accused of breaking his girlfriend’s jaw culminated in less than two hours of jury deliberation. The result: Kiyon Brown is guilty of aggravated assault.
However, the jury ruled that Brown is not guilty of battery against the girlfriend’s sister.
The state argued that Brown beat up his girlfriend after a dispute about apartment keys, and additionally punched her sister when she tried to intervene.
Brown’s defense team claimed the blows were in self-defense after the two sisters double-teamed the defendant. The defense counsel claimed that at one point during the Jan. 26 incident, Brown’s girlfriend was holding him in place while her sister struck him.
The attorneys packaged the previous week’s arguments into impassioned, 45-minute recaps Thursday morning before the jury was sent out to deliberate.
Assistant District Attorney Dan Itzen replayed the state’s version of the night in question for the jurors — how Brown’s girlfriend was confronted by the defendant just after she returned from her mother’s funeral. How she watched her sister get beat up by the defendant before he turned on her, breaking her jaw in the process. How she had to hold her jaw up with her hand and was wheeled out on a gurney, only to see her boyfriend laughing.
Itzen dedicated a good portion of his allotted time to Brown’s point of view as well, using the defendant’s inarguable actions and words against him. Brown said his girlfriend was being “dramatic” when she was wheeled out on a gurney, Itzen reminded the jurors. “She must have been dramatic when they had to put screws in her mouth,” Itzen quipped.
Brown’s exchanges with the victim after he was in jail served as a boon for the prosecution, demonstrating Brown’s attempt to persuade the victim to alter her statements or refuse to cooperate entirely with the state.
In one of several transcripts of Brown’s communications to his girlfriend that Itzen showed to the court, Brown appealed to his girlfriend that her assistance was his only way out of the current “situation.”
“Innocent people are not worried about getting out of a situation,” Itzen said.
The defendant did not act in self-defense, he acted as the aggressor, the prosecutor said in closing.
“The state of Wyoming would ask that you return a verdict of guilty on both counts.”
Defense attorney Robert Oldham’s final arguments focused less on the night’s timeline and more on chipping away at Itzen’s logic and reminding the jury of what U.S. law asked of them.
“None of us are above the law and none of us are below the law,” Oldham said.
Oldham contested Itzen’s emphasis on Brown’s statements to the victim while in jail. “We’re here to decide what happened on January 26,” he said. The jury was not here to decide whether Brown tried to get his girlfriend to change her story, he reminded them.
The defense counsel additionally stressed the hallmarks of self-defense as described by law. He contended that if his client felt threatened, he had the right to defend himself by all reasonable means.
“[The law] has to be applied to persons who may not be very likable,” Oldham said. The defense counsel admitted that the state’s evidence did not paint a very “pretty picture” of Kiyon Brown.
“We ask you afford Kiyon Brown the right that the law dictates we all have, and find him not guilty,” Oldham said in closing.
Itzen said he was pleased with the jury’s ruling. “This was a culmination of a lot of hard work from the Casper Police Department, the victim witness program and the victim herself,” he said.
An aggravated assault conviction could carry as many as 10 years in prison, and a battery conviction could have amounted to six months. An official sentencing hearing will be held in approximately six weeks, Itzen said.
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