Jury returned in Jabril Peppers domestic violence trial: What it said

QUINCY ‒ New England Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers was found not guilty Friday on all charges in a domestic assault trial.

The former team captain had been accused of choking a woman, slamming her head against a wall and pushing her down a staircase in the early morning hours of Oct. 5 at his Braintree apartment. He had been charged with assault on family or household member; assault and battery; assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, a wall; and strangulation.

Peppers responded to the verdict with a sigh of relief.

On her way out of court, Peppers’ accuser said, “I told my side of the story. I know the truth.”

Peppers interrogated by prosecution on second day of trial

In the second and final day of testimony, Peppers said from the witness stand that an argument began when the woman attempted to have unprotected sex with him.

His testimony contradicted the woman’s account. She said on Thursday that Peppers grew angry when her phone rang during sex, displaying the name of another man.

As the two argued, Peppers said he began to record her with his cellphone, following advice given him by NFL officials when he was a rookie. When the woman saw his phone’s flash, she grabbed the phone and his wrist, Peppers said.

Peppers pulled away, and the woman fell to the ground, scraping her knee, he said. This contradicted the woman’s statements, who said Thursday that the injury occurred when Peppers pushed her down the stairs.

Assistant District Attorney Abigail Bird cross-questioned Peppers in a fast-paced series of yes-or-no questions. She asked Peppers if he was angry that the woman was sleeping with other men, which he denied.

She then asked if it angered him that she was asking him for things, including financial assistance, while still sleeping with other men, which he affirmed. At one point, Peppers recounted saying to the woman, “you gave my teammate a threesome but not me.”

Bird questioned Peppers about the four video clips he recorded during the argument the early morning of Oct. 5.

“You chose when you wanted to film her and when you didn’t, correct,” she asked, to which Peppers said, “yes.” The video clips, which were played during trial, do not show Peppers choking the woman, slamming her head into the wall or pushing her down the stairs, as the accusation states.

In a final line of questioning, Bird asked Peppers about his football career, particularly its violent nature. During the questioning, Peppers said that on the football field, “I want to hurt people,” which he qualified by saying that he never wants or intends to injure opposing players but rather wants “them to feel me.”

‘A scam to get paid.’ Defense attacks accuser’s credibility

In his closing argument, Brofsky questioned the thoroughness of what he called the “so-called police investigation.”

He noted that the arresting officer did not separate Peppers and the woman and record statements from both at the scene. Instead, Brofsky said, the officer put Peppers in handcuffs within 40 seconds of arriving without asking for his side of the story.

“They’re lazy or they’re incompetent,” Brofsky said of police work.

As the “key piece of evidence,” Brofsky pointed to two videos taken by Peppers in close succession, with a minute and 10 seconds elapsing between the end of the first and the start of the second.

In that time span, the woman testified that Peppers pushed her in the back, sending her tumbling down the staircase.

Citing the transcript of the videos, Brofsky said the first video ends with the woman complaining about her purse, which she said Peppers threw from the third-story loft down to the second floor.

When the second video begins, she is still complaining about the purse, Brofsky said, quoting the transcript.

“She says not a word about being pushed down the steps,” he said to the jury. “She does worry about her purse. That’s something the Commonwealth cannot get over.”

Brofsky closed by calling the case a “scam for her to get paid” and “legalized extortion,” suggesting to the jury that they should not find the woman credible.

Prosecution says Peppers was angry when he couldn’t control accuser

Bird closed by stating that the case is not about money but control. She argued that Peppers was jealous when another man called her phone while they were having sex.

“He realized that he, the captain of the Patriots, the star football player, did not have complete control over her.”

Bird defended the way Braintree police handled the 911 call, noting how the responding officer testified on Thursday that he observed a scrape on the woman’s knee and redness on her face. Those observations, combined with the woman’s statements, provided probable cause for arrest, the officer testified.

At the close of her statement, Bird recalled Peppers’ earlier statements about hurting people on the football field.

“He likes to do that,” Bird said. “He told us that. ‘You don’t have to hurt people, but I want that. I want to hurt people,’” she said, paraphrasing Peppers’ testimony.

(This story was updated to remove a photo.)

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Reach Peter Blandino at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Verdict in for Jabril Peppers Patriots safety domestic assault trial