Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer has been acquitted, but is the case against him over?

A jury has found Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer not guilty on two criminal misdemeanor charges.

The state accused him of falsely telling a 911 dispatcher that a black newspaper carrier, Sedrick Altheimer, threatened to kill him during a confrontation nearly two years ago.

KNKX reporter Kari Plog has been following the case. She spoke with KUOW's Angela King about what we learned during the trial and what comes next for Troyer.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Angela King: Before we get into the details, let's run through the prosecution's case against the sheriff. Remind us what this was all about.

Kari Plog: The state argued that Troyer triggered a massive response to a false emergency that didn't exist. He called an inside line and said, at least four times on that call, that Sedrick Altheimer had threatened to kill him. Prosecutors said that he should have known, as a former longtime spokesman for the department, that his words would cause the response that it did, which was the highest priority response that exists, wasting resources and putting the public and other officers who responded at risk.

And what about the defense's case? As I understand it, they basically argued this case was politically motivated.

That was something they seemed to lean on a lot throughout this trial. They said Troyer was tried in the media as a racist and unfairly smeared by the state as a liar. They also stressed that this case was a "he said, he said." Altheimer said he didn't threaten Troyer. The sheriff says Altheimer told him he'd "take him out." The Tacoma officer who wrote the report said the sheriff walked back what he said about the death threats when he was interviewed on the scene. Troyer said that officer who took the report was mistaken.

The defense spent a lot of time attacking the character of Altheimer, saying that he was looking for a confrontation that night and, if he had just identified himself as a newspaper carrier, that none of this would have happened.

Well, we understand the jury deliberated for about six hours before it came back with its verdicts. What was the reaction in the courtroom, and have you heard anything from the community?

So, as you can imagine, this case has been very emotional for everyone involved. Most of the people in the gallery for much of the trial were very loyal supporters of the sheriff. There was almost this quiet celebration, kind of a collective sigh of relief coming from the gallery.

As for the community, it kind of depends on who you ask. There's still a strong and vocal group of people who want Troyer to resign. There haven't been any recall petitions filed because the threshold is really high, and it's very unlikely that it would be successful. Despite the controversy, though, Troyer won his election in 2020 overwhelmingly. Judging from the reaction of his supporters during this trial and the opinions that we heard from a lot of the jurors during selection, Troyer is still very popular in Pierce County.

Tell us about the makeup of the jury and whether that's being called into question.

Pierce County, like much of the Pacific Northwest, is very white. So, the pool that they pulled from, which was a very large pool because of how high-profile this case was, was mostly white. The people of color were mostly dismissed for hardships. But there actually were two people of color on the jury that deliberated, including a Native man who talked in pretty strong terms about his own past experiences being racially profiled by police. Most of the jury was white, though, and all of them were men.

You mentioned earlier the sheriff accused the media of portraying him as a racist and liar. Do we know if race played a role in the jury's deliberations?

I can't speak to the jury's deliberations. I haven't been able to speak with any of them since they were released just last night. But race was a constant undercurrent in this trial. At one point, the defense brought up photos of Troyer's family, highlighting foster kids and otherwise who are mixed-race. One of his neighbors testified about their "multicultural neighborhood."

What stood out the most to me, though, was the way that they characterized Sedrick Altheimer, who is Black. He's shorter than Troyer, but they often painted him as this big scary man, saying that his muscles were pumped up when he confronted the sheriff. They focused on how loud and how angry he was, really trying to show the jury that he was someone to be feared.

This case has been decided, but the sheriff and the county are still facing another one. That's a $5 million civil case brought against them by Altheimer. Are there any concerns that this ruling may affect the civil case?

It's hard to predict what might happen, but we did get a little preview of how Troyer might defend himself in that lawsuit. The complaint says that Altheimer was the victim of unnecessary use-of-force and racial profiling, that he was wrongfully detained and that his only crime was being Black in a white neighborhood. In this criminal trial, we heard from that neighbor who said it isn't a white neighborhood. The defense stressed that Altheimer was never arrested, that he was merely stopped and then let go. They also said that guns were never pointed at him, which is technically true, though multiple guns were drawn at the scene. I imagine a lot of these arguments and others will come up in that civil suit.

Any word from the sheriff this morning? Any talk of what lies in his future?

I tried to talk with Sheriff Troyer immediately after the verdict came down yesterday. He said his attorney would be handling interviews. I'm hoping that I will get another opportunity to speak with him. He did seem to get kind of emotional on the stand when people asked what was in his future and when his term was up. So, it'll be interesting to see if he runs for election again. Like I said, when he ran in 2020, he won overwhelmingly. It was a crowded race, and in the primary alone, he got more than 50% of the vote. So, we'll just have to wait and see what happens.