After a two-day trial last week, a district court jury acquit- ted Dan Johnson of Boulder of charges of felony assault with a weapon and partner/family member assault, a misdemeanor. It took the jury barely over an hour to reach its verdict. Shortly before announcing it had a verdict, the jury asked Judge Luke Berger to define “reasonable apprehension.”
With the agreement of attorneys on both sides, Berger provided definitions from Black’s Law Dictionary. Johnson was arrested in October after an evening of dining and drinking at the home of his ex-wife. Both sides agreed that they argued but she said he could sleep on her couch because he had been drinking. She told law enforcement later he forced his way into her locked bedroom, where she greeted him with a gun and that he wrestled away from her and hit her in the face with it before driving away.
When officers responded they met his vehicle and he told them the couple had argued after she became angry over texts with other women she read from his phone. He admitted picking the lock to the bedroom but said he was only defending himself when he took the gun away and accidentally “bopped” her on the head while sitting atop her to get the gun.
