Jabrill Peppers found not guilty of domestic violence charges

New England Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers was found not guilty of three domestic violence charges Friday after a brief trial in Quincy District Court.

The six-person jury returned its verdict around 2:15 p.m. on Friday, January 24, after deliberating for approximately an hour.

Peppers’ mother could be seen crying in the courtroom after the verdict was read.

The victim, who MassLive is not identifying, left the courtroom after the verdict was read.

“I told my side of the story. I know the truth,” she said as she left the courthouse.

The charges – battery with a dangerous weapon, battery on a family/household member and strangulation or suffocation – stem from an incident around 4 a.m. on October 5, 2024, when a woman accused Peppers for choking and hitting her. head against a wall and throwing her down a flight of stairs.

In a brief statement, the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Peppers, thanked the jurors for their service.

“The jury heard the evidence and returned its verdict,” the statement said. “We respect the jury’s decision.”

• Learn more: ‘The Most Important Thing in My Life’: Jury Weighs Domestic Violence Charges Against Jabrill Peppers

The Patriots safety took the stand in his own defense just before court adjourned for the day Thursday and continued his testimony Friday morning.

On the witness stand, Peppers offered a very different version of the events of October 5, 2024 than the woman who testified the day before. After running into the woman at a North End restaurant around 10 p.m. on October 4, the couple went to a nightclub in Allston before taking a rideshare back to Peppers with one of the woman’s friends.

The group had planned to attend an after-party, but Peppers and the woman never made it, after they began having sex when they returned to his Braintree home. While they were having sex, Peppers said, the woman’s phone rang 3 or 4 times.

After the fourth ring of the woman’s phone, they began having oral sex. That’s when, Peppers said, the woman twice attempted to climb on top of him and have unprotected sex against his will.

The second time she did it, Peppers said he had to “push her back” and the woman began insulting him, calling him a racial slur. Believing the woman was behaving erratically, Peppers took out his phone to film her. That’s when, he said, she grabbed his phone and his wrist. When he removed his phone, the woman fell to her knees.

She didn’t fall any other time they were together that night, he testified.

In a video captured by Peppers the night of the incident, a popping sound can be heard. He testified that the sound was the woman hitting his chest. He testified that there wasn’t enough time between two videos he took for him to have thrown the woman down a flight of stairs, as she accused him.

Peppers also testified about his interactions with Braintree police. He said he was “fully compliant” and doing everything asked of him.

On October 5, he told Officer William Miranda that “it all came from her trying to have unprotected sex with me”, only to be told that the woman had accused him of having assaulted. Peppers said he told police he thought “she was trying to do all this to ruin my career.”

During cross-examination by Deputy Norfolk District Attorney Abigail Bird, Peppers insisted that he was not jealous of the woman and would not have been upset by her relationships with other other men. But he said he was “upset that she wanted to sleep with other people and ask me for things,” referring to the woman who asked him for $2,000 to help pay her mortgage.

Peppers admitted he was “frustrated and angry” with the woman the night of the incident, but denied grabbing her neck, throwing her against the wall or pushing her down the stairs.

In another line of questioning, Bird suggested that Peppers could have manipulated the videos in some way or not returned all of the videos he took that night. Although he denied doing so, he said he studied the videos carefully.

“It’s the most important thing in my life,” he said, adding that he started filming because “if it’s your word against someone else’s, it doesn’t matter. generally does not go well for man.”

Bird concluded his questioning by asking Peppers about his football career and how he approaches game safety.

“When I’m on the field, I want you to feel it,” he testified. “I want to hurt the person I’m attacking.”

In his closing argument, Marc Alan Brofsky, Peppers’ attorney, asked jurors four questions:

1. Are these injuries compatible with a brutal attack?
2. Why didn’t she run away?
3. Why did she look so comfortable (in the videos) and not leave?
4. What do they say about this attempted shakedown?

Brofsky’s final question refers to a civil lawsuit filed by the woman in which she is seeking $9.5 million from Peppers, in addition to asking her to donate to a domestic violence charity, to undergo therapy anger management and apologizing to her.

That suit was brought up several times during Brofsky’s argument, where he called the woman’s allegations a “cash grab” and the complaint itself “hogwash.”

“Use common sense, if that man lifted her with one hand there would be marks on her neck,” Brofsky said, adding “if someone as strong as Mr. Peppers did that to her, she would be dead, she would be in the hospital, she would be seriously injured.

“We’re not even close. She was given an ice pack,” he said.

Instead, Brofsky said, the woman was evasive about her bar injuries, and in showing the videos, Brofsky said she did not mention back or shoulder pain the night of the incident. .

Brofsky also blasted Braintree police, saying the department failed to properly investigate the case, pointing to Miranda’s testimony that he arrested Peppers just 40 seconds after he left his home that morning.

There is “not a shred of evidence” that Miranda “is engaged in any investigation,” Brofsky said. The case put Peppers’ life, career and reputation at stake, he added.

But in his closing argument, Bird pushed back on the notion that the matter was about money, saying instead that Peppers was angered by the loss of control over his relationship with the woman.

“He reacted violently,” she said.

In the videos, Peppers can be heard calling the woman and “reprimanding” her – all while being naked and trying to gather her things to leave, Bird said.

Critically, the videos show that the woman does not have time to make up her story, Bird argued. In them, she can be heard saying that Peppers pushed her and held her against a wall.

“Despite all this evidence, they want you to believe she made it all up just to get money from him,” Bird said. “We are not here today about money.”