Jan. 6 rioter ordered to pay $500K to widow of officer who killed himself

A federal jury ordered a Jan. 6 rioter to pay $500,000 in damages for assaulting a police officer who died by suicide nine days later.

The jury on Monday awarded $380,000 in punitive damages and $60,000 in compensatory damages to Erin Smith, the widow of D.C. police officer Jeffrey Smith, in her civil lawsuit against David Walls-Kaufman, 69. The jury also ordered Walls-Kaufman to pay a further $60,000 to Smith’s estate for his pain and suffering. The damages were first reported by the Associated Press, and confirmed to the Washington Post by Erin Smith’s attorney, David P. Weber.

Walls-Kaufman, a chiropractor who lived and worked on Capitol Hill, was sentenced in 2023 to two months in jail for a misdemeanor offense over his role in the Capitol riot in 2021. The judge at the time said she was unable to include Smith’s death in her sentencing decision because Walls-Kaufman had only pleaded guilty to illegally protesting in a Capitol building.

Within hours of taking office for his second term, President Donald Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of those charged and convicted over the riot, though Trump’s decision did not affect the civil suit brought by Erin Smith.

Walls-Kaufman was not criminally charged with assault, as prosecutors said they lacked sufficient evidence to prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt, but the burden of proof in a lawsuit is lower, the Post previously reported.

“The verdict has provided Widow Erin Smith a measure of justice that she has long sought for her husband,” Weber wrote in an emailed statement. “We are considering our appeal options on the portion of the case that was not allowed to go to the jury.”

Walls-Kaufman, meanwhile, described the jury’s decision as “absolutely ridiculous,” adding: “No crime happened. I never struck the officer. I never intended to strike the officer,” the Associated Press reported.

His lawyer, Hughie Hunt, described the outcome as “shocking,” according to the AP.

Hunt did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes dismissed part of Erin Smith’s wrongful death claim against Walls-Kaufman. According to the AP, she said that she did not believe that reasonable jurors could conclude that Walls-Kaufman’s actions could have caused a traumatic brain injury that led to Smith’s death.

Walls-Kaufman blamed any injuries the officer sustained on a later incident on Jan. 6, 2021, when another rioter threw a pole that hit Smith around his head, according to the AP. But the jury on Friday found that Walls-Kaufman was liable for assault and battery, Smith’s lawyers said.

Smith’s lawsuit said that footage from Jan. 6, 2021 showed Walls-Kaufman grabbing and “violently” swinging Officer Smith’s baton, hitting him in the head. Officer Smith was vulnerable because his visor was in the upright position, the lawsuit said, and argued that Smith suffered from post-concussive syndrome, which was to blame for the depression he suffered and his suicide.

According to a 2023 sentencing document, Walls-Kaufman was also a former congressional staffer and was among the first rioters who breached the Rotunda doors on the east side of the Capitol, despite being sprayed with a chemical irritant.

He later “physically scuffled with police officers who were attempting to quickly move rioters out of the Capitol following the shooting of a rioter outside the Speaker’s Lobby,” and had to be forcibly removed from the Capitol, the document said.

Jeffrey Smith was one of four police officers who died by suicide in the months after the Capitol riot, according to authorities; another died of a stroke a day after the insurrection.

Smith’s widow spoke to the court during Walls-Kaufman’s sentencing in 2023, saying: “Because of the choices he made on January 6th, I lost my husband.”

“My life will never be the same,” she added.

The D.C. Police and Firefighters Retirement and Relief Board granted Erin Smith a full pension, saying that the injury her husband sustained on Jan. 6, 2021, was the “sole and direct cause of his death.”