Aaron Richard Russell, a former San Diego County sheriff’s deputy convicted of a federal civil rights violation for shooting an unarmed, fleeing man in the back outside the downtown San Diego jail, was sentenced Friday to 12 years in federal prison.
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Russell, 29, had previously pleaded guilty and served about five months in jail for a state charge related to the May 2020 killing of 36-year-old Nicholas Bils. Federal prosecutors later charged Russell with depriving Bils of his rights under color of law and discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.
A San Diego federal jury deadlocked following an initial trial last year, but in March, a second jury convicted Russell on both counts.
U.S. District Judge Todd Robinson sentenced Russell to two years in prison on the civil rights violation, plus the minimum 10 years for using a firearm in a crime of violence, for a total of 12 years. Prosecutors had asked for a 13-year term, while Russell and his attorney had argued for the minimum 10.
Robinson acknowledged that Russell’s time in custody will be more difficult because he was a law enforcement officer, but he said part of the reason for his sentence was to help “restore the public’s trust in law enforcement.” The judge said that law enforcement officers are rightfully held to a higher standard.
“They must be put on notice,” Robinson said.
Russell shot and killed Bils the evening of May 1, 2020, a little more than a month into the COVID-19 pandemic. Bils had been walking his dog when he was arrested by California State Parks rangers on suspicion of violating newly implemented COVID restrictions at Old Town San Diego State Historic Park. As he was being transported to jail, he escaped from a ranger’s vehicle and began sprinting away from officers and deputies with handcuffs still attached to one wrist.
Russell, who was 23 at the time and had graduated from the San Diego Regional Training Academy about a year earlier, was walking to work at the jail when he saw Bils escape from across the street. He stepped into the road and quickly fired five shots from close range without warning.
Four of those shots struck Bils from behind, including one that entered his back, pierced his lung and heart, bounced off his breast bone and lodged back in his heart, according to prosecutors.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Askins told the judge Friday that the shooting was willful and not a split-second decision nor a mistake, as Russell’s attorney had argued.
“That’s murder by a sworn law enforcement officer wearing a badge,” Askins said. “He doesn’t get a pass because of that badge.”
Askins argued that Russell also committed perjury at trial by lying under oath that he believed Bils might be armed with a gun. The prosecutor also said Russell “almost killed” a nurse whose car was struck on the driver’s side by one of Russell’s shots. And he argued that part of the tragedy of the case was the public’s loss of faith in law enforcement.
“He abused his power in the worst possible way,” Askins said. “This was a willful kill. It wasn’t a mistake.”
Russell told the judge in a brief statement that he was “deeply regretful for my decisions and actions that day.”
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Defense attorney Jeremy Warren had challenged the firearms conviction and asked the judge to acquit Russell of that crime, which would have nixed the mandatory minimum sentence and allowed Robinson to impose a much lighter prison term. But the judge upheld the conviction in a ruling made just before sentencing.
Warren told the judge he would appeal that ruling. The defense attorney told the Union-Tribune that the legal issue in question is one that’s never been decided by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In sentencing documents and in court Friday, Warren argued that Russell, who is now a father, is a changed man six years after the shooting. Contrasting his client with Derek Chauvin, the Minnesota officer who killed George Floyd, he said Russell did not have a history of abuse or misconduct like many officers convicted of civil rights violations.
“Very few civil rights prosecutions seem to involve split-second, heat of the moment decisions like what happened here,” Warren argued in sentencing documents. “Instead, they involve officers who are terrorizing their communities, officers who retaliate against a prisoner in anger, officers who plant evidence, and so on … None of those factors were operating in this case.”
But Askins reminded the judge that several other law enforcement officers were present when Russell shot Bils, and all testified at trial that they never considered pulling out their weapons, much less firing.
“The only reason this shooting happened quickly is because Mr. Russell” made a hasty choice, Askins argued. “No split-second decision needed to be made … (Bils) wasn’t a threat to anyone.”
In a letter read by a prosecutor, Bils’ mother told Russell that she forgave him. But Amber Barnett told the judge she had “no forgiveness to offer” the man who killed her cousin.
Barnett said Bils, who experienced mental health issues most of his life, had always been afraid of police, and her family didn’t understand why until “that fear was affirmed in the worst way.” She said her entire family now fears law enforcement and has been “torn apart by what Mr. Russell did.”
Russell resigned from the Sheriff’s Department five days after the shooting, and county prosecutors charged him with second-degree murder, making him the first San Diego-area law enforcement officer to face a murder charge in an on-duty shooting. He was also the first officer in the state to face a murder charge under stricter use-of-force standards that went into effect just months before the shooting.
Russell pleaded guilty in 2022 to a state charge of voluntary manslaughter. That same year, the county agreed to pay $8.1 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by Bils’ family. In May 2024, more than four years after the shooting, a federal grand jury indicted Russell on the charges for which he was sentenced Friday.
Robinson allowed Russell to remain out of custody for the time being, but ordered him to report to prison on July 13.
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