Former SEAL Speaks Out on Jury's Not Guilty Verdict
Akron Beacon Journal | Apr 06, 2015 | by Ed Meyer
Former Navy SEAL Christopher Heben had a message Friday for those who might doubt a jury's not guilty verdicts in his trial on falsification charges.
"There's always going to be nay-sayers, and the court of public opinion is a very vicious and malicious court. I think we, as a nation, have lost the whole concept of 'innocent until proven guilty,'?" Heben said.
Anyone who doesn't trust the jury's decision, he said, should to go to the News Channel 5 website and request a copy of the trial's streaming video.
"Take 16 or 18 hours out of your life and watch it, and maybe that'll change your opinion," Heben said. "But I'm not going to try to sway your opinion here. We all say you can't please everyone, and that's the truth."
Heben commented on the verdict for the first time in a scheduled news conference Friday morning at the downtown Akron office of his lawyer, James L. Burdon.
An Akron Municipal Court jury got the case Wednesday afternoon following two days of prosecution and defense testimony. After only 35 minutes of deliberations, the eight-member panel found Heben not guilty of fabricating a story about being shot last spring in the parking lot of the Mustard Seed Market and Cafe in West Akron.
He had been charged with obstructing official business and falsification.
The year-old misdemeanor case "was very disturbing and distressing," Heben said, and also hurt him financially.
"I won't give a dollar amount, but it was very, very substantial, I will say that. Seven figures. Without being too exact, it was a seven-figure loss over the course of the last year," he said.
Heben, who served as a SEAL from 1996 to 2006, is a motivational speaker, a news media source on special operations teams and president and founder of the INVICTVS Group, a veterans consortium that provides corporate and personal security training.
Burdon began the news conference by informing reporters and television crews that it was not a forum for questions that police or prosecutors would ask.
Heben applauded the service of federal, state and local police officers, hundreds of whom he has personally trained, he said, and thanked the jury for its decision.
"They made the correct decision and the right decision. I've maintained my innocence the whole time," he said, "and it was the right decision."
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/04/06/former-seal-speaks-out-on-jurys-not-guilty-verdict.html?comp=7000023468025&rank=2
