[A] judge has declared a mistrial after a jury deadlocked in the case of a Burlington Technical Center teacher accused of assaulting a 16-year-old student in full view her classmates.
The case stems from a Nov. 29, 2017, incident in which criminal justice teacher David Scibek, a former Burlington police officer, allegedly bruised a student after applying a pressure-point technique to her neck after she refused to do pushups as punishment for throwing a gum-wrapper across the room.
Over the course of a daylong trial at the Chittenden Superior Court in Burlington on Wednesday, the state sought to paint Scibek, a 20-year veteran of the police department, as a frustrated former cop who overreacted when a student — one of only two teens of color in the class — challenged his authority.
Scibek pleaded not guilty in February to the misdemeanor simple assault charge. Defense attorney Ernest Allen focused during the trial on the unorthodox culture of the class, which he called a “baby police academy,” where students expected to encounter real-world scenarios and pushups were an accepted consequence of bad behavior.
Allen also attempted to undermine the credibility of the student’s story, arguing prosecutors themselves had described a much more toned-down version of the incident to jurors. VTDigger does not typically name minors involved in criminal cases.
The student took the stand in the morning and told jurors that Scibek’s course had been her “favorite class” and that she and her instructor had had a “great relationship.” But she said things had gotten more tense after she’d started working on a project on racial profiling, a subject she and Scibek had differed over in the past.
She told the courtroom that the day before the incident in which Scibek allegedly assaulted her, she’d had a conversation with him about his reticence to give her guidance on her racial profiling project.
“I told him that I was feeling kind of upset because he didn’t want to help me. And I felt like he was getting upset over the topic that I was working on,” she said.
As for the incident itself, she described the events of the day in visceral, traumatic terms. After initially refusing to do the pushups, she said her teacher suddenly came up next to her and dug his fingers into her neck.
“All I could feel was this excruciating pain,” she said. She also said that she did not fall to the ground but that Scibek “dragged me out my chair on to the floor.”
“I tried to get up and he pushed me back down to try and get me into the pushup position,” she said. The incident, she added, left her “very embarrassed and terrified.”
Scibek, for his part, offered a starkly different version of events when he took the stand in the afternoon, although, he, too, agreed that he and the student had previously enjoyed a good relationship.
He described her as “very smart, very charming” but also said she was “becoming increasingly confrontational with her peers.”
When she refused to do the pushups, Scibek said he decided to use the occasion to demonstrate to the class the so-called “mastoid” technique, in which pressure is applied behind the ear to create momentary pain.
“It’s a teachable moment, as you say in the industry,” he said.
But Scibek also said he wasn’t able to complete the maneuver because the student’s hair blocked his way.
“There was just too much hair. I just couldn’t find — I think I briefly felt her ear,” he said.
Afterward, Scibek claimed the student slid out of the chair, apparently of her own accord, and that he only briefly touched her in attempt to steady her as she fell.
Jurors also heard from a University of Vermont Medical Center physician assistant, who diagnosed bruises on the student’s neck and back after she came in for an examination on the night of the incident, as well as four other students from the class who were there that day.
Every student described enjoying the class, and said Scibek hadn’t appeared agitated during the incident.
In closing arguments, Allen, the defense attorney, homed in on the other witnesses and said they contradicted the story told by Scibek’s accuser.
“She says that when she was down on the floor and she tries to get up, he pushed her down again to this pushup position. Nobody else sees that,” he said.
Prosecutors, too, told a less intense tale. “The State doesn’t believe her story,” Allen said.
In his own closing arguments, Deputy State’s Attorney Franklin Paulino said that while Scibek may have been a well-liked, popular teacher, his actions that day were reckless and inappropriate.
“We ask that you judge the acts, not the person,” Paulino said. “I’m not a teacher. But common sense would tell me this is the worst opportunity for a teaching moment.”
The jury deliberated for over four hours after closing arguments closed at about 5 p.m. before declaring they were deadlocked.
