A Clark County jury acquitted a one-time 3rd Congressional District candidate of allegations that he struck his wife in the head during an October argument at their Camas home.
After deliberating for a half hour, the panel of four men and two women rendered their verdict at 5:30 p.m., acquitting David W. Hedrick, 31, of fourth-degree assault domestic violence.
The verdict apparently wasn’t swayed by partisanship; none of the jurors said they knew of Hedrick. The Camas man first gained attention in 2009 by confronting U.S. Rep. Brian Baird at a town hall meeting in a video that went viral on the Web.
Last year, he ran as a Tea Party Republican candidate for Baird’s open seat. He finished third in the August primary behind Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler and Democrat Denny Heck.
Hedrick also wrote a children’s book critical of Barack Obama that was subject of an item in Time magazine.
Despite testimony that Hedrick’s wife, Megan, had also assaulted her husband during the argument, the jury did not return a second verdict that David Hedrick was acting in self-defense. This special verdict would have reimbursed David Hedrick’s court costs.
Afterward, Hedrick said he didn’t believe the negative publicity of the case will stain his fledgling political career.
“I’m going to keep working politics,” Hedrick said outside the courtroom. “As long as there’s infringements on the Constitution, I’ll continue to work to fix it.”
It became apparent at Friday’s Clark County District Court trial that the story of what happened the night of Oct. 9 and into the 10th differed depending on whom you asked — or when.
The crux of the prosecution’s case was a 911 call placed by Megan Hedrick, accusing her husband of throwing her to the ground, hitting her in the back of the head, and then hitting her again in the front of the head.
That’s where the state’s evidence ended.
‘She-said … she-said’
Defense attorney Jack Green pointed out that Megan Hedrick changed her story once a sheriff’s deputy arrived at her house. She told the officer that she swung a folding chair at her husband and said he had only hit her once. There were never any injuries or physical evidence of an assault to corroborate her story.
“This is not a he-said-she-said case,” Green said. “It’s a she-said, then she-said, then she-said-again case.”
On the witness stand Friday, Megan Hedrick outright denied that she had been assaulted by her husband.
She told jurors that she and her husband began arguing that night over Hedrick’s recently amicable relationship with his ex-wife. At one point, he left the house to let her cool off.
An enraged Megan Hedrick said she then decided to burn several of his items in a barrel in their yard and changed his password on the computer.
After Hedrick returned home later in the evening and noticed the changed password, he confronted his wife. She told him she wanted to talk about their problems, but he insisted that she give over the new password.
There was “yelling, yelling and nothing, so I struck him,” she said.
“How did he react to you punching him?” asked Vancouver Assistant City Attorney Patrick Robinson.
“Puzzled,” she said.
Megan Hedrick said she started hitting him more before picking up a folding chair and swinging it at him. David Hedrick managed to catch the chair, she said. He then forced her to the ground to restrain her.
“He said, ‘Once you’re calmed down, you’ll get up,’ ” she testified.
After this exchange, Megan Hedrick said, she formed a plan to get back at him by calling 911.
Prosecutor Robinson played the 911 tape for jurors. On it, Megan Hedrick tells the dispatcher that she would like to file a police report because her husband hit her.
Once a sheriff’s deputy, Jesse Henschel, arrived on scene, the story unraveled. She initially said nothing about a folding chair, saying only that her husband hit her once. After the deputy questioned David Hedrick and then Megan Hedrick again, the story of the folding chair came out.
Henschel testified that he arrested David Hedrick and then referred the possibility of charges against Megan Hedrick to the prosecutor’s office. However, she was never charged.
Prosecutor Robinson argued that Megan Hedrick’s most credible story was the initial one to the 911 dispatcher, and that she changed her account out of her loyalty to her husband.
“She got up here and put on a performance,” Robinson said after Megan Hedrick testified.
In his closing argument, defense attorney Green argued that you can’t convict a defendant based on an initial 911 call and nothing else.
“All they’ve proven is that she made an accusation once,” Green said. “It doesn’t matter if you believe her or not, that’s all the evidence they got.”
Laura McVicker: 360-735-4516 or laura.mcvicker@columbian.com.
