Jury finds man guilty of shooting deputy

TAMPA -- A jury found DeAndre Wallace guilty of attempted murder today in the shooting of Hillsborough sheriff's Detective Christopher Baumann.

Wallace will be sentenced May 8.

"It's very difficult for a jury to overcome the fact that a police officer got shot," defense attorney Ronald Kurpiers II said.

Baumann was critically injured on April 28, 2007. He had gone to Progress Village to train undercover detectives to make drug buys on the street, but he ended up tussling with a man carrying a gun around the neighborhood. The man shot Baumann twice, once in the chest and once in the back.

Prosecutor Jay Pruner said in his closing argument that there is no question Wallace, 19, was the shooter.

But defense attorney Kurpiers accused deputies of making a "rush to judgment."

He said they were drinking beer during their undercover operation and were too impaired to see who hit Baumann.

Hillsborough Sheriff's Office policy allows alcohol to be consumed during covert operations as long as deputies have less than a 0.05 blood alcohol level, Baumann said. A person is considered legally impaired at 0.08.

The five deputies involved in the undercover drug buy, including Baumann, said they each had only a few sips of beer.

But none were tested for their alcohol level after the shooting. Also, none of them mentioned to investigators that they had consumed alcohol on the job, Kurpiers said.

"When alcohol's involved," he said, "judgment and coordination are the first to go."

Sheriff David Gee was sitting in the courtroom audience today for closing arguments.

After the verdict, he said there was nothing uncommon about undercover deputies using alcohol as a decoy.

"Anytime you're hanging with the bad guys you've got to act like the bad guys," Gee said.

If convicted of attempted first-degree murder on a law enforcement officer, Wallace faces a maximum of life in prison.

-- Colleen Jenkins, Times staff writer