The decision to convict a Kansas City police detective who fatally shot a man in 2019 was based on protections laid out in the U.S. Constitution, Jackson County Circuit Court Judge J. Dale Youngs said as he delivered the verdict Friday.

Kansas City police Det. Eric DeValkenaere was convicted of second-degree involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action in the shooting death of Cameron Lamb on Dec. 3, 2019.

DeValkenaere’s defense attorneys requested a bench trial, which means it was heard by a judge and not a jury.

Lamb, 26, was shot after officers investigating a crash reported a red pickup chasing a purple Ford Mustang in a separate incident. Officers in a police helicopter spotted the truck driven by Lamb and followed it.

Several minutes later, DeValkenaere and his partner Sgt. Troy Schwalm, who were in plainclothes, arrived at Lamb’s home at 4154 College Ave.

Prosecutors said there was no evidence anyone was hurt or that a crime had taken place when they got to the house.

Lamb was fatally wounded as he was backing a pickup truck into his garage.

“Many of the fundamental issues that have been presented to me for determination in this case turned out to be issues of law, particularly issues of law related to the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Youngs said during the hearing.

“These protections are fundamental to the effort to preserve our freedom as citizens and our rights to expectation we will be free from unreasonable government intrusion into our homes, property and persons.”

Youngs said DeValkenaere and Schwalm did not have a search warrant or an arrest warrant, which would have allowed them to be on the property. They did not have consent to be on the property and there were no circumstances where someone was being harmed or in imminent danger that would have permitted them to be on the property, Youngs said.

“Sgt. Schwalm was not lawfully present in the backyard carport area of 4154 College on Dec. 3, 2019,” Youngs said. “Nor was the defendant when he followed Sgt. Schwalm into that area and when the defendant encountered Cameron Lamb and when he then shot.”

He called DeValkenaere and Schwalm “the initial aggressors in the encounter with Cameron Lamb,” adding that they escalated the situation when they had a duty to retreat.

Allen Rostron, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, said the case was framed by the Fourth Amendment, but that “doesn’t make it easier to decide the outcome.”

“The constitutional standards that apply are very general, like whether the officer’s use of force was objectively reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them,” Rostron said. “People will obviously disagree about what is reasonable in a particular situation, especially a complicated situation where things were happening quickly and the witnesses say different things about it.”

During the trial, DeValkenaere testified that moments before the shooting, he saw Lamb reach with his left hand for a handgun from his waistband and point towards Schwalm.

Defense attorney Dawn Parsons contended they did not need a search warrant, probable cause or consent to go on the property to investigate, saying under “the totality of the circumstances, they can do that.”

DeValkenaere will spend 10 days out on bond pending his sentencing. A sentencing date has not been set.