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Cont: Man shot, killed by off-duty Dallas police officer who walked into wrong apartment p2

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Darat said:
But this was not a split second decision. She had to see Jean, deliberately unholster her gun, disengage the safety (I assume that, my knowledge of guns is a bit basic the hard bit comes out of the hole) take aim and then fire. She then decided to fire again.
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Some pistols, particularly the Glocks often preferred by police, don't have safeties to disengage. But in others it's just a thumb lever; people train to disengage the safety as they draw from the holster. I'm willing to grant that she drew her weapon on instinct; the issue is that she deliberately shot somebody -- twice -- when she had no conceivable grounds to do so, and, in particular, when she could have safely backed out of the unit and demanded an explanation/called for backup/etc.
 
Joe Random said:
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Back when I took hunter safety and when the NRA was only about how to be safe with firearms, one of the first few things drilled into me was being sure about my target.
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Not just sure of your target, but sure of everything behind your target. This was an apartment building; how many layers of wallboard and glass could a shot have passed through, with human beings behind all of them?
 
If that 911 tape gains her any sympathy for being surprised, she loses it when she keeps saying things like "I'm gonna lose my job!" as the guy she shot is dying in front of her eyes.
 
Darat said:
But this was not a split second decision. She had to see Jean, deliberately unholster her gun, disengage the safety (I assume that, my knowledge of guns is a bit basic the hard bit comes out of the hole) take aim and then fire. She then decided to fire again.

That is not a split second decision.
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Neither was Noor's decision to unholster his gun and shoot an unarmed woman outside his car window, but the jury still only found him liable for 3rd degree murder, which is differentiated from more severe murder charges by a lack of intent.

We can split hairs about whether shooting at a person is ever an act without intent to kill in the general sense, but a jury won't necessarily see it that way.

If you think that Guyger committed murder with a clear intent, be prepared to be disappointed by the trial. My complete amateur opinion is that she'll get a similar outcome as Noor, a lesser degree murder charge that is more akin to manslaughter.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
We can split hairs about whether shooting at a person is ever a be an act without intent to kill in the general sense, but a jury won't necessarily see it that way.
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We can always split hairs, we don't always split hairs. That's the problem.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Yes as I've said repeatedly until the same level of fervor for "mens rea" as a magic word and hair splitting over parking spots and the exact height of door numbers and placement of welcome mats is applied to black people shooting cops while executing no-knock warrants in the middle of the night (often at the wrong location funny that) or white supremacist running down protesters I maintain there's an icky sheen to this whole thing.
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This. Many many times this. This is known as the double standard for burden of proof: where one demands much more burden of proof for conviction of one set of people (police), while holding another group of people (civilians who are surprised by a no-knock warrant, police screaming at them, or police shouting conflicting confusing things at them) to a much lower burden of proof for conviction.
One of these is supposedly trained for high-intensity situations, and the other just might be bleeding out on the floor.
 
Fired Dallas officer Amber Guyger appears in court for murder case in fatal shooting of Botham Jean

Dallas News said:
Fired Dallas police officer Amber Guyger appeared in court Thursday, her first time before the judge who will oversee her murder trial in the shooting death of Botham Jean.

During a 12-minute hearing, state District Judge Tammy Kemp quizzed attorneys about the leaking of Guyger's 911 call after the shooting despite a gag order. In the call, Guyger sounds frantic about shooting Jean but also repeatedly mentions that she is going to lose her job as a police officer...

Kemp had previously asked the prosecution and defense to question everyone they worked with about whether they released the 911 recording. She asked the attorneys for the results of the inquiries Thursday in court. Kemp said she was "dismayed to find out the 911 call had been leaked to the media." The person who released it, she said, "lacked the integrity and the fortitude to honor" the gag order.

Prosecutor Jason Hermus and defense attorney Robert Rogers said that they had not leaked the audio and that the people they asked also said they had not. Hermus said Dallas police are still investigating whether any of the department's officers released the call. Kemp asked Hermus to notify her if the police inquiry leads anywhere.

Kemp and the attorneys decided that jury selection will begin Sept. 6 — exactly one year after Jean's death. Potential jurors will first fill out a questionnaire, and those who are not disqualified will return Sept. 13 to be questioned by the attorneys. There probably will also be two pretrial hearings in July, but those dates have not been set. Testimony is scheduled to begin Sept. 23...
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https://www.dallasnews.com/news/cri...-court-murder-case-shooting-death-botham-jean
 
An article outlining the defense's strategy with regard to Amber Guyger.
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-police-officer-amber-guygers-defense-tactics-11735279

It is what we predicted here.
Mistake of Fact
"She clearly, based on what we do know, has the defense of what we call mistake-of-fact," Dallas defense attorney Pete Schulte, a former DeSoto cop and Dallas County prosecutor, told the Observer. "If she can show to a jury that her mistake-of-fact led to this and the jury finds that it was reasonable, then she's entitled to an acquittal, because our criminal laws don't want to criminalize accidents. That's for the civil courts."
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Sleep Deprivation
To that end, the defense's expert list includes Charles Czeisler, a Harvard-based sleep researcher with expertise in circadian and sleep disorders. Guyger was reportedly on the tail end of a 15-hour shift when she shot Jean, and the Dallas Police Association has cited fatigue as a potential reason for the shooting to the media.

In addition to Czeisler, Guyger's defense also lists Marc Green as a potential witness. Green, from Toronto, has made frequent appearances in U.S. courts, according to his CV, in issues of human perception, like eyewitness identification, visibility and reaction times.
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I'm far from being a lawyer, but I hope the prosecution really hammers home questions like "So with you being as tired as you were and in possession of a lethal weapon it's safe to conclude that, had you gone to your actual apartment and found a maintenance worker inside trying to fix a gas leak you'd have shot him, too?". Only in more lawyerly language.
 
Belz... said:
"Accident"? It would've been an accident if she just came into the appartment and left. She shot a man. That's not an accident.
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"Your honor I was cleaning my compound bow and didn't realize it was loaded until it accidentally discharged and hit my wife in the back. Twice."
 
Mind you, this happened in Texas.

My guess is she'll get acquitted and the family will get money in civil court.
 
Joe Random said:
I'm far from being a lawyer, but I hope the prosecution really hammers home questions like "So with you being as tired as you were and in possession of a lethal weapon it's safe to conclude that, had you gone to your actual apartment and found a maintenance worker inside trying to fix a gas leak you'd have shot him, too?". Only in more lawyerly language.
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What would such a question accomplish for the prosecution?
 
theprestige said:
What would such a question accomplish for the prosecution?
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Saying 'ask questions like' was my lazy way of expressing that's the angle I hope they pursue, by whatever lawyerly way appropriate.

Again, not a lawyer by any stretch myself, but to me the point of failure in this case was never going to the wrong apartment, it was the decision to shoot, period. Meaning if she in fact had been at her apartment as she claims to have thought, there were reasons why someone might be in there which didn't involve anything nefarious. In either the hypothetical 'correct apartment, guy fixing gas leak' situation or the one that played out in reality, it's my layman's opinion (want to emphasize that part since I can't claim any expertise here) that she should have done a far better job assessing the situation before deciding to shoot. Doing so would have allowed her to see (hypothetical) 'dude is fixing a gas leak, so don't shoot', or (reality) '****, I'm in the wrong apartment - don't shoot'.
 
Joe Random said:
"So with you being as tired as you were and in possession of a lethal weapon it's safe to conclude that, had you gone to your actual apartment and found a maintenance worker inside trying to fix a gas leak you'd have shot him, too?".
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Objection! The prosecutor is asking for speculation.
 
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