Thermal
August Member
No duty to retreat ( I assume you mean the shooter, not the perp) . You can even chase them down to shoot them
Cont: Man shot, killed by off-duty Dallas police officer who walked into wrong apartment p2
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No duty to retreat ( I assume you mean the shooter, not the perp) . You can even chase them down to shoot them
Elagabalus
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OK, $246 max. Oh, you city-slickers. Looks like I forgot to mention the 80 mile (or more) commute from the court house location.
https://www.cacd.uscourts.gov/jurors/subsistence-information-hotels
Check out the Hotels-Hilton, the BillMore! Swanky!
Thermal
August Member
I'm still going to get a job so I can quit it for that cash cow
Be sure it's at least 80 miles from the federal courthouse.
I mean, in this case the shooter trespassed in the wrong apartment. Didn't she have a duty to retreat instead of opening fire?
Thermal
August Member
I'm no lawyer, but I don't think a duty to retreat is ever imposed on the criminal. Its strictly for the lawful defender/victim, so it would not be imposed on a trespasser
In a sane world, if there is ever a safe option available besides killing, it should be taken.
DevilsAdvocate
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It's a little complicated. Guyger will presumably claim self-defense. Note that for self-defense, the law says that the person must "reasonably believe" that force is necessary.
Texas has two laws about there being no duty to retreat. (There are actually more because they are duplicated for self defense, defense of property and defense of others, but we'll just look at self-defense.).
Texas law says that a person can use force against another in self-defense. It also says a person is not required to retreat when using such force as long as the person had a right to be where they were, did not provoke the person, and was not committing a crime. Note that that law doesn't say anything about a reasonable belief. Those are the conditions. Guyger fails on two of those conditions: she didn't have a right to be there and was committing a crime (at least of trespassing).
But there is another law that says when determining whether force was necessary and what degree of force was necessary, the jury may not consider whether the person failed to retreat.
But Guyger will likely claim the castle law. Under that law, there is a presumption that lethal force is immediately necessary if she reasonably believed that someone had unlawfully broke into her home. In that case, it doesn't matter whether the jury can consider retreat in determining whether force was necessary, because it is automatically presumed. But the law also says the jury can't consider failure to retreat anyway.
DevilsAdvocate
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Claiming that you shouldn't have to serve jury duty due to hardship is one thing. Saying that you will willfully disrespect the court by intentionally being not impartial is quite another.
Severe financial hardship, including the need to care for others, is a perfectly valid excuse to get out of jury duty. You have to fill out a form and provide some documents. You can find the form here:
https://www.njcourts.gov/jurors/assets/juryfaq.pdf
DevilsAdvocate
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You can't use your phone or the internet when you are in jail for contempt of court either. At least probably not much. And the room service isn't nearly as good.
DevilsAdvocate
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Texas law allows the use of force to protect property. But lethal force is only allowed to prevent certain crimes. Burglary is one of those, which I think would be most applicable to this case. Another is theft in the nighttime. Laws in many jurisdictions distinguish between theft in the daytime and theft in the nighttime. It's kind of weird, but that's the way it is, and the way is has been for along time.
Deadly force can only be used to protect property if there is no other safe alternative. So, there is no castle law or law saying there is no duty to retreat. A person can only use the minimum force necessary.
It would be much more difficult for Guyger to establish a defense of property than it would self-defense.
Based on the evidence we have, it is quite clear he was across the apartment, in the living room. She was near the door next to the kitchen, on the other side of the counter. To get from the door to the living room where Jean was, a person would have to walk down the hall, go though the entrance to the living room, and then circle back toward the kitchen counter.
The best evidence we have available very strongly suggests that the door was ajar as Guyger claims. As I have said, even Merritt (the Jean family attorney, who originally brought up the claim) has dropped the issue after further evidence came to light.
DevilsAdvocate
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That attorney, Russell Wilson, is saying basically what I have been saying this whole time.
I wish the author would have used quotes instead of paraphrasing this:
I don't think alternatives will be an issue. But the first sentence doesn't jibe with the second. I think the big issue will be whether the mistake is considered reasonable.
TurkeysGhost
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I would argue that her mistake is not reasonable. Maybe she was too tired and too distracted to properly find her own apartment, but that smacks of negligence to me. If you are too sleepy to function, you shouldn't be carrying a gun. Her extreme sleepiness, if that is the excuse, is her problem to mitigate.
Her wandering into the wrong apartment and killing the resident is not reasonable, even though I can easily see how such a mistake could happen for an extremely sleep deprived person.
I wonder if the case is really going to come down to threading this needle, like it has on this forum. Anyone with legal experience want to chime in? How often is it for juries to be given such legally technical arguments to consider?
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Drewbot
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The jury instructions, if the judge allows Mistake of Fact defense, will be something like: If you think the Defense presented enough evidence to support their claim that the defendant made a mistake of fact, then you must then ... If you do not think the Defense proved that the defendant made a mistake of fact, then...
Mistake of Fact is an Active defense, in other words, the defense has to prove to the jury that it was indeed a mistake, it is not a passive defense, where the prosecutor has to prove guilt. The defense is going to admit she shot him, admit she was in the wrong apartment, but try to prove that it all was because of an error or mistake.
Mistake of Fact is an Active defense, in other words, the defense has to prove to the jury that it was indeed a mistake, it is not a passive defense, where the prosecutor has to prove guilt. The defense is going to admit she shot him, admit she was in the wrong apartment, but try to prove that it all was because of an error or mistake.
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Thermal
August Member
Yes, severe financial hardship is an excuse, of course. Severe. You think the Court and a prospective Juror agree on what is 'severe'?
The lost time and disruption to my work schedule for up to two weeks would easily cost me a few grand. Easily. I have filled out the form you linked. It has never been accepted as an excuse, only a deferment, even when I was the self-employed sole provider for a family of five. They don't care, bro.
Thermal
August Member
I think the sleepy-bye thing is a peripheral contributor, not the prime argument. The prime argument is (presumably) that she inadvertently drove up an extra floor on a (presumably) corkscrew parking garage. Not noticing the background noise of painted and lit up numbers is far more understandable, tired or not.
Do you think you would notice if I changed your house number or street sign? I don't think I would. People walk on auto pilot even when fully awake, if they think they know where they are. I get asked for directions sometimes, and cannot remember how many streets or traffic lights there are to a destination. You just...go there on autopilot. I can fully sympathize with walking up to the wrong door.
Which is why no mother ****** should by wandering around with a gun on the streets. People do dumb careless things. Taking human lives should not fall into that soup.
plague311
Great minds think...
This leaves out the fact that Jean's door is distinctly NOT like the other doors on his floor or in the building. He took steps to ensure that his door stood out. Mistake of Fact is fine and dandy, and all that good stuff. I just don't see it as the complete catch all that is being implied from time to time. Getting to the wrong door is fine, every action after that was a deliberate step that caused her to shoot someone.
Whether the door was open or not makes no difference. In fact, if the door were ajar it should work against more than if the door was closed. An open door should have made her wonder why and how it got opened.
The open door had to have jolted her out of any "auto daywalking" she had been doing (and I do believe she could have walked up to the wrong door by mistake). It was something out of the ordinary, and that's what usually breaks one of these auto walking moments, something no longer fits the habit and you jump off the rails. After that every action she took can no longer be a result of her "mistake of fact". That's the disconnection point. The mistake of fact only gets her to the door. (Of course all that is based on the few "facts" we think we know.)
Thermal
August Member
Agreed. I don't agree with Texas law. Find it barbaric, truth be told.
But the prosecution will not be asking us what we think. They will be asking a Texas jury what they think.
ponderingturtle
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That is the gist of it. As long as she can reasonably to believe it was her apartment it is all legal. That gets to the real issue, how much would a reasonable person realize it wasn't their apartment?
I mean this isn't as simple as opening fire and shooting your kid/spouse or what ever when they are home when you don't expect or up getting a drink of water at night.
plague311
Great minds think...
Hilite 1) I absolutely agree, it's something that could be done. It seems like a stretch given the description of how long they had to walk, but not implausible.
Hilite 2) Again, I agree. The moment she got to the door, and noticed it was ajar she should have started looking around to take in her surroundings. ESPECIALLY as a police officer.
Hilite 3) As an aside, she also said she put her key in the door, and that's when she noticed that the door was ajar. Which means the key would have been denied (from what I understand it would have attempted to unlock the door when it went in the lock, then the key is used to turn it. The key lock is unlocked before the turn, unlike with a regular deadbolt). So I see multiple things here that a reasonable person would have looked into when had they been in this circumstance.
Her sister also claimed that Jean wasn't a fan of the dark, so the lights being off are something that is conflicting as well.
Of all the people that showed up, hopefully they got reasonable people.
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