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Man shot, killed by off-duty Dallas police officer who walked into wrong apartment p3

JoeMorgue said:
He point is the same point as the point of all anti-intellectual post-fact trolls.

"Destroy all intellectual means of proving a point, so the argument belongs to however is the loudest and most stubborn."
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In this case, I think Guyger's pistol was the loudest.

I'll see myself out.
 
whoanellie said:
You can listen to the hearing of the appeal here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-X_37kTSxk

It doesn't seem like the 3 appellate judges thought much of the Guyger's attorney's arguments. They spend much of the time discussing why the 'mistake of fact' issue.
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Well, that was lame. This case has some challenging issues that could be brought up on appeal. This wasn't that.

The judges looked annoyed that he kept going on and on with the evidence that she made a mistake of fact. And he wasn't even doing that well. One judge looked puzzled when he started going over al the clues Guyger missed, which is sort of against his argument.

And when he brought up that there has never been a case like this before in Texas, and that there were a bunch of people in that apartment complex who went into the wrong apartment, but they didn't shoot anybody. He is arguing that simply the fact that she went into the wrong apartment and thought Jean was an intruder should have been considered reasonable justification for deadly force. But apparently people have been walking into wrong apartments all over the state for decades and never not once has anybody else shot someone. Apparently nobody else has ever found it reasonable to go in with guns blazing.

At one point he says something like, "You have to realize Guyger was a police officer." and one judge made a face and shrugged his shoulders like, "What the hell does that have to do with the legal arguments in the appeal?" He seemed to be rehashing evidence instead of making legal arguments.
 
I don't think he ever even really got to his point (if there was one). I think he is saying that the jury should have been instructed to find not guilty on murder if they believe Guyger made a mistake of fact. But the mistake of fact was that she believed Jean was an intruder in her apartment. That doesn't remove culpability. The culpability for murder is intentionally or knowingly killing a person. Whether she thought he was an intruder or a friend or maintenance worker or whatever doesn't change the fact that she thought he was a person.

He gets into the idea that she did not have evil intent. Murder under Texas law does not require malice.

I think the argument he was trying to make was that she had a mistake of fact that Jean was an intruder and that it is reasonable to believe that an intruder is dangerous and therefore it is reasonable to believe that deadly force is necessary. But that leaps to a bunch of unsupported conclusions. Obviously many people who went into the wrong apartment did not have such beliefs.

Even if we accept that she had a reasonable belief that he was an intruder, deadly force under the section he cited would be allowed "to prevent the other's imminent commission of aggravated kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, robbery, or aggravated robber." There was no evidence presented at trial that Guyger was acting to prevent one of those crimes or even that she believed any of those crimes were being committed. If she had chosen to close the door and call the police, would she have reported that there was a sexual assault in progress? Of course not.

Lacking any of those conditions, we are back to the regular old standard for when deadly force is justified. No need to go down the mistake of fact path. Actually, the mistake of fact path is only necessary to get to the castle doctrine, but he didn't bring that up.

The State attorney absolutely nailed it. He practically wrote the opinion for the court. I expect the decision will be, "Yeah. What he said."
 
This is an attorney that has been paid to appeal, or rather has said he can appeal. All he was doing was throwing mud on the hopes that some mud would stick somewhere and a judge would notice.

DA - your post that has “…. but they didn't shoot anybody. He is arguing that simply the fact that she went into the wrong apartment and thought Jean was an intruder should have been considered reasonable justification for deadly force. …”

Don’t think he was trying to argue that, I think he was trying to argue that people who didn’t make a “mistake of fact” didn’t kill someone therefore since she did that is evidence for her making a “mistake of fact”! A rather twisted argument.
 
Darat said:
This is an attorney that has been paid to appeal, or rather has said he can appeal. All he was doing was throwing mud on the hopes that some mud would stick somewhere and a judge would notice.
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It wasn't even that. He was dumping mud on his head and splashing around in mud puddles. He mostly repeated evidence, rather poorly, and which is not relevant to the appeal. And in terms of the appeal, just cast about terms of "mistake in fact" (which should be "mistake of fact") and a bunch of legal citations of self defense that the judges were clearly trying to talk about in clear terms but, oh well, he has a bunch of numbers and letters and so that's something.

He phoned it in. He had no argument. After the State's concise response, he was given an opportunity to rebut. His response was that he had nothing more to say.

He spent most of the time on evidence that is irrelevant. He had no cogent argument. My brief post above would have made a better case, and that is just what I think he might have been arguing. He never even got to an actual conclusive argument. It was just, "She mistakenly thought she was facing an intruder in her own apartment...therefore, not guilty."

There are complex issues that could be raised in this case. But that did not happen here. The little amount of argument that was made is absurd and just plain dumb.

He didn't even try.
 
Darat said:
DA - your post that has “…. but they didn't shoot anybody. He is arguing that simply the fact that she went into the wrong apartment and thought Jean was an intruder should have been considered reasonable justification for deadly force. …”

Don’t think he was trying to argue that, I think he was trying to argue that people who didn’t make a “mistake of fact” didn’t kill someone therefore since she did that is evidence for her making a “mistake of fact”! A rather twisted argument.
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No. He actually wasn't arguing anything at that point. He was just saying stuff.

His point was that she made the same mistake of fact as those other people who entered someone else's apartment. His whole claim of "mistake of fact" is that she thought she was in her own apartment. He (and in the trial proceedings) says that is a reasonable determination of her actual belief because many other people have done the same thing. The defense had witnesses that they had walked into the wrong apartment in the same building.

They all made the same mistake of fact. Based on that evidence, people walk into the wrong apartment all the time in that building. And probably all over the city. All over the state. For decades.

People walk into the wrong apartment all the time. By his argument, the only rational conclusion in such a circumstance is that such a person is an immediately deadly threat that must be dealt with by deadly force. That deadly force is obviously the reasonable response to such a situation.

But, by his argument, this happens all the time and a case where someone shot somebody, or even seriously injured someone, has never ever happened in the all the history of the state. Never. Not once.

He didn't really get into the argument that she made a mistake of fact that he was an intruder as opposed to a maintenance worker or something like that. He just jumped to the law that permits deadly force to prevent someone from committing robbery, kidnaping, sexual assault, etc. without explaining how he leaped to that conclusion.
 
TheGoldcountry said:
I object!

Why?

Because it's devastating to my case!
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It didn't even seem to be that. It looked more like...I don't really have anything and will just ramble on about about the case and maybe a tiny bit of quasi-legal stuff to justify getting paid for this job.

After an actual response from the State attorney. What is your rebuttal? "I have nothing to add."

That is just getting paid. Do paper work. Do a hearing. Blah blah. Money money money. I think this was so bad it was borderline malpractice.
 
DevilsAdvocate said:
... The defense had witnesses that they had walked into the wrong apartment in the same building.

They all made the same mistake of fact. Based on that evidence, people walk into the wrong apartment all the time in that building. .....
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That lowers the justification for shooting, so it is an odd defence case to make.
 
Nessie said:
That lowers the justification for shooting, so it is an odd defence case to make.
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Yep. It was a total fail. Judges were making puzzled faces.

He is saying the jury should have been instructed that someone who mistakenly goes into the wrong apartment is completely justified to kill anyone there because that is what a reasonable person would do, but also people walk into the wrong apartment all the time and throughout the entire history of the State of Texas nobody has ever done that ever.

It happens all the time. People act reasonably. Nobody gets shot. But in this exact same case, it is reasonable. And even necessarily reasonable. The jury would have have to conclude that it was reasonable because in all the times this has happened before...nobody ever ever shot someone.

The whole thing was a farce. A mess. Nonsense. A meaningless waste of time. As I said, he didn't even try. I think at a couple points the judges said that the arguments he made and the cases he cited actually worked against his client. This was just stupid.
 
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DevilsAdvocate said:
Yep. It was a total fail. Judges were making puzzled faces.

He is saying the jury should have been instructed that someone who mistakenly goes into the wrong apartment is completely justified to kill anyone there because that is what a reasonable person would do, but also people walk into the wrong apartment all the time and throughout the entire history of the State of Texas nobody has ever done that ever.

It happens all the time. People act reasonably. Nobody gets shot. But in this exact same case, it is reasonable. And even necessarily reasonable. The jury would have have to conclude that it was reasonable because in all the times this has happened before...nobody ever ever shot someone.

The whole thing was a farce. A mess. Nonsense. A meaningless waste of time. As I said, he didn't even try. I think at a couple points the judges said that the arguments he made and the cases he cited actually worked against his client. This was just stupid.
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It reminds me of the story about improving flight crew safety during WWII. The person tasked with armouring the planes put the armour where no bullet holes were being found, rather than where the planes were full of holes. His reasoning was that the planes returning with lots of holes survived and got home. No planes were returning with holes in certain parts, so those were where they were most vulnerable and so needed armour.

The defence did not think through the evidence and what it actually means.
 
Nessie said:
The person tasked with armouring the planes put the armour where no bullet holes were being found, rather than where the planes were full of holes. His reasoning was that the planes returning with lots of holes survived and got home. No planes were returning with holes in certain parts, so those were where they were most vulnerable and so needed armour.
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I can actually see the logic of that as a hypothesis. But you'd have to look behind the areas where there were no holes in the returning planes and see just what it was in there that was causing the planes hit in these spots to crash fatally. If there wasn't a logical explanation along those lines, well...
 
Rolfe said:
I can actually see the logic of that as a hypothesis. But you'd have to look behind the areas where there were no holes in the returning planes and see just what it was in there that was causing the planes hit in these spots to crash fatally. If there wasn't a logical explanation along those lines, well...
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The charts did show that.

Similarly, and also in WWII, the US adopted a new helmet. The medics soon reported seeing more of particular types of serious headwounds. Which they thought might indicate a design flaw, until they saw that it was people surviving previously-fatal shrapnel or shots .
 
Rolfe said:
I can actually see the logic of that as a hypothesis. But you'd have to look behind the areas where there were no holes in the returning planes and see just what it was in there that was causing the planes hit in these spots to crash fatally. If there wasn't a logical explanation along those lines, well...
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It was more than a hypothesis. A mathematician determined that bullets that just went through sheet metal wouldn't crash the plane. But bullets that hit the engines would. That's where they added armor.
https://medium.com/the-innovation/the-missing-bullet-holes-and-abraham-wald-25e68d7a870f
 
Nessie said:
It reminds me of the story about improving flight crew safety during WWII. The person tasked with armouring the planes put the armour where no bullet holes were being found, rather than where the planes were full of holes. His reasoning was that the planes returning with lots of holes survived and got home. No planes were returning with holes in certain parts, so those were where they were most vulnerable and so needed armour.

The defence did not think through the evidence and what it actually means.
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The fix in the current case is to disarm off duty police entering apartment buildings.
Learn and change things, and thank this hapless woman for the lesson rather than punish.
 
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Samson said:
The fix in the current case is to disarm off duty police entering apartment buildings.
Learn and change things, and thank this hapless woman for the lesson rather than punish.
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"Hapless woman", Really?

utterly reckless and dangerous killer

Who was rightly convicted.
 
Samson said:
The fix in the current case is to disarm off duty police entering apartment buildings.
Learn and change things, and thank this hapless woman for the lesson rather than punish.
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No, the fix is to underscore the fact that, even if you're a cop, you're not entitled to just kill someone for no good reason. She deserves more punishment than she got.
 
We should also be thanking Derek Chauvin for teaching us all the valuable lesson that you shouldn't murder a person in your custody if you're being filmed. He deserves a medal, not jail time, the poor hapless dude.

:rolleyes:
 
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