GUILTY TX - Former Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger, indicted for Murder of Botham Shem Jean #6

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MsArk said:
I’m guessing right in the middle from 50 years with this jury. Honestly, I would be satisfied with 10 years and prohibited to ever carry a firearm. She is not some mad criminal running around as a menace to the general population. Many will disagree with me though.
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I'm guessing right in the middle (or slightly less) from this jury. 20 years? As a felon, she's now prohibited from owning or carrying a firearm in Texas, I believe.
becrietz said:
I always understood that SHE was in the wrong apartment. I was stating it from her point of view which is why i disagree with a murder charge. Though i do think she was wrong and should be found guilty of manslaughter and should serve jail time. She took an innocent life regardless of the situation.
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Fortunately, verdicts do not spin on what the defendant (now murderer) thinks. No system of justice relies primarily on what the defendant says.

If it did, it wouldn't be justice. Both sides got their time in court; Ms. Guyger did not come across as credible and in fact, did a number of things that we know juries associate with dissembling and lying. So why would the jury take her point of view?

She admits she shot a man dead. She also openly admitted she intended to kill him. That's murder in Texas.
 
becrietz said:
I have not followed this case at all. Just read the news story and was shocked to see all the people shouting justice was served. I am honestly confused and have come here to see what I am missing. From what I have gathered this woman believed she was entering her apartment and an unknown man was in her apartment and she shot and killed him. How is that murder? Manslaughter maybe but murder? It seems to me to be a horrible mistake that she made not murder. Should she get punished? Yes she killed someone. But a drunk driver that gets in a wreck and kills someone does not get charged with murder. She wasn't even intoxicated. Even a person in a car accident that is at fault for running a red light and kills someone does not get charged with murder. This is what I am confused about. As I said I have not followed this case and am curious what I am missing. I understand he is black but I think the same thing would have happened if he was any other race. He was a unknown man in a woman's house.
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He most certainly was NOT an unknown man in a woman's house, and there was actually no reason for her to believe that was her apartment. It was clear from the mat outside the door it was not her apartment and surely a police officer, who is trained to be observant, would not overlook that her apartment has a new doormat?
 
MyBelle said:
That won't fly because AG ADMITTED her intent was to kill him. The only thing reckless about this case is her reckless disregard for human life.
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That is a good point, she meant to kill him when she fired the weapon.

But... the defense could argue that the initial reckless action was thinking she was entering her apartment. Thus, the death was due to reckless action (recklessly thinking there was an intruder in her apartment).

Shooting an actual intruder, as apposed to an innocent man is not reckless.
 
Peterpaul said:
This was a terrible accident, she lost her job. I say time served and call it a day!
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Amber herself testified that she intended to kill Jean. She said she was outside in the hallway when she heard noise from inside the apartment. So she went in to "find the threat" instead of following police safety protocols, and taking cover/concealment plus calling for backup.
 
Cryptic said:
That is a good point, she meant to kill him when she fired the weapon.

But... the defense could argue that the initial reckless action was thinking she was entering her apartment. Thus, the death was due to reckless action (recklessly thinking there was an intruder in her apartment).

Shooting an actual intruder, as apposed to an innocent man is not reckless.
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Or to stop the perceived threat in front of her!
 
Texas has codified the castle doctrine in a series of laws that permit the use of force if one "reasonably believes" it is "immediately necessary to prevent or terminate the other's trespass on the land," and the use if deadly force if they reasonably believe it is necessary to prevent an intruder from committing a crime, or from escaping afterwards.

The flaw in this reasoning, of course, is that Guyger was not in her home—in her castle—when she killed Jean. She was, instead, trespassing in his home and breaking in to his castle, and she killed him inside of it. Under Texas law, if it had been Jean who shot and killed Guyger when she crossed over the threshold, he would have been perfectly justified in doing so.

Guyger's lawyers offered an answer for that problem, too: In Texas (and many other states), there is no crime if a defendant made a reasonable mistake about a matter of fact—here, the all-important fact that Guyger was in the wrong apartment. It is a theory that knits together two distinct legal concepts into one exculpatory narrative: Because she had an erroneous but good-faith belief about where she was, they argued, she is entitled to the protections of the castle doctrine, which absolves her of criminal responsibility.

Much of Guyger's trial centered on questions about whether her actions were, under the circumstances, reasonable: Did she not notice Jean's red doormat, for example, or differences in the hallways she walked each day? But it was impossible to ignore how race affected the way in which the trial unfolded: Amber Guyger, a white law enforcement officer, killed an unarmed black man in his home, and yet was allowed to assert a defense in court reserved for people in their own homes. As prosecutor Jason Fine put it: "This law is not in place for her. It's in place for Bo."
https://www.gq.com/story/amber-guyger-guilty-verdict-castle-doctrine
 
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