Texas Cop Who Fatally Shot Man After Entering Wrong Apartment Identified

Classic tear down the victim. Typical.

 

Exactly. Look at all these black people crying about another criminal killed for attacking an officer doing her job!

 

Its like the police union has a playbook. I always though republicans hated unions. I guess its only the teacher's union.

 

Clearly he was Frank Lucas.

 

It’s literally a hand full. 10 grams is a typical amount for someone who just bought but smokes about once a day or every couple days.

The shooter didn’t walk into the apartment and see Tony Mantana behind the desk with a mountain of coke and a machine gun.

The Fox “report” is complete garbage.

 

and like I said on the first page, the shooting would still have not been justified.

the story is a local affiliate, not fox news.

 

I think you are right. Truth is we still don't know the facts. At best (weird choice of words, I know), it is a tragic situation where a police woman screwed up completely in a very hard to comprehend way (wrong apartment, decision to shoot, etc). At worst, she either knew him or made terrible racial assumptions or was compromised.

 

Well in that I agree, it's not a slam dunk one way or the other. It comes down to if her story about not realizing where she was can be debunked or not. If her story can't be debunked then we have to act under the assumption that she believed that there was a person who broke into her apartment lurking in the dark and that would be justification for deadly force in Texas. I think there's plenty of ways to attack her story about not realizing where she was but will that work? I'm not sure.

The only thing I'm saying is that manslaughter is not an option because either her justification is valid or it's murder. There's no option where it's a reckless shooting or whatever because her story is a legitimate justification. I don't know which direction the jury will go but murder or walk seem to be the 2 most likely scenarios based on what we currently know.

 

A few things.

1. This has nothing to do with stand your ground.

2. Her believing to be at her apartment is part of what she believes is happening or going to happen....and that's exactly why they talk about what she "reasonably believes" to be the case rather than what actually is the case. Her reasonable belief is all that matters....but obviously there are ways to suggest that her story isn't reasonable.

Essentially it's a slam dunk one way or the other, we just don't know which way it is going to go. It's either murder if you don't believe her story is plausible or it's her walking if you do believe that it is plausible. Perhaps as more evidence comes out we'll know which direction it is likely to go.

 

I don't think it is binary.

I can see a jury determining that it was unreasonable given the circumstances for her to believe that she was in her apartment and defending herself. I also think that a jury may believe that she provoked the incident either by entering the apartment or by drawing the weapon without cause and therefore determine she doesn't get the benefit of the presumption.

I can also see a jury deciding that while she may have intended to fire her weapon, she didn't have the requisite intent for murder. That's why I think, without more facts (and with the unpredictability of juries), you can't rule out either manslaughter or murder or her getting off.

 

Texas Stand your ground is embedded in Self Defense laws, by eliminating the previous language regarding the need to retreat. I'm talking about Section 9.31: Self Defense, which is required by the statute you quoted. What you posted is when deadly force is allowed, which requires 9.31.

But, I'm not sure why it matters whether Stand Your Ground is defined in 9:31 & 9:32 or not. We can discuss them without the history lesson.

It is very common for laymen to assume a law applies, because they found wording that they were looking for. That doesn't mean the ;aw covers what they think it does.

I think it is reasonable to say the law assumes a crime must have been factually possible, meaning that the victim would indeed, at the very least, have to be in the location the law covers. I understand your reading of the law, and maybe the judge does allow the "reasonable belief" language to refer to the actor's belief that the law covers them.

But there is nothing in 9:31 or 9:32 that discusses actual location confusion. Be prepared for a judge to instruct a jury to disregard whether she thinks it's her place or not, by simply telling the jury we know with 100% confidence that the victim was not committing a crime, so the statutes "reasonable" language does not allow for the defendant to invent or imagine a crime. Then instruct them that they must find a defense for her that does not involve being where she thinks she was.

I mean, you can say that there is no way a judge can say that, but you actually don't really know, since this is such a unique case.

This is why I'm in agreement with @jcf that there is no slam dunk here, unless the jury is convinced Mr Jean let her in. Then that is really bad for her.

 

A crime was possible....if the situation was as the defendant believed it to have been.

It doesn't specifically have to discuss that given that it already is covered under "reasonable belief", this isn't something that would come up often enough to specify. When dealing with self defense as a justification, the reasonable belief of the accused is all that matters, not the facts as they are. If a judge told a jury to disregard what the accused believed to be the case then it would be easy to overturn on appeal. When it comes to justification for use of deadly force, intent and the reasonable belief of the accused is one of the most important factors.

 

It's fine that you think "reasonable belief" covers utter "my bad" confusion. And maybe it does. I think it's a stretch of the purpose of the "belief" wording, since the law is written first to protect Mr Jean in his house from invaders, than it ever was to protect the invaders from being confused and scared.

You're right. It is common that sometimes laws don't specify every possibility. But when penal codes specify what is allowed, it doesn't usually mean what isn't specified is allowed as well. That's the "You didn't say I couldn't do that" defense of middle-school brats.

Laws don't necessarily apply, just because the defendant thinks they do. ie, just because you are confused, doesn't mean a law meant for other situations covers you.

I find your way of thinking fascinating sometimes. You get locked into a belief, and read everything as if it backs up that belief. I think it's more piudent to say this is such a rare case, that us laymen don't really know how the existing laws apply. If you have some expert law analysts to quote by name, I'd appreciate learning more on this, but otherwise, will wait for the case to unfold, before thinking you or I can apply laws to Ms Guyger's utter "my bad" confusion.

cheers -- and no real need to keep saying the same thing back n forth. Make yourself useful and quote some law experts who are commenting on this case or something.

 

Lmao yeah, he could make a whopping 100 dollars from 10 grams, that's definitely a personal amount. It's about 2 weeks worth of weed for a casual pothead.

 

Thanks for actually answering the question. Some people think their race card excuses them from having civilized conversation.

We are looking at heavy negligence related involuntary manslaughter at the moment... when we don't have enough regarding motivation and likely will never have a factual account. It will take a lot, a lot, to have the charges upgraded to first degree or second degree murder.

A week's worth of weed isn't going to change that and he isn't going to be made into a rapist because of it. I am surprised at what people are wasting their time worrying about... this seems like more of an opportunity for Shaft festishists than people who want justice.

 

This is just a baffling turn of events... there is overwhelming proof she ****ed up and is in the wrong, and her fellow police are still willing to cause mass chaos and perpetuate further mistrust with the community and African Americans to save her.

This is a major problem with unions no one ever talks about. It is the Union's job (and their members) to defend their rotten apples until the end, and many of our civil servants take full advantage of that fact... bad fireman, bad police, bad teachers, and countless other bad government workers are all saved by their unions. Don't believe me? Go stand in a Post Office line at 11:00AM on a weekday.

 

I'm not. We need civilian led true independent investigations of all officer involved shootings. They need to be the first or part of the first team on the scene.

 

Wait, what? Civilian led? So you want civilians, who have no criminal investigation skills to perform criminal investigations?

I'm fully on board with police not being able to investigate one of their owns' alleged crimes, like State Police, County Sheriff, US Marshals or FBI investigating City Police or vice versa... but it is absurd to task civilians to lead a high profile criminal investigation.

 

As the spouse of someone who is a teacher that is part of the Union here in Texas I can’t disagree more in respect to Teachers in TX. Without it things would be 20x worse and they are already pretty damn bad.

Especially with school districts having a lack of a true hr type of intermediary to handle disputes or accusations. You wouldn’t believe the issues that come up where the school leadership is ready to throw the teacher under the bus and it’s only the union rep that steps in to give representation. My wife has a perfect record for 12 years at the same school, won state uil twice, and never had a single write up.

Then just recently a parent tried to collect a scalp because their kid didn’t get a part in the program they wanted and accused my wife of some terrible crap. The school was ready to throw her under the bus and fire her like that until the union stepped in. A week later, the parent confessed that her kid made the story up and was just upset because the girl that got the part was dating her ex boyfriend .... seriously.

Also I went to the post office the other day and was in and out in 5 minutes. I have worse experiences all the time with my cable, cellphone provider, etc. Poor customer support isn’t a unionized worker anomaly.

 

They would have experience since it would have to be a body that has the mandate to investigate police misconduct. This is not a new concept and is implemented in some countries.