One story everyone seems to agree about

wouldn't that be incompetence?

I'll never forget an experience early in my airline flying career ... telling it to another pilot later ...
Ah that was a big day for you ... now instead of being incompetent because you didn't know any better ...

Now you do ... and you'll be held for negligence.

 

Over the last two years, I have rented two corporate apartments in two different large cities. Honestly, both were like hotels. Everything looks the same. Multiple times I went to the wrong floor after long days. Her story is not crazy to me, but walking into an apartment and shooting is.

She deserves time. No way society can allow this to be an excuse for a shooting like this. Prayers for both families.

 

Incompetence and negligence often go together. The key distinction here is between "negligence" (which will get you criminally negligent homicide) and "recklessness" (which will get you manslaughter, which is more serious). Rather than give definitions, I'll give you hypotheticals to help explain the general difference.

First hypothetical - Let's suppose you go to a party and have a few beers. You're feeling a little "beautiful" but not really drunk, so you wait a little, have some water, take a piss, and decide to drive home, because you basically feel OK. While on the way home, you're just a little slower in your reflexes, and it's dark. You approach an intersection, don't appreciate that intersection quite as fast as you normally would, so you slam on the brakes but slightly cross into it and run over and kill a pedestrian who's crossing the street. Since you don't know a lawyer, you foolishly take a breathalyzer test. It shows you have a BAC of .081 - barely drunk, and you probably sincerely felt sober enough to drive. This would be criminally negligent homicide.

Second hypothetical - Let's suppose you do what a good friend of mine used to, which is the "Tour de Trudy's." As the Austinites here know, Trudy's is a Mexican restaurant in Austin that serves a somewhat famous Mexican Martini. They have a two-drink limit, because it'll f**k you up. It's strong, tastes pretty good, and is pretty cheap for how much damage it'll do. My friend used to drive to all three of Trudy's locations in succession and max out on the martinis. He wasn't a very big guy, so downing six of those meant he was friggin' sloshed. Let's suppose that on the way home from the final location, he passes out at the wheel, his car jumps a curb and kills someone who's walking. Of course, he knows me and therefore knows better than to blow, but suppose that in his drunken stupidity, he forgets and does it anyway. He blows a .27 BAC. He was reckless and committed manslaughter.

Why the difference? The obvious answer is that my friend is much drunker, but that's an imprecise explanation. The big difference is my friend's inferred knowledge at the time he chose to drive home. The jury is going to infer that my friend knows he's slobbering drunk as soon as he takes the wheel. In fact, that's the whole point of the "Tour de Trudy's." They may not draw that inference in the first hypothetical. Accordingly, my friend knows that by driving home, he's taking a massive risk that he's going to inflict harm on someone else, and he's just choosing to disregard that risk for no reason other than to avoid the hassle and cost of calling a cab. (There was no Uber back then.)

Side note - These hypotheticals are for illustrative purposes, and I used them because they're easy to explain. They are actually ******** from a legal standpoint, because Texas has set DWI apart from other criminal laws to make it easier to nail somebody for something big if that person is driving drunk. They basically did it to "look tough," to virtue signal, and to appease crappy prosecutors who are too lazy to prove their case under the normal laws. Specifically, it has an "intoxication manslaughter" statute that effectively deems all drunk driving that causes a fatality to be manslaughter. Accordingly, even the guy in my first hypothetical could get charged with manslaughter because of this special rule. That doesn't mean he will for sure, but he can be.

 

Ms Guyger is testifying in her defense today. Tearful, contrite, apologetic. She couldn't look more symathtic if portrayed by Jessica Chastain.

 

Why didn’t she perform CPR after she shot him?

 

You shoot to kill, not to injure.

 

Oh, is that why?

 

Cross examination comes after defense questions. She was in such a state she didn't think to open her first aid kit is what we have heard so far.

 

Yes, from a citizen’s perspective (which she was in this context) cause it’s a lot easier to defend yourself later when the other person is dead. Also, what happens if you let a gang member (for example) survive? Not a lot of upside to shoot to injure.

 

Such a state. She did think to text her married lover partner to come quick. As her victim bleeds out.

 

One shot nicked the heart, pierced the lung, diaphragm. stomach and small intestine. I think even Dr. Shaun Murphy would have been pretty much helpless facing that kind of trauma.

 

Is it true she shot him while he was on his couch? That to me says she gets convicted of something.

 

Why didn't she perform CPR?
Why didn't she try to stop his bleeding?
Why didn't she stay with him?
Why DID she think to call the guy she was screwing after she shot him?
Why didn't she tell the 911 operator that he was coming at her or give any indication that he had threatened her in any way?
Why didn't she notice that the apartment numbers were different before entering?
Why didn't she notice that what she thought was her apartment had a doormat when hers did not?
Why didn't she notice that she was in an apartment that looked nothing like hers and apparently smelled nothing like hers?

She might be crying on the stand and might feel bad, but if I was on that jury, I'd see her as someone who was very trigger-happy. Furthermore, even if she feels bad in retrospect, at the time, all she could think about was saving her own *** and couldn't have cared less about the innocent guy she just blew away.

 

I think she did think it was her apartment.You don't always see what you don't expect to see, the door mat.
She was coming off a long shift after working many days.
Was he on the couch? Doesn't see logical to stay on couch as someone you don't know enters your apartment.Seems more logical to get up and approach the door.
I would imagine both had adrenalin kick in but she was a cop and knew what to do when confronted by someone YOU think is in your apartment.
Too bad her training did not stay with her and she could have tried to help him.
So far there is no reason not to believe her.There does not appear to be any prior relationship.
But she took a life for no reason.There have to be consequences.

 

Not for cops.

 

We will see. If she was apprehensive enough to go into the apartment ready to shoot it would have made sense to call the police. There was nothing but property in the apartment to protect. Just a Block from headquarters. The bullet trajectory, down from the chest into the abdomen shows he wasn't looming over her. Sitting on the couch eating ice cream is not typical burglar bejavior... the jury can find some charge that will stick.

 

Ah ... but that's part of the degradation of our contemporary judicial system. The judges run it and direct and discount.

The jury gets only what it's directed based upon the presentation of the two counsels. Rather than telling the court what will be accepted in the evidence and then censure/cite the collecting agency .... guilty defendants walk. A result of the jury nullification law (I'm sure Dees can refine/correct) which was passed a few decades ago.

But, no, the jury will decide on a very narrow question; yes or no ... not maybe or yeah, but, or no but. ... it will not be rightfully authorized to administer justice.

 

Guilty of MURDER. Amber Guyger found guilty of murder at trial in fatal shooting of neighbor Botham Jean

 

Apparently a big sticking point is prosecutors offered no motive.

 

I did not hear all the testimony nor
the arguments. It was an ethnically diverse jury and they came to a conclusion pretty quickly. I'd have to know more before I would contest the verdict, which I expected to be guilty of manslaughter. It was reckless to enter the apartment, gun drawn, without backup if she was so afraid that the mere sight of a suspected burglar would require lethal force.
I wonder if the jury thought she was more angry than scared?

 

Here is an article with more pertinent details on what was given to the jury. Ex-Dallas Officer Who Killed Neighbor In Upstairs Apartment Is Found Guilty Of Murder

 

Her team screwed the pooch by having her testify. When she admitted she didn't know where she was, that takes her out of her own apartment. When she admitted that she shot to kill, both of those things combined mean that she was just a tired cop who murdered someone in a really poor decision.

She'll probably get between 5 and 20 years, but seeing how the judge wasn't super sympathetic to the prosecution, it'll be 5-10. Out in 4-6 on behavior.

 

Justice served....I guess. Don't shoot people eating ice cream on their couch. What sucks is he is still dead and the guilty verdict does nothing to help him.

 

Jury will likely have an instruction on Sudden Passion, which would cap punishment at 20 years.

However, you underestimate the impact of good-time practices on release decisions. Unlike cases where the conduct was committed prior to 1987, good time does NOT actually advance someone convicted of most cases with a death to the gate. In fact, the deadly weapon finding that will likely attach to ANY finding would require half to be served flat before the Board of Pardons and Paroles even got a crack at her file. Minimum terms change as the sentence increases...current minimum on a life sentence with a deadly weapon finding tends to be thirty years although there are some that, depending on date of offense, fall between 15 and 40 years...

Because of the expected protests, she could very well do the entirety of any sentence less than ten years in duration and a substantial majority of anything under twenty.

The length of sentence will be critical as it will drive whether she is bond-eligible while the appeal is pending. Anything over ten years and she goes into custody after the gavel bangs.

She won't be able to be housed in the general population at any juncture of the incarceration. Notoriety has long kept people in segregation, ostensibly for their own safety. She may not even be able to be housed IN the State of Texas. There is precedent for out-of-State transfers and I know of several that were in TDCJ long enough to be photo'ed and printed before being whisked away to a different State. Some of them were high profile and some were simply because of the position they held (ie. wardens). There have been former officers profiled in the news who DID remain in the population on a few select units, but they generally did not involve a death. Of those that did involve a death, it was often a vehicular-related incident and NOT something involving the service weapon.

And since someone will inevitably ask again...yes, this IS my career emphasis. The past 20 years have involved the representation of clients in matters before the Board and I also have 12 years with TDCJ, having left as a Program Administrator. That results in the side income from occasionally testifying as an expert on the matter of prisons and parole in Texas...

 

Wrong again, but no surprise there.

 

I think the landscape is changing. Not to where the social justice warriors want it to be … but cops who are out of line (and not just bizarro out of line) face consequences for shootings that used to not get past the grand jury. Truth be told there are a lot of justified killings of unarmed suspects. I think there will be more emphasis on non-lethal alternatives.

 

As there should be. Lets all hope the SJW don't get everything they want but like you I think they've moved the pendulum to a more neutral setting when considering shootings by police.

 

No appeal?

As many have said ... seems like manslaughter is a more appropriate charge.

Murder is the SJW screecher influence.

Pitiful.

Just operate on borrowed time, LEOs ... either the court or a perp is gonna get ya.