The only comment needed.
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I can’t be happy about this, because nothing about this entire story is good.
This case doesn’t address or set precedent for the usual style of police killings, which happen in the line of duty.
The woman officer made terrible mistakes, and being tired after your shift is no excuse for killing someone. She could have simply walked away and been safe, and it appears from transcripts that she knew this. He behavior was horrible, and it cost someone else their life. And her own life, while not ended, has been basically ruined because of her mistakes.
But I doubt that the castle rules will change. And I doubt that police training will change. And I see no reason this will effect prosecuters’ decisions to not charge police who kill people in their usual style.
Perhaps the upside is that there is a bit of justice being meted out for someone who killed another person. But it is a story overflowing with horrible stuff.
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If only there was some way to prevent the prolific spread of needless firearms…
No, it hasn’t. Nobody knows what her story will be once she gets out of prison. However, we all know how Jean’s story ends.
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I was in the same boat, but upon reading some folks with closer knowledge of the trial it seems likely that the judge did so out of an abundance of caution to avoid handing the defense an issue for appeal. Makes sense, and it worked out, so good job all the way around.
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Something has never added up about this story.
The entire defense was based on how she didn’t realize she was not in her own apartment. And that the lights were off. And rather than retreat, she drew and fired, under some twisted, confused rendering of castle doctrine.
Reports I’ve read say that he was eating ice cream on the couch, rose up and walked towards her, presumably to shoo her out and lock the door behind her. Or was it? She said she feared for her life. But if this dude had a bowl of ice cream, what is threatening? Other than his brown skin? Or were the lights actually off?
witnesses allegedly heard pounding on Jean’s door and a woman’s voice shouting " let me in " before Jean was shot.
I wonder if in her time policing, she ever had other serious lapses of judgment? Was something else going on?
Early on, there were rumblings of a relationship, but those were debunked and Jean’s relatives say they didn’t even know each other.
Was she drunk? High? On something else? What got into her to do this?
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Nah, pretty sure it was this one.
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Trying to use the castle doctrine was a Hail Mary attempt by the defense. If the jury had gone for it that would have been a real miscarriage of justice IMHO.
But I’d really like to point out just how fucked up the “shoot first ask questions later” move by the cop was. I know some survivalist-style training systems will emphasize reacting over thinking because if you stop to think you are dead, but that’s an absolutely terrible mindset to have when dealing with regular people. It leads directly to tragedies like this.
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In Texas the sentence for murder is from 5 to 99 years in prison. So there is judges discretion, but not that much
edit: It is the jury not the judge that will decide the sentence
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Criminal trials are not supposed to work like that – if Alice is acquitted, Bob can’t cite it as evidence that he should go free too – but in practical terms, if other people haven’t been convicted, it affects prosecutors’ decisions to file charges or not in the future
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Agree, but there is more to it that doesn’t add up. If they didn’t know each other, then when she was pounding on the door shouting “let me in!” then at that point, she didn’t know he was brown. I am just totally confused at how this situation played out. There are several other obvious why’s that remain unanswered.
It’s just going to have to go down in history as another crazed Becky with a gun shooting an unarmed black man in his own home.
Maybe Dateline will eventually interview her and Lester Holt can grab her by the neck and shake some answers out of her.
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the jury may not have believed her at all
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I though it was, that is how we have a Miranda Warning, and how standards for what a cop can and can’t attain people for at traffic stops, and all manner of other interpretations of criminal law come about.
So if this trial did end up “not guilty” because she had a belief that she was in her own home, future trials could more easily turn on that same defense (they would still have to show the shooter really thought it was their home…if I live in a trailer it would be hard for me to shoot someone to death in a mansion and claim I thought I was home…well, unless I guess I once lived there?).
Of corse a jury can decide not to care about precedent, a judge will tell them they need to care, but they don’t actually have too.
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I believe the things you’re talking about come from appeals court rulings, not jury decisions
which is of course the next step here as well
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Also worth mentioning… `
`There were 5
— Naima
Black people and 5 non-Black POC on this jury. That’s how this verdict
happened. DO NOT SKIP JURY DUTY, PLEASE.
Cochrane (@naima) October
1, 2019
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Yahhhhhh, ok, you have a point. Definitely the things I gave as examples were appeals, at least one to the supreme court. I don’t know if a jury decision is a less powerful president. What little law training I had is um, pushing 30 years ago, and if I once knew this finer point I can’t recall it now.
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LawTwitter consensus seems to be that the judge allowed them to present that as a defence to stop them appealing any conviction on the grounds she didn’t allow it.
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Worse and worse. I think this is one that the more I try to slice and dice it to make sense of it, the less it will. It’s Becky with a gun instead of a cell phone, that’s what it is.
Makes me wonder if all those other Beckys who call for help had guns instead of phones, if there would be a lot more dead POC.
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