Cool, an actual conviction. It only took a particularly egregious instance of a police officer doing the absolute wrong thing. Like, how much worse could it have been? I guess if she was live-streaming it, maybe? Good on the jury. I’m mostly optimistic about this one.
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Murder seems a little harsh. There was no premeditation. I would think manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide would have been more appropriate. I guess it’s a makeup call for all the cops who should have been convicted but got off.
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Texas doesn’t have any distinction between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. For manslaughter, it has be shown is that the accused acted recklessly, resulting in a death.
If you willingly and knowingly cause a death (such as drawing a gun, aiming and pulling the trigger at a human), in Texas, it is murder.
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Wow, maybe they’ll start convicting male cops next!
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Yeah, she though she was in her own apartment but the intruder changed or sold all the furniture and brough new stuff ?
She walks into someone elses apartment, sees changes of placement of the couch, tv, book case, kitchen, pictures on wall but she still thinks this is her apratment? Her training tells her, This is my apartment and this black man is a burglar, instinct, pull firearm and discharge? Yeah right.
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FTFY.
Wouldn’t that be somethin’?
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That’s basically the usual police justification for shooting, though. “I felt I was in danger (from someone who clearly posed no danger), therefore I had the right to shoot him/her.” It usually works.
Yeah, “stand your ground” laws are essentially set up to allow the prejudices of the police, prosecutor (and, if it comes to it, jury) to absolve the shooter, regardless of the situation itself.
Though they were prosecuting, the prosecutors were trying to do their bit and screw up this case. (After explicitly being gagged, they immediately went and did a television interview. Clearly angling for a mistrial.)
Yeah, this is the lack of more bad news more than anything.
Yeah, there are some anomalies that maybe were just unrelated coincidences, but certainly she lied about the situation (and the police tried to back her) to make her shooting seem more justified.
It’s not entirely clear that actually happened, or if it did, if it was her. It seems like she got in because the door was not working properly and the door, which was supposed to shut automatically, hadn’t shut entirely; that being the case, she wouldn’t be shouting to be let in (and he doesn’t seem to have left the living room anyways, so couldn’t have let her in). But she lied from the start and got her fellow police to cover for her, so the evidence is rather corrupted.
While the evidence indicates he was sitting or standing up in his living room when he got shot, not even “walking towards her.”
Not just that, but: shoot first, ask questions later and lie about it all.
She could have said, ahead of time, “I’m going to shoot that guy.” Although cops have said that, then shot someone, and gotten away with it, so…
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I’ve been mad at neighbors before. I mean, real fuckin mad. But want to shoot one of em? For real? Like murder somebody for making noise or being an asshole? Come on. No. Who does that? What kind of twisted person just goes and kills a neighbor? If you’re near the front door, don’t you just run away, out of there? Even if you are mistaken and think it’s your own apartment, but you’re at the front door, don’t you just take two steps the fuck back, pull the door shut and stop to think? I mean in my world, it goes down like that. What kind of a freak just draws and starts firing???
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Hammer gonna hammer.
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I wonder if she was treated like any other murder suspect without the preferential treatment if it would have changed the outcome? I remember hearing the story for the first time and wanting to give the shooter benefit of doubt, but the actions of her fellow officers made me turn… F’ them all.
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I’ll take what we can get. It’ll start with the minority cops, then maybe just maybe, we’ll get white dudebro cops prosecuted for their crimes.
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You’re sitting on your couch eating ice cream and someone blows you away. That’s not murder?
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Yes, that I wondered about also.
For a murder charge to stick, doesn’t the prosecution have to show premeditation?
In Germany, I understand, this killing would have been an ‘Affekthandlung*’ unless it can be shown that she meant to kill him, decided beforehand. Had the plan to.
*But there isn’t even an English word for that.
‘Temporary insanity’ is not the same thing.
‘Fear for own life’ isn’t either.
Justice can still be miscarried in this case. In Texas the penalty for murder is between 5 and 99 years.
If she ends up for a short duration on that spectrum, it means another attack on the feeling of safety of anyone, anywhere in Texas.
Anywhere everywhere really.
If one doesn’t feel safe at home, one isn’t really at home.
The Police as an institution is a conspirator in this murder as well as some specific colleagues.
I vaguely remember a suggestion that the cops didn’t give her any kind of medical examination for several days after the shooting. So have had she been either drunk or high (either of which could explain her muddled thinking, but not in an aw shucks, silly me, kind of way) then it would have passed.
Is that correct?
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I’m fairly sure that the victim’s name was Botham Jean not Jean Botham.
I know that Jean sounds more like a first name, and Botham more like a surname, but his mother’s name is Allison Jean.
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Not in Texas. See @Punchcard’s comment above:
So if she’d been waving her gun around, and she’d dropped it and it had gone off, that could have been manslaughter. But she admitted deliberately shooting him.
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Thank you, corrected.
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Wait till the actual sentencing. There’s still a chance the judge could give her what amounts to a slap on the wrist.
a) There’s significant evidence that seems to indicate there may have been premeditation.
b) It’s still “murder”, either way. Just the degree changes. And that doesn’t matter much in Texas.
@michaelditullio: No, the judge cannot do so. Minimum 9 years, and the jury decides the sentence, in this case (capital murder). @Punchcard has already explained this pretty well =).
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It’s a common past time among white supremacists.
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