And the fact that she has been schooled at length by her attorneys. She has went through her testimony, including cross-examination, over and over and over. She has been coached to cry. This is a ploy to garner sympathy from the saps on the jury.
Hell, it worked for Rittenhouse.
And no, I do not believe, not for a second, that she mistook her service weapon for a taser.
My google-fu is weak. I have searched, but could not find an instance when an officer meant to draw a service weapon but actually drew and fired a taser. Page after page where they drew the gun and meant to draw the taser…
I mean, it has to have happened seeing as how often the reverse has happened and how easy it is to mix them up. Right?
Maybe one of you can come up with some stats.
When I searched pulled taser instead of gun all I get is cops who pulled guns instead of taser.
And of course, the obvious outrage from the Police Ranks complaining how this put lives at risk. I mean, the obvious argument IS that when you have to fire a gun and taser gets pulled instead, lives ARE at risk.
Otherwise, it seems that regs that state the taser HAS to be on the same side as the gun looks a little like ‘you can always shoot and say you were going for the taser wink wink’.
A year and a half ago, while on my way to my mother’s funeral, I rear-ended a car at a poorly-marked intersection. As my left headlight was crumpling in, my first thought was “Oh my God - my car!” - and not the fact that there were something like seven children in the back seat of the coupe I had hit. That took about 3 seconds (they were all fine; their car was barely scratched).
What I’m saying is that thinking about yourself in the first few seconds of a traumatic event is a normal human reaction. It’s what you think after those first few seconds that counts.
That’s fine, but we are being told that we should see her remorse in those few seconds and judge her accordingly.
As @Cervaise said, her remorse in that moment was not over having killed someone, it was over what that meant would happen to her.
So I’m really not sure of @Czarcasm’s point that he is trying to make here.
The remorse she showed on the stand was coached and motivated by wanting to get a lighter sentence. The remorse that she showed right after it happened was motivated by her fear of personal consequence.
At least it means something is working in the legal system. 10 years ago, she would have been able to proudly exclaim, “I shot him, and not only am I not going to jail, I’ll even get to keep my job!”
Maybe, maybe not. Intentionally using her gun would require intent to kill, but a voluntary manslaughter charge allows for intent to kill, but requires the perpetrator to be acting under emotional circumstances that could cloud a reasonable person’s judgment.
But if, as @Typo_Negative suggests, she intentionally pulled her gun then that that means every subsequent expression of regret was planned/feigned. Wouldn’t she think of better things to say in the moments afterward? Things that paint her in a better light, like expressing concern for Wright instead of “Oh god I’m going to jail?” Wouldn’t she follow through with calling in the shooting and trying to render aid, instead of curling up in a ball on the ground?
Sure it would. Of course it would. There would outcry from LEOs. They would demand that the taser and and gun be in separate places. If they needed to fire the gun to defend themselves and came up with a taser…we would hear about it.
They don’t pay them enough to live in the county, I’m sure Battle Ground has a much less expensive housing market. Vancouver and environs is basically a bedroom community for Portland.
Where all the White-Wing scum lives. TriMet wanted to extend Max from Jantzen Beach across to Vancouver, but the clarkies would not be having any of that because the line runs through a dark neighborhood and they did not want any of those people using it to come over bringing violence.
Freely admitting that I have not lived in Portland since 1979, and aware that many things have changed since then, I suspect that this is not one of them. I seem to remember a strong sense of seedy bigotry from that direction. The bigotry on our side of the Columbia was a little more middle class.
Kansas City, MO had a rule that LEOs need to live in the city limit. Since the state controls our police department (combination of racism and Boss Tom problems), they passed a law saying that was no longer allowed. They did allow the officers could be forced to live in MO, however.
What is particularly galling about the change (other then the legislature substituting their judgement for the local folks) is that KCMO is huge geographically, and there is pretty much any type of housing you could want available, with the possible exception of acre+ sized lots.