I feel for the neighbor. I can see where you might be afraid to go over yourself if you think a break-in might be in progress. If the cop had just gone over and knocked at the front door to see if everything was ok, nothing would have happened. But to shoot to kill the instant something may startle you is not good policing. He didn’t identify himself and within maybe three seconds of first uttering a word he shoots her dead. Yes this is murder. At least it didn’t take weeks of investigating to make the obvious charge.
Yes, the cop did wrong here, but in a working-class neighborhood in Texas, shouldn’t the civilian be wearing body armor?
I am (sadly) truly stunned it has moved this quickly. This is how the backlash SHOULD look. I’ll eat my crow sammich this time, but I’m not convinced it represents anything like a national, institutional awakening with the Blue Man Gang.
I saw posts from several people (some black, some queer) on my facebook saying some variation of ‘hey, just in case you don’t get it, if you ever think something is wrong with me, for the love of god don’t call the cops to check on me’.
I wish there were minimally armed personnel that could be dispatched for welfare checks.
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As fucked up as the situation is, I don’t know if a murder charge is appropriate.
Unless new facts come to light, I have to assume that the officer believed (wrongly) that he was taking correct action as a police officer. He had no intent to commit a crime. I think that neither officer followed correct procedure and that he fired his weapon out of cowardice, not malice. Maybe one of our law-talking guys can correct me, but that seems like manslaughter, not murder.
If I recall from the Guyger thread, Texas doesn’t have a manslaughter charge. The equivalent in TX is second degree murder, which is what she was convicted of.
To make the best of the thalidomide tragedy?
Ah, thank you.
Talking with Metroplex residents and LEOs elsewhere. I’ve never been to that part of FW.
Panning around on Google Street View for 1200 E Allen Ave, Fort Worth, it looks lower income, working class: peeling paint, work trucks, older used cars,window A/C units, meh upkeep on the yards. OTOH, no window bars, decent sized lots, and it looks like people there actually work for a living. There aren’t people sitting around in plastic chairs drinking out of a bag at 2PM.
Not all that different than the neighborhood where Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas were murdered by Houston P.D. officers.
You are a terrible, terrible person. 
Sec 19.04 of the Texas Penal Code is titled “Manslaughter.” It is defined as, “recklessly causing the death of an individual.” It is a 2nd degree felony; the penalty for which is 2 to 20 year incarceration in state prison. PENAL CODE CHAPTER 19. CRIMINAL HOMICIDE
The difference is intent, correct? Manslaughter would be used when a person causes the death of another through negligence. If there is intent at all, manslaughter would be apply.
Guyger was convicted of murder. Texas does not have degrees of murder. Its Penal Code is modeled after the Model Penal Code, which eliminated such degrees of murder, and many considerations that went into distinguishing between those degrees, like malice aforethought, depraved indifference, etc… Texas has the following degrees of criminal homicide: Capitol Murder, Murder, Manslaughter, and Criminally Negligent Homicide.
Murder may be found in Texas Penal Code, section 19.02. It is a 1st degree felony, except where the defendant proves by a preponderance of the evidence that they were “under the influence of a sudden passion arising from an adequate cause.” In which case it is a 2nd degree felony. A 1st degree felony normally has a sentence range of 5 to 99 years in state prison, hence criticism of Guyger’s 10 year sentence.
Thank you! I thought I had a basic grasp of it, but that explains the distinction well.
The difference is the required mental state of the offender. Manslaughter requires recklessness: a conscious disregard for the risk that the actor’s conduct may result in harm to another. Negligence in general is a lesser mental state, and merely requires that the actor breached a duty to the victim, which caused a harm. For Texas law, in the case of criminally negligent homicide, per the Texas District & County Attorney’s Association, the actor is criminally negligent if, “he ought to be aware of a substantial an unjustifiable risk the result would occur… …The risk must be of such a nature that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would have exercised.” See, tecaa.com/journal/what-is-criminal-negligence-the-cca-gives-prosecutors-a-clear-rule
I’m not trying to be unnecessarily pedantic. These words are terms of art in this field and have different, precise meanings.
Required mental states in Texas for criminal homicide:
Capital Murder: actor commits more than one murder in criminal episode, or murders somebody special.
Murder: actor must have intentionally or knowingly caused the death. Or intended serious bodily injury, but victim dies.
Manslaughter: actor recklessly causes death.
Crim Neg Homicide: actor causes death of another through gross negligence.
So you have no first-hand knowledge of whether or not the neighborhood is “bad”. And the pictures you’ve now viewed don’t seem to indicate that it is a bad neighborhood?
Given that, wouldn’t manslaughter or Crim Neg Homicidebe a more appropriate charge? The recklessness or negligence being not following correct procedure?
I think it’s a neighborhood I wouldn’t want to live in now. It’s a neighborhood where most of you, despite the virtue signalling, wouldn’t be caught dead in now, if you had any choice at all. I’ve lived in neighborhoods like that in the past, and gotten my stuff stolen while I lived there, contra Alessan’s observation that working class people don’t have time to steal, because they’re at work. Maybe they don’t, but their piece of shit kids and relatives do.
More importantly, it’s a neighborhood that, to a hypothetical FW cop, is among the neighborhoods where you might find a drug house where drug manufacturing is going on. Which—to them—might be an explanation for why the door is open when its 45 degrees outside, yet there are people milling around inside.
Young black female is killed in a home she had every right to be in, by a white cop. Murder is definitely the appropriate charge.
What I think happened is the stupid bastard freaked out when he saw a gun, had his finger near the trigger, let his hyperaggressive modern American policing training take over his conscious thoughts, and shot someone he saw near a gun. You want to call that murder? OK with me. Maybe it’ll encourage the others not to treat every potential problem as a nail needing to be hammered down with multiple gunshots.