That’s not exactly correct. They were arguing a Mistake of Fact which is a defense allowed in Texas.
In the sentencing phase the jury also heard the victim’s brother speak. He stated he forgave her and asked for leniency. That may have swayed the jury. The prosecutor was asking for 28 years.
I suppose its possible she could have entered with the intent of single handlingly arresting him. It sounds unlikely and doesn’t fit any of her actions but it is a non-zero possibility.
I already think it’s an outrageous slap on the wrist, but what does 10 years mean in actual time behind bars?
She’s a leader for a sheriff’s position in Arizona as soon as she’s out.
I wasn’t in the apartment and I wasn’t in the the courtroom, but the only witness to what Jean did was the defendant. Even if she thought she was in her own apartment, even if she were surprised, I am surprised that her police training caused her to fire when the victim had no weapon and presumably did not assault her. I just have to believe she had other choices. “The trajectory of the bullet showed that Jean was either getting up from his couch or cowering when Guyger fired at him, the prosecution said.”
Earlier in this thread there is an assertion (maybe backed up by a link, I don’t remember) that folks convicted of this crime are not eligible for parole. I think it was 2 days ago, if you want to look it up. If that is true, then she will serve the full 10 years, no?
Huh, I didn’t think that murder meant ineligibility for parole. 10 years, to me, seems a touch light, but not terribly so, as I wanted her convicted of manslaughter. The sentence range there is 2-20. No priors, little chance of recidivism, no malice (yes, I know it’s not an element of murder in Texas. Still, this was an accident.) OTOH, she’s a cop, and usually, professionals are or should be held to a higher standard for conduct not meeting the standards of their profession. Mr. Jean was a model citizen: that argues for a greater sentence. She used a gun in the commission of the offense, which usually doesn’t count if the offender’s a cop, but still. I’d have given her something in the 12 ish range, about what I think Intoxication Manslaughter convicts get.
Glad it’s over. Hope Dallas doesn’t burn down. Hope that other police officers learn from this.
This shooting is 10 times out of 10 a no-bill if Jean was actually in her apartment, as a trespasser, at 11 pm-ish at night. Regardless of whether he was armed or unarmed.
Now, working a call of a potential burglar in the apartment, while she’s in uniform, with probable backup? Yes, then I think it’s probably outside their standards and practices to start blasting as soon as the trespasser stands up.
Surprised as she was though, and in her own apartment? Different story.
This was not an accident, like spilling a cup of coffee or something. This was an agent of the government who broke into an innocent man’s house and killed him while attempting to act as an agent of the state (ordering him around at gunpoint), then tried to get other cops to cover up her crime (which they did to a degree, notably by searching the victim’s house hoping to implicate him) failed to render effective aid to the victim and lied in her testimony about the crime.
Also not sure why one would say ‘little chance of recidivism’, the circumstances of her ‘accident’ are pretty common (most people manage not to break into someone else’s home and shoot them, then try to cover up the crime) so why would one think she couldn’t ‘accidentally’ find another black guy to shoot the next time she’s tired?
I am generally supportive of individual police officers, or at least I think I understand how the actor/reactor theory that goes into their shoot/don’t shoot training can cause them to make decisions that have been ingrained in their mind as “rational” to them, even as they appear hyper-reactive to average citizens.
But I am well aware that, all training aside, there is a school of thought that goes “better to be judged by twelve than carried by six,” and there is an even more despicable school of thought that holds it is something like a public service to shoot anyone and everyone you possibly can (provided there is a fig-leaf of legal justification available, like castle doctrine or stand your ground, and a scarcity of witnesses), and that anyone who runs afoul of them and theirs is mere vermin, and they would shoot a perceived intruder even as they were on their knees unarmed and pleading for their life.
It’s just possible Guyger is such a person, and she, like so many who adopt a “shoot first, ask questions later” attitude, never realized she was capable of making a mistake (the “I don’t need a safety on my gun, my finger is my safety” school of thought).
Anyway, wherever Guyger truly lies on the trigger-happy spectrum (she may just ave been genuinely terrified and in fear for her life with her first reaction to draw and fire as training so often emphasizes), I hope the sort of people who would be smug about taking a life in ambiguous circumstances would take notice. But of course they probably won’t, because those very same people have a knack for insisting that they are FAR too clever to ever be mistaken and THEY could never shoot an innocent person.
Do you believe that she entered the apartment believing it was her own, or are you of the opinion that she knew it wasn’t hers, forced her way in, and shot a man for… reasons? Because I think you overstate your case with the quoted portion.
As to the “coverup” you allege to, I don’t know. Do you have more specifics for that, beyond that she texted her partner prior to the arrival of police? Because if she WAS looking to do a coverup, she did a really lousy, downright half-hearted job of it.
ETA: My 8:44 reply was to Gray Ghost, but it’s too late to specify that and append this reply to Pantastic.
Accident. She legitimately thought she was entering her own apartment. She was either negligent or reckless in disregarding the gazillion clues that it wasn’t her place, as well as recklessly deciding to go clear her own apartment herself, but her crime is of a different, fundamental nature than most knowing and intentional homicides. Texas doesn’t have malice aforethought as an element for murder; many other states do.
If she wanted to cover up the crime, the easiest thing to do would’ve been to police her brass, quickly grab anything electronic from the front room, and make it look like a burglary gone wrong. Instead, she hung around and waited for police to show. Dallas PD behaved abominably, treating her with the softest of kid gloves. Disgusting. They aren’t being sentenced.
Not doing any first aid looks bad, but with his wound, it would’ve been futile. The bullet penetrated the left ventricle. CPR would have only gotten his blood out of his circulatory system faster than it already did. The vast majority of handgun wounds are survivable with prompt care. Mr. Jean’s wasn’t.
You want to argue that means she exhibited some degree of depraved indifference to Mr. Jean’s condition? I won’t argue with you.
As to recidivism, she can’t legally own a firearm again. She will never be in a law enforcement or security role again. Both sets strongly mitigate against this set of facts ever happening for her—or frankly anyone, given how novel this case was—ever again. Contrast with what is usually meant when penologists talk about recidivism. E.g., John Doe, at sentencing for armed robbery, has several past armed robbery and other violent crime arrests. He likely has little education. What do you think he’s going to go right back to doing when he gets out?
What’s in it for her?
Not an accident. She intentionally killed him and only afterwards recognized the (blindly obvious) fact that she wasn’t home.
If I go out and kick someone’s dog because I thought they knocked over my trash cans, that’s no accident. That’s malice. I did that willingly. No amount insisting will convince people that I didn’t intend to kick the dog.
Well, I’m glad she was convicted, and I’m glad she won’t ever legally carry a gun again.
I have zero sympathy for her. She was tired, she thought she was home, she noticed the door was unlocked (but not that it was the wrong door with the wrong welcome mat) she opened the door, she stood by the open door seeing a seated man eating ice cream, and she thought she was in danger for her life?
WTF? Is she paranoid? Delusional?
Could she not just retreat? Or ask, “who are you and what are you doing here?”
I’m surprised to see so much support for her in this thread.
Many of the news sites I’ve read state that she will be eligible for parole in 5 years. I have been unable to find any confirmation one way or the other on official government sites.
Accident? The trigger didn’t pull itself. She had the choice to shoot or not shoot. She made the wrong choice, at the cost of an innocent man’s life.
Assuming that she was as tired as she claimed–
It’s clear that you have no idea of the degree to which extreme tiredness can blind you to things that would be obvious under other circumstances.
You have gotten a bee in your bonnet about her state of mind. You are insisting that she went in to that apartment bent on mayhem. Ironically, if she HAD, in fact, been in her apartment as she thought she was, literally every single thing she did would have been both legally and morally defensible.
Legally? In Texas, yes. Not in my state, where you have a duty to flee if you can do that rather than kill.
Morally? Hell no. It’s flat out wrong to kill a person who presents no danger to you. The guy was sitting on a couch eating ice cream. That doesn’t threaten you, or even your property. I mean, maybe it’s your ice cream? Do you think it’s morally defensible to kill a man over a bowl of ice cream? Without even determining if it’s actually your ice cream?
…
Years ago, when Facebook was new, and I took some of the quizzes that it offered me, I remember one that was supposed to place you in a country. One of the questions was literally this:
You come home, and find a stranger sitting at your kitchen table. He hasn’t yet seen you. Do you:
a) Offer him tea?
b) Ask him who he is and why he is there?
c) Sneak back out and call the cops?
d) Shoot him?
I answered (b), because I would be startled. My husband, a more phlegmatic sort, answered (a). He said, “I would assume it was one of your friends and you’d forgotten to mention to me that he was coming by.” At the time, I did have a lot of people he didn’t know over for events linked to a group I was in.
Anyway, violent burglars don’t casually eat ice cream in the couch. They grab stuff, maybe break stuff, and go. She didn’t interrupt a robbery or anything suspicious or threatening. I mean, it’s hard to think of a less threatening thing a person can do than eat ice cream while sitting on a low seat like a couch.
If the captain of Springfield’s high school basketball team was a monster then it would also be legal to shoot him.
Literally everyone here and in her courtroom recognize that she was blind to all the obvious clues around her. Despite her tired recklessness, if she drove over a person or two on her commute home I would say she’s still guilty for those too.
I, personally, think she entered Jean’s home with the intent to shoot him. Any other intent would have led to her acting responsible by reporting the crime, or waiting, or arresting/talking to Jean, or cluing in that you have entered someone’s home. Either way she definitely intended to shoot him when she shot him.