Several people have done so in this thread. If you mean the DPD saying that they think they themselves are a “prime” suspect, of course they’re not going to do that, especially if (as seems likely) they’re trying to sell a story about reefer-addled negroes driving hundreds of miles to buy small quantities of drugs from someone they know is under police interest, killing each other over it, then leaving a friend with a chest wound in the hospital where he chooses to give a full accounting to the police.
You don’t think they should have searched the killer’s apartment for evidence that the killer (who has admitted to past drug use) was involved with the drugs that they were hinting at (but didn’t find so dropped that tale) in the victim’s apartment? Or any evidence showing a link between the killer and the victim? What exactly do you consider ‘evidence that explains what happened’ other than ‘black person has drugs’, because that seems to be all they’ve been looking for. Because I would think that, in a case where you have a murderer claiming that it was all a mistake and that they didn’t have any reason to kill the victim, ‘evidence that explains what happened’ would include anything pointing to a connection between killer and victim, such as a personal relationship or involvement in criminal enterprise together.
I’m advocating for punishing straight up murderer’s fairly harshly. This doesn’t exactly seem to be a controversial as several other people have stated the same opinion that ten years in prison for straight-up intentional murder with no actual extenuating circumstances is a slap on the wrist. At this point, I’ve shown evidence that her sentence is significantly less than one would get for killing a police dog (which is not even a person) or for firing a gun without hitting anyone while involved in a drug crime.
The sentences that people get for various crimes in this country do have bearing on what one considers a reasonable versus an unreasonable sentence. The Federal ‘drug and gun’ sentences that I cited to show that she was getting merely a sentence equal to what is considered appropriate for someone who merely fires (but does not hit anyone) a firearm during a drug crime, it’s not tied to being a minority.
The fact that the state-mandated sentencing guidelines allow for a slap on the wrist in this case doesn’t change my opinion that the sentence is a slap on the wrist.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. If the roles were reversed, do you think he’d be looking at a piddly ten years? Do you think he’d have even 50-50 odds of surviving to trial rather than being ‘shot while resisting’ on the way in?
Notably, why would a man who knows he’s on the police’s radar and who’s stated to the press that he fears for his life set up a drug deal in the parking lot of his own apartment with no one backing him up during the deal and with the drugs stored in his own home and no one ready to clear them out if things go bad? Why would the guy who’s been shot in the chest (which, incidentally would seem to make talking difficult) sing out this entire tale to the police instead of giving a generic ‘some guy wearing a mask shot me, don’t know who, I forget where’ type of answer? Why didn’t any of the people investigating the key witness in this controversial case notice that he was not only moving drugs, but moving them through his own apartment and dealing from his own parking lot until after he ‘happened’ to get shot (Or did he embark on this new career a week after testifying)?
The report that was released today in Chicago doesn’t make it a good week for the police to argue that they deserve to be presumed incorruptible.
It was a internal investigation conducted by the Chicago PD after Laquan McDonald was fatally shot by Jason Van Dyke, a Chicago Police Officer, in 2014. The report found that at least sixteen police officers were actively involved in a cover-up to protect Van Dyke.
Again, this doesn’t prove that the Dallas PD was involved in Brown’s death, conducted a bad investigation, or has arrested the wrong people. But it does demonstrate that a lot of police officers are willing to file false reports, alter evidence, and give false testimony when it comes to protecting a fellow officer who’s been accused of a crime.
If there are situations where people distrust the police, the police need to acknowledge that they’ve earned that distrust.
I’m honestly still not sure why the police were ever and are still believed to have had a motive here. Their interest in murdering the witness who heroically corroborated Guyger’s story seems less than threadbare to me.
Most of your questions, though, about what Brown and the alleged drug-deal participants could possibly have been thinking, I think can be answered by a combination of “criminals can be stupid” and “criminals can be desperate.” I mean, just look at that Guyger character as an example of how stupid criminals can be. At best she wandered into the wrong apartment and shot a guy just minding his own business before she figured out her error and panicked, at worst (as you seem to be hinting, please correct me if I’m wrong) she had some premeditated reason to kill Jean, but she did a really lousy job of ensuring she’d get away with it (making her both more malevolent and stupider too). If it was premeditated, she’d have done better to shoot him on his way to or from work and claim he charged at her, for instance. That at least would have put her on neutral ground for a self-defense claim.
But one question that can’t be answered with “stupid/desperate criminals” has to do with where you asked, “Why didn’t any of the people investigating the key witness in this controversial case notice that he was … moving drugs … ?” [slight snip at the …].
Was someone investigating Brown prior to this? I’ll admit, it kind of raised red flags to me when he said he made his living as an entrepreneur (okay…) managing five airBnB properties (huh?), but would it be routine to investigate a witness like this, and did they? Particularly when, as I’ve noted previously, his testimony really doesn’t seem to have been all that “key” (the media seems to have applied that label rather sensationally since his death). I may have missed it, but I don’t recall that he said anything that really disputed Guyger’s recounting of events. Again, Guyger basically confessed on day one of the investigation, and again on the stand for the jury to hear.
People who sell illegal drugs for a living don’t always make 100% logical and rational decisions. If they did, they wouldn’t be in the drug business.
Why would they? The prosecution isn’t going to go digging for dirt on their own witness, and the defense can’t just demand to search his apartment.
The only one going on about “reefer-addled negroes” here is you.
Moreover, you assume the buyers knew who he was. If you asked a typical man on the street, prior to the murder, who Joshua Brown was, chances are they’d have no idea.
Why would they “know” Brown was under police “interest?” The investigation of Jean’s murder is long over.
Maybe they left a friend at the hospital with a gunshot wound because they’re not so callous as to leave their friend by the side of the road to die.
You’re talking about the three people who traveled from out of state? The fact that they were “involved with drugs” in a general sense isn’t really evidence of their guilt in Brown’s murder; it would be unlikely to justify a warrant allowing the search of their residence(s) in Louisiana.
I haven’t read that Brown’s murder was due to a mistake. Articles I’ve read indicate that Green and Brown “got into an altercation during the drug deal”, which is what led to the shootout.
I can think of several reasons. For starters, maybe he didn’t want to let three strangers of questionable integrity into his apartment where they could beat him senseless and rob him of his valuable inventory, to which they would have ready access. Maybe he felt that an ambush in the parking lot would be more dangerous for the perps (because of potential witnesses) than an ambush in his apartment, and therefore less likely.
Don’t know the nature of his gunshot wound, other than it’s “in the chest.” Small caliber? Maybe something that didn’t blow a huge hole in his lung or heart? So maybe he can talk with some effort. And maybe he’s willing to talk, since he claims he didn’t shoot Brown and wants to get the police to go easy on him (maybe he’s unaware of the felony-murder-rule implications). Maybe the police convinced him to talk since witnesses gave descriptions of the events surrounding the murder. Or they lied about witnesses putting him at the scene of Brown’s murder (cops are allowed to lie to suspects about the evidence against them).
Who would investigate him? He’s supporting the prosecution. How much investigation do you think Guyger’s defense attorney would have been able to conduct, other than asking a few of the guy’s neighbors what he was all about?
Do police typically investigate the background of witnesses to a crime?
The DPD, as an organization, didn’t want her Guyger after she killed Jean, which is why they fired her. There is no reason for the DPD to be involved in a coverup of an officer who broke the law & was fired.
While it’s theoretically possible a rogue officer committed the murder of the witness, again it doesn’t make much sense. By her own admission Guyger shot Jean. She was already fired before the prosecution. Even if she got off, she wasn’t getting her job back. If there was a rogue officer, this wasn’t the witness to commit murder over.
Your theory that DPD committed the second murder doesn’t even make plausible fiction.
Whether or not the cops murdered the witness, this needs to be answered.
If they’re smart they do, though I would think it would be the DA’s own investigators.
You don’t want this to happen: After five hours of testimony outlining everything the defendant did, say, who he shot, in detail, the defense comes on and asks the witness about the time he was abducted by aliens, and he proceeds to tell, in detail!, about how he was taken by aliens from Tralmaffadoor in their mind-powered ship, where cotton candy falls from the sky. I think you’d like to know that about him ahead of time.
And if your witness to a drug related shooting turns out to actually be a member of a rival drug gang, and not just an innocent civilian, that would be helpful to know as well. Because his testimony would be suspect.
I can see how that would be something the DA would want to avoid in a case where the witness is expected to refute the defense’s version of an event, but I don’t see that in this case. Even if the defense had hired private investigators or used contacts within the DPD to uncover information, how exactly would casting doubt on Brown’s credibility have benefited them, given what he actually said on the stand?
It would be one thing if Brown had testified “Sure, I saw her talking to Jean all the time. Just before the shooting, I heard her say the insurance rates had gone up and if he didn’t pay she’d put two in his chest. Then I heard her order him to his knees as he pleaded for his life. The I heard the shots, and I heard his body hit the floor. Then she muttered a racial slur, turned to me, and said ‘keep your mouth shut or you’re next!’” Then I could see the defense wanting to impeach his testimony with evidence that he might be engaged in illegal activities and biased against the police.
But he didn’t do that. He didn’t say anything too far out of line with what Guyger had claimed all along. His testimony, in a nutshell, was (paraphrasing) “It sounded like two people meeting by surprise, then there were gunshots shortly after, and then she was frantically pacing down the hallway with her phone saying she messed up.”
So, even if the defense had suspicions (or even outright proof) that he was a drug dealer, would it really have benefitted them to lean into him after he basically corroborated (or at least gave testimony broadly consistent with) Guyger’s claim that this was all a horrible mistake on her part?
Oh, come on. What else can you realistically expect that would have been more favorable than a black judge, seven black jurors, five other non-white jurors, and four white jurors. Out of the jurors, 12 out of 16 were women.
That is absolutely as diverse of a jury as you could hope for- if anything, maybe a balance of men and women would have been more diverse.
If they came to the conclusion that it was murder, and decided that 10 years is an appropriate sentence based on the evidence and testimony that they saw, then I have to take them at their word (so to speak). I wasn’t there in either situation- the killing itself or the trial.
The last few pages of discussion would seem to indicate, to me at least, that devil’s advocacy is I no way necessary here. There are already posters who appear more than willing to advocate for that or a similar position quite sincerely.
Do you really thing that the cops killed him and then arrested people who could say “The cops put us up to it!”. If the cops were as sneaky as you imply, there would be no witnesses of any kind and no arrests. Cop haters will be cop haters. I put this right up there with a flat earth and fake moon landings.
If there are no witnesses and no arrests, that proves the cops conspired to cover up the fact that they killed him. If there are witnesses and arrests, that proves the conspiracy goes deeper than you ever thought.
Even if we go with that theory, do you think it’s the DPD as an institution that did this or just a rogue cop, & if it’s the latter couldn’t it just as easily be a wannabe/fanboi rather than a real cop?
If it’s an individual, cop or not, do you not think the DPD (institution) has the ability to investigate it?
I may be Just Asking Questions, but that theory doesn’t work if no one knows the cops killed the guy. And in this case no one knows.
I don’t really see a problem with “hating cops” as a result of this case. A cop DID murder a guy and the police tried to cover it up. If that doesn’t deserve “hate”, what does?
For the Love of God, you guys have me siding with **Shodan **and Mike F.
This witness testified to a version of events that are almost identical the officer’s own account. It wasn’t *his *testimony that convicted her.
This man had stated that he already lived in fear of being shot. Why? Someone had tried to kill him a year before. He ended up wounded and his companion was killed during the attack.
Which is more likely? That he was killed as reaction to his testifying, or that he was killed by someone who had tried to kill him before? Or killed for the same reason that someone else tried to kill him for a year before? Even HE thought that there were people who were not cops that wanted to kill him.