“Certainly not a simple unpremeditated murder” ? Murder? If that doesn’t deserve more than 10 years, what does? What crime could possibly be worse than murder?
A mass murder where someone plans for months to go to a hotel room in Las Vegas and indiscriminately shoot dozens of people partying in the street. A mass murder where someone plans to go to an elementary school and kill as many little children as he can. Stuff like that.
10 years for taking someone’s life is a slap on the wrist, however much you want to try to spin it. I don’t think anything less than 20 is remotely reasonable, and think life without parole or the death penalty would be more appropriate. I’m not sure why you claim the murder was not premeditated, you’re disagreeing with Amber’s statements and the conclusion of the jury who stated that they believe she decided she was going to kill the ‘intruder’ before entering the door. I think 10 years is appropriate just for the misuse of authority and failure to render aid at the scene (which didn’t even merit separate criminal charges).
Lots of crimes that don’t actually involve killing a person get mandatory sentences of ten years or more, and claiming that ten years is fine for outright, deliberate, premeditated murder when there are people doing life sentences for marijuana sales with no actual murders involved is sick and disgusting.
I don’t know their posting history, but is there any evidence that these posters think that 10 years for marijuana sales is fine?
News is now reporting that Atatiana Jefferson (homeowner) pointed the gun toward the window before she was shot. According to her nephew, an eyewitness.
This kinda changes things I think. The policeman made a huge mistake, but if this is correct and he saw the gun before he fired, it sure doesn’t look like murder any more.
I don’t see where it changes much, if anything. The officer did not identify himself, was sneaking around the outside of the house, peering into the windows, had no probable cause there was any crime being committed, and fired within a half second of finishing his shouted, almost unintelligible command.
I have to admit, I have a problem with them not arriving in front of the house in their cruiser with their lights flashing and their sneaking around outside the house. The only thing that makes sense is if they suspected that nefarious people were committing a crime inside, being notified of police being outside might cause them to destroy evidence. Cops really hate it when that happens.
Had it been a prowler who saw a homeowner pointing a gun at them, and so the prowler shot through the window, killing the homeowner, would you expect the prowler to not be charged with murder?
I don’t see how this changes anything.
Our gun lovin’ friends tell us all the time about how having a gun in the house makes you safer. Not this time, it seems. Assuming she did point the gun. She might be alive today if she didn’t carry.
Might, since we don’t know how trigger happy the cop would have been.
Having never identified himself as a police officer, he was an unidentified person presenting a credible lethal threat to a homeowner who was entitled to use deadly force to defend herself against such a threat. He killed someone who had been completely justified in aiming a gun at him.
Nonsense. Again, this is a state with strong castle doctrine laws, and widespread legal private gun ownership. Something that the police obviously know. The police officers here are entirely responsible for setting up the circumstances of this encounter: they inexplicably chose not to announce themselves and instead chose to prowl around outside unidentified. Any homeowner has the right to investigate an unidentified intruder in or on his property with weapon drawn. And an unidentified intruder, cop or not, does not have the right to summarily execute the homeowner for doing so.
If you sneak up to someone’s window, start shouting at them and pointing a gun at them, they pull out a gun of their own, and you shoot them, how does it not look like murder? Just like with Amber Guyger, attacking a person in their own home, then attempting to use ‘self defense’ as a justification for murdering them is simply absurd.
If the purpose of prison is to deter someone from committing a crime again (as we are so often told,) I fail to see how a sentence of longer than 10 years would achieve anything that a sentence of 10 years alone didn’t.
That is a reason, but it’s not the only reason.
After Guyger and now Dean both being charged with murder, who would have thought Texas of all states would do the right thing when cops assassinate innocent civilians?
Even the police chief, who was about to fire Dean, agreed that Jefferson was justified in arming herself. Dean violated every protocol in the book. If he spotted a weapon, the thing to do would be for the police to retreat to a safe perimeter, and demand that everybody in the house come out with their hands in the air. After loudly and clearly announcing themselves, of course.
This second one is nuts. The cop was there on a welfare check and he sneaks up like he got a burglary in process call. Wtf?
Consider two questions:
Do you believe that the police should have to wait until they get shot (or at least shot at) to fire on someone? And, if the answer is no, how do you tell the difference between someone who is pointing or even just holding a gun with no lethal intent, vs someone who has lethal intent and is a threat to be neutralized before they use it?
I ask those questions, because I think the answers go a long way to explaining police behavior. I have gathered that they seem to be trained the answer should be “no” to the first question (that is, they are trained it is acceptable to shoot first), and “you very often can’t, at least not in time to keep from getting shot” to the second. Which leads to trigger-happy police and dead civilians. And it all makes perfect sense (from a certain point of view…).
I have no easy answers. All reports indicate the police put themselves into a clusterfuck by not arriving with their blue lights on and not announcing their presence. They put themselves in a position where Jefferson, who legally owned the gun, would have been justified in firing on them. If the police would have followed protocol, as even the chief admitted they didn’t, Jefferson would be alive. I’m not a cop hater, but they fucked up and a young woman is dead as a result.
IDK. From all the stories I’ve read, a cop escalating a situation and when the civilian reacts using excessive force or shooting them then victim-blaming because THEY reacted seems like standard police protocol.
It is not clear the law gets him off the hook. What is his defense? Self defense? Texas law on self defense… I’m not sure.
Texas law is very generous in allowing self defense as a defense, but it DOES NOT allow it in cases where the person who committed the homicide “provoked” the person killed; in other words, if Dean provoked Jefferson into taking the action of drawing a weapon, Texas law says he cannot claim self defense. Prowling behind a person’s house like a thief can certainly be construed as provoking Jefferson; her decision to arm herself was a reasonable act to the perception of a person skulking behind her house at the wee hours of the morning.