why?
In Texas, Sec. 9.42 of the Penal Code provides that deadly force is legal when used by a person protecting their own property from burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime.
Sec. 9.32 provides that force is lawfully used against a person who unlawfully and with force entered, or was attempting to enter unlawfully and with force, the actor’s occupied habitation, vehicle, or place of business or employment.
So if she entered her own home, and encountered someone she reasonably believed to be present unlawfully to commit theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime, Texas law seems to permit deadly force.
This analysis addresses your comment, “Even if she was on her own home.” It does not address the actual situation at hand, where she was not in her own home.
Ok, fair enough.
I don’t know what level of confirmation would be convincing or available. But the arrest affidavit says that she “arrived at the apartment complex and parked her vehicle on the fourth floor of the parking garage, which should correspondence to the floor the resident lives on. Guyger entered the building and walked down the fourth floor hallway to what she thought was her apartment.”
Because you misapprehend the “intent is irrelevant,” aspect of felony murder. Intent to cause a death is not necessary to apply the felony murder rule, but intent to commit the predicate crime is necessary.
In other words, you must intend to commit some crime such as burglary, and if a death occurs during the burglary, the felony murder rule may well apply. But if you lack any criminal intent, the felony murder rule is not triggered.
ah, after a little research I see that breaking and entering with intent to commit burglary is a felony, otherwise it’s a misdemeanor. Bricker is absolutely correct. Felony murder does not apply. . .nevermind. . .
eta: and I see Bricker has answered as well
mc
Yup, and as I said earlier - I hope that one outcome from this might be that people think long and hard about the potential consequences of laws that reduce the obligation to retreat and appear to lower the legal standard for what it’s reasonable to do in defense of your home. It might be a freakish occurrence for a resident to be mistaken about where they are, but it’s far more plausible that a bona fide visitor might be at the wrong door; a door that happens to be the home of some trigger happy asshole who thinks they are entitled to shoot first and ask questions later.
So she had probably put a lot of practise into shooting black people and this was all just muscle memory?
Thank you.
We’ve had a long time to think about it, and the consensus has been more guns.
The fact that the guy was in his underwear, on top of all the other little gnawing inconsistencies that should have been needling at her elite law enforcement-trained brain (or seemingly any sober moron’s brain for that matter) didn’t give her any pause? It didn’t slow down the decision making process to draw and fire her lethal weapon at all? What would have given her pause? A banner draped across the front door saying “This is not your home Ms. Guyger”? I dont mean to sound crass or flippant bit nothing about this story seems plausible to me. I know i really should reserve my judgment until more comes out tho. But damn.
I don’t think gun control or repeal of castle laws would matter here, but don’t let that stop you from trying to make political hay. Since she’s a cop, she’d have had a gun no matter what. We don’t do the unarmed police thing here, if you hadn’t noticed. Castle law doesn’t matter, either. She’s a cop and they get to play by different rules from the rest of us.
It was about 10pm, and the apartment was dark (as you might expect). That, perhaps, is why she didn’t notice that he was in underwear or realize the significance of that.
If I came into what I thought was my house and encountered a stranger in his underwear that would alarm me. Even more, I think, if I were a woman.
She wasn’t on duty. Setting aside questions about whether her account is plausible, let’s take it at face value and assume that she believed that she was in her own home, and that the victim was an intruder. Under those hypothetical circumstances, the Texas castle doctrine statute that Bricker posted would likely have exonerated her actions, even if she could easily have turned around and safely retreated from the apartment and called for assistance. So it’s entirely plausible that the Texas castle doctrine contributed to her decision to shoot rather than withdraw.
And “trying to make political hay”? Is that the this is not the time argument? Would you say that to the victim’s family? Oh, right, it’s Scumpup - you probably would.
Have you tried offering thoughts and prayers instead of continuously trying to determine what can be done about all these shootings?
Yup, but the “if I came into what I thought was my house” clause is the key to that sentence, isn’t it. It’s why any sensible society should hold people who are armed and prepared to kill (whether police officers or otherwise) to a high enough standard of sobriety and awareness that they would not be in the wrong fucking apartment without realizing it.
I’ve open the doors of cars identical to mine and realized almost instantly it wasn’t mine due to the contents. Did she think he bought and rearranged all new furniture too? I don’t care how tired you are, how big an idiot could this person be? She was awake enough to see a black guy, draw her gun, and shoot without warning.
It’s more believable to me that she had a beef with this neighbor and used this “excuse” to murder him. Either that or she just ate a bagful of shrooms…
I’m skeptical about the first idea, precisely because it’s so implausible as an excuse. I’m much more inclined to suspect that she was impaired; or at least something like extreme exhaustion combined with a highly emotional state for some unrelated reason.
It’s also not ‘breaking and entering.’ I’m not a lawyer, but Texas has two different crimes that might fit for ‘breaking and entering’: Burglary and Criminal Trespass. Their definitions can be found in Chapter 30 of the Texas Penal Code. I’ve discussed this in the Pit thread covering this, but for Burglary, you need the intent to commit some other crime when you enter the premises, which no one is yet claiming she had. For Criminal Trespass, you need “notice that the entry was forbidden.” That she then ignored. She didn’t have notice that the property was someone else’s; she thought it was her apartment.
Anyone have any info about how far away Mr. Jean was when he got shot? I guess she’s now claiming he was halfway across the apartment, in the dark, when she shot him? Seems to be something that ballistics/crime scene investigators should be able to clear up; whether the shooting appeared at close (1-3 feet) range, like you’d expect if she shot him when he opened the door, or further away, as might be the case if the door was ajar and she opened it.
The door ajar might lead her to immediately suspect burglary. When my apartment was burglarized, my first clue was that the door opened easily, with a piece of door jamb coming along with it. A cop may suspect that an ajar door, when it’s her apartment, and she’s pretty sure she locked it, might mean she was the victim of a burglary, where s/he kicked in the door to gain entry. Then she’d start thinking about the burglary, worrying about what she’s going to have to do next, and not paying attention to all of the signs that she might not be at her own place.
I find the idea of leaving that Mr. Jean would leave his front door ajar at 11 o’clock in that part of Dallas to be frankly bizarre, but stranger things have happened.