Basically, police get a “no knock” warrant. In the middle of the night, break into the guy’s apartment. The guy shoots at them, kills one of the police officers, wounds another one. Since it is a “no knock” warrant, that means the police didn’t identify themselves, so to me, he was obviously defending himself.
I understand that the state wants to prosecute - after all, a police officer is dead, but I really don’t see (unless there is some clear evidence that he knew he was shooting at police) how he can possibly be convicted. He definitely shouldn’t be, IMO.
I also don’t see how it is relevant (to the murder charge, that is) whether there were or, as the case is, were not any drugs found in his apartment after the shooting.
Am I missing something here that makes the outcome here non-obvious?
I’m not sure if this part is true. No knock, as I understand it, means that they can break down the door without warning. They should still identify themselves as police officers when coming through the door, usually by shouting.
The one link I read did not mention whether they did or did not identify themselves as police officers.
ETA: Just read the other. It doesn’t say whether police identified themselves or not. Which is bad reporting. A reporter should have asked that question.
If he fired on them after they identified themselves, then the charge is appropriate. If they did not identify themselves then…well, that’s another matter.
You have a situation where somebody is forcibly breaking into your house. That’s clear self-defense. Unless it’s the police breaking into your house with a warrant.
But here’s the kicker. The person inside the house has no way of knowing that the people breaking into his house are police with a warrant.
I have to agree. If the police did not identify themselves than it is reasonable to assume the suspect *believed *that criminals were breaching his home to do him wrong.
“The TRU was beginning to breach the window when the 49 year old male inside, opened fire striking four officers.”
It’s a “no knock” warrant. It would be pretty hard for the police to claim that as they were “beginning to breach a window” they identified themselves to Guy.
What the outcome should be is obvious. Unfortunately, it’s not a sure thing.
Personally, I think that there should basically be no such thing as a no-knock warrant. If you actually need to make a no-knock entry (and no, protecting hypothetical evidence of a hypothetical crime doesn’t count), it is under circumstances in which a warrant is not legally required anyway. When the cops go out of their way to stack the deck against someone just minding their own business - breaking into the house when the homeowner’s most likely to be asleep, for example - it’s their own damn fault if they get themselves shot.
You didn’t see this stuff happening on Dragnet. ISTM that police have become more militarised in the past couple/few decades. I was working in L.A. when the North Hollywood shootout happened. The bank robbers had illegal automatic weapons, and the cops were armed with their .38 Special revolvers (some possibly had 9 mm pistols) and 12-gauge shotguns. During the course of the shootout, cops went across the street to B & B Sales to borrow semi-automatic AR-15 rifles. (I bought a few guns from B & B.) I recall that after the shootout, police forces started to be equipped with M-16s modified to only fire semi-automatically. Personally, I think police should have access to weapons equal to what criminals might have. But ‘recently’ cops seem to fashion themselves soldiers. They seem to have gone from ‘There are cops, scum, and morons’ to ‘There are Badass Super Warriors, scum, and other scum’.
There have been far too many cases of innocent homeowners being killed or terrorised by cops violently breaking into the wrong house. I recall a case where the L.A. Sheriff’s Department had its eye on someone’s property in Malibu (its forfeiture would have done much for their coffers), and they fortunately received an anonymous tip that the homeowner was growing marijuana there. The guy’s dozing in his chair, when suddenly a bunch of armed men burst in. Rudely awakened, he picks up a handgun and is killed. Of course there was no marijuana anywhere on the property.
I feel that any innocent person who kills a cop during a no-knock break-in, and survives, should not be charged with a crime. Self-defense is justified when a person is in fear of his life. If he doesn’t know that the intruders are cops (and it’s unlikely he would, since he may not be able to process the announcement in the fraction of a second between them shouting and the flash-bangs going off), then it’s clearly self-defense.
I looked around and I don’t think anyone started a fundraiser for him. If/when they do, I think I will contribute. And I rarely do (never did for Zimmerman, although I thought he was being railroaded).
In my opinion, the police should be required to identify themselves as police in a reasonable manner and they should make a reasonable effort to present their warrant to the homeowner and/or occupants.
The only situation where the police might be justified in entering a house without warning would be when there is reasonable grounds to believe there might be a hostage situation. And by reasonable grounds, I don’t mean “Well, it’s possible there are people inside we don’t know about and if they were inside, they could conceivably be being held hostage.”
Googling this, people are comparing this to a case in Texas in December, when one Henry Goedrich Magee killed a police officer in a no-knock raid looking for marijuana. Unlike with Guy, the Grand Jury chose not to indict Magee. Interestingly, in Magee’s case, the police had already broken in to the home, making it slightly more likely that they had been able to identify themselves as police officers than in Guy’s case. Also they did apparently find some drugs in Magee’s home, though not what they were apparently expecting.
I tend to think one shouldn’t shoot at someone unless you can actually clearly see who your shooting at. Since swat teams usually have clothing that clearly identifies them as such, I think Marvin is responsible for the deaths caused by his shooting (though even then, I think manslaughter is probably a more appropriate charge).
But I don’t know what the actual legal standard is. Texas certainly has a reputation for having maximalist self-defense laws, so I wouldn’t be surprised if blazing away at any thing that scares you, sight unseen, is considered kosher.
It’s not “anything that scares you”. It is someone breaking through your window, in the middle of the night. If that is not a classic case of self-defense, I don’t know what is.
I think the prosecution’s argument is going to be that self defense is an affirmative defense, that these were police officers executing a lawful warrant, and that the officers announced they were police while they were entering. So, the onus is on Gay to prove that he didn’t know they were cops and had reasonable reason to fear for his life.