Reply To: Dallas police officer Amber Guyger fired after fatally shooting neighbor Botham

[Dragon]

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olecapt wrote:

Dragon wrote:

Except that she wasn’t a there as a police officer. She was an armed intruder on private property with no authority to be ordering anyone to do anything. There was no crime in progress, no danger to life or property. The only suspicious activity was her own, and that concluded with her killing an innocent man. Texas Penal Code § 19.02(b)(3),[1] states that “a person commits murder if he ‘commits or attempts to commit a felony, other than manslaughter, and in the course of and in furtherance of the commission or attempt, or in immediate flight from the commission or attempt, he commits or attempts to commit an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual.’” The felony in progress here is Assault with a Deadly Weapon (negligently causing bodily injury to another with a dangerous weapon ). Is there any question she was negligent during the course of this incident? Looks like felony murder to me.

Of course she was. Standard peace officer gimmick. They are never off duty. And once she says “POLICE” she is there. And failure to comply with the directives of a police officer who then fears for his life is virtually always a successful defense against murder.

In this case they are attempting manslaughter on the basis she was reckless or negligent in being where she was. But they will likely fail as the defense will convince one or more jurors she was in her police officer mode with a non compliant suspect.

A “police officer mode” defense could be her undoing. As an officer of the law, she knows better than anyone else that you do no draw your weapon and point it at someone unless you intend to use it. It is her intent at that moment that the state can use to show that the killing was indeed felony murder under the law. She didn’t “accidentally” shoot Jean. It was a deliberate and conscious act that she performed after she entered the darkened apartment without the owner’s knowledge or consent.

I’d like to know what her tox screen showed after the incident. If there wasn’t one, I’d like to know why. If anyone, let alone a police officer, comes home so disoriented that she wanders into the wrong apartment, I think it’s reasonable to suspect that she was impaired, and the homicide that followed was a direct result of that impairment.

Any way you look at it, her defense team is going to have to earn their money to get her out of this jam she put herself in.