Amber Guyger has been indicted for murder. Guyger is the Dallas Police Department Officer who killed Botham Jean, her downstairs neighbor, after having broken into his apartment. In the aftermath of Jean’s death, Guyger claimed that she had mistaken Jean’s apartment for her own and that she had assumed Jean was an intruder.
Although local law enforcement had made it very clear that they were going to try to excuse, minimize, and justify Guyger’s behavior – including refusing to name Guyger for several days after the killing, quietly letting her change her story, refusing to release other information about her, and shamelessly leaking the contents of Jean’s apartment in an attempt – the jury disagreed. It chose to indict her for murder instead of manslaughter, which was what she had been originally, and inexplicably, charged with.
Whether a jury will be willing to find Amber Guyger guilty for Botham Jean’s murder is another, later matter, but for the time being, this jury’s finding represents the briefest glimmer of progress.
Murder not manslaughter is interesting.
Now I’m wondering what is going to come out during the trial that has been covered up by the police/press up to this point.Report
This is covered at the end of the linked article. It’s murder (what we’d call second-degree in CA) because she meant to shoot him and inflict grievous bodily harm at the moment she did shoot him.
Manslaughter doesn’t contemplate any intention to harm, simply negligence.
At least, that’s my limited understanding.Report
Oh, my suspicion is that we don’t know half of how awful the story is yet. It got murder instead of manslaughter not because of the “meant to shoot him and inflict grievous bodily harm”. She might have gotten away with that as a cop.
It’s the stuff we don’t know that will get us to say “WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT’S ONLY 2ND?!?”
And I wonder what that stuff is and at what point it comes out during the trial.Report
I guess you are thinking that she more or less up and decided “Ima gonna go down there and shoot that guy because he bothers me” Which is horrifying, to say the least. And would be first degree, for sure.
That’s a distinct possibility, I guess. I just have a hard time figuring out how a human being can get to that place.Report
I don’t know what it will be. I just know that the police started by doing what they always do… and then they stopped doing what they always do.
I can only imagine how bad it must be to get them to say “you know what? We’re going to get out of the way of this one…”Report
@jaybird They’ve got door lock information, the 911 call, the ballistics, and, most importantly, the drug tests for her. I’ll bet it’s in there somewhere.Report
Did they take drug tests?
My off hand WAG is alcohol was involved and played a big role. My other WAG is there’s no way her fellows would have tested her if they thought she was drunk.Report
@dark-matter The reporting I’ve seen suggests that these results are available and were taken in the aftermath.Report
I’ve read that she lived directly below his apartment and had complained about noise prior to the incident.Report
I recall digging into it at the time, and you’re absolutely right.
Manslaughter (in that state) is pure negligence. Performing an action that any reasonable person knows can be lethal is “murder”. The act of aiming a gun and pulling the trigger is sufficient. (Very few people will claim “shooting someone” as “not being potentially lethal”).
The mitigating factors (such as being confused, drunk, in the wrong apartment, under the mistaken impression there was a burglar, etc) are taken into account at sentencing, rather than charging. So, if convicted, her sentence range will be much lower as (as far as we know) she lacked such things as “premeditation”.Report
@morat20 I’ve seen this argument made in relation to police shootings, which is one part of the much bigger problem:
“(Very few people will claim “shooting someone” as “not being potentially lethal”).”Report
If a person is charged with murder, can a jury find that they’re guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter?
Or is a charge of murder when there is ample evidence of manslaughter but not enough for murder, actually a way of getting someone an acquittal?Report
The answer to your first question is yes. The greater charge always includes the lesser charge.
At least that is what I remember from crim law in California.Report
Well, THIS! IS! TEXAS!
They’ve been known to do things a bit differently.Report
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_rule_(Texas)
Texas’s felony murder rule, codified in 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.”
So, if I understand this right, if Guyger is changed with manslaughter, murder is off the table, but if she’s charged with assault, she can also be convicted of felony murder.Report
I don’t think that’s applicable, or at least would be a really weird way to handle this. Felony murder is something charged when a person dies/is killed during the commission of a felony but the defendant isn’t the one who pulled the proverbial trigger. The leading case on it in Maryland for example was a situation where the defendant committed a robbery, initiated a car chase, and a bystander was killed by a police bullet in the resulting shootout. Defendant was convicted under the felony murder doctrine despite not being the person who actually shot the victim because the defendant created the situation through commission of a felony.
Manslaughter is typically a lesser included offense in a regular.p murder charge (at least where I practice).
Edit- screwed up the reply, this was to Mike Schilling.Report
@inmd This serves as its own indictment of how we handle police who kill.Report
It was a controversial application for sure (at least among lawyers, IIRC it was the early 90s so the public was probably all for it).Report