ETA: It doesn’t appear he was shot while sitting on the couch.
Defense takes the position that he was rising up toward her. Prosecution says he was in the process of standing or cowering. Neither seem to suggest that she walked in and executed a man sitting on the couch eating.
In any case, it’s still murder.
In addition, Texas Penal Code 9.32 describing the castle doctrine there refers to someone 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". In the what-Guyger-may-have-believed scenario (i.e. if it were her own apartment, where she discovered an intruder there), that scenario would have the intruder having entered when the apartment was unoccupied (note the word “occupied” in the law).
https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.9.htm#9.32
She stood on the threshold of Botham Jean’s apartment, used her police equipment to prop the door open, drew her gun, and started barking commands at him to show his hands, as he stood in the shadows, moving side-to-side and then walking toward her. He said, “Hey, hey hey,” and she fired twice, once into the far wall. The other shot struck him fatally in a downward angle, entering just above his heart.
The apartment’s light switches were within reach on the entry’s right wall. The layout was identical to Guyger’s own apartment. Since she was willing to assume the risk of standing in such a dangerously exposed place, I don’t know why she didn’t turn on the lights. Maybe even ask Jean why he was there.
This is a misstatement of the law.
There is no duty to retreat ** if the intruder entered while you or someone else was in your “castle.” ** But even if we assume that Guyger thought she was in her own home, she clearly did not believe that she entered it before the “intruder” entered. She thought she surprised an intruder.
There is no duty to retreat if the intruder was in the process of committing a violent crime, like assaulting someone in the home. But Guyger had no reason to believe a violent crime was taking place.
As I read the statute, if you walk into your home and discover someone is stealing your silverware, the castle doctrine does not apply. Stealing silverware is not a violent crime, and the intruder did not enter an occupied home.
I went to law school in the mid-70s. The first day of class, one of the professors told us, “ Never cite Texas law.” I went on to practice law in Texas for almost 30 years. Texas is different, but so is Louisiana. And don’t even get me started on California.
@Cardinal Fang, I don’t necessarily agree with your interpretation. The fact that the judge instructed the jury that they may consider this, allowed them to potentially acquit her with the Castle doctrine as justification suggests that walking in on a trespasser in one’s own home and using lethal force to protect your life in that moment would be legal, depending. Shooting someone who trespassed and is attacking your silverware? Probably not. Someone who trespasses while you are not home, but physically threatens you once you arrive? It certainly looks as if the judge was giving the jury the right to make the second finding and use it as a Castle Doctrine rationale. In the end, the jury didn’t buy that she was in the second situation.
Texas Castle doctrine does allow you to use lethal force to protect theft of property in your home or attached garage in certain circumstances.
A good lawyer could make a case for use of deadly force in a robbery of property. Better not to test it, but depending, it could be defended.
The above interpretation doesn’t mention that the burglar must be committing a violent offense against another person.
https://www.uslawshield.com/castle-doctrine/
None of this applies to Amber.
However, Amber Guyger insisted that the “trespasser” advanced on her in a threatening manner. This could be a defense in the Castle doctrine if she had in fact walked in on a trespasser who proceeded to threaten her physical safety. This is Texas-a person walks in on an intruder who menacingly approaches him/her, the person “reasonably believes” they are in physical peril-that person is highly unlikely to be convicted in gun happy Texas. If this were actually the circumstance- that non police officer, petite Amber Guyger interrupted a trespass of her home and then killed a larger male intruder who she felt was going to physically harm her-no way she is convicted in Texas.
But Amber was not a civilian, she had extensive training, she did not walk into her home to find an intruder, and she could not prove her claim to the jury that she was physically menaced. It seems that they felt that regardless of her" feeling" threatened, regardless of her feeling that she was in her own home, that feeling was not reasonable in light of the other facts.
I’m not an attorney, just doing what we all do here.
When a judge instructs a jury on a defense, it does NOT mean that the judge has made a finding that the defense is appropriate – it just means that, giving the defendant the benefit of the doubt, the judge has determined that there was some evidence introduced at trial that conceivably could support the defense. And sometimes judges give instructions that are favorable to the defense simply to avoid giving the defendant something to complain about on appeal – an experienced trial judge is likely to have a pretty good sense of where the trial is headed by the time it comes around to ruling on jury instructions.
So no - it doesn’t mean that the Texas castle doctrine would apply – it just means that it wasn’t absolutely, positively certain that it wouldn’t.
I think it is a misreading of the statute to think that castle doctrine applies when it is not the person’s house – the language about reasonable belief in the law is about the perceived circumstances giving rise to the defendant’s conduct – I assume when the law was written it was assumed that people know where they live.
Generally, “wrong house” situations tend to come up in the opposite circumstances – some drunk person mistakenly trying to enter the wrong house or apartment, and the occupant shooting the perceived intruder.
I don’t think anyone is going to ever apply castle doctrine in a situation where it benefits the intruder over the real-world occupant – because the whole idea stems from the concept that we each have the right to be left alone and undisturbed in our own homes. So the point of that law is to protect people like Botham Jean – who would have probably been within his rights to shoot some stranger mistakenly opening his apartment door. Though Amber Guyger’s police uniform would have been a complicating factor in that scenario – if a uniformed cop burst came through my front door right now, I probably wouldn’t think I was being burglarized – but then again, I should have the right to assume I’m not about to get shot.
That’s what I’m saying. The jury could have rejected the defense because they decided that Guyger didn’t, in fact, believe she was in her own home.
Or the jury could have rejected the defense for the same reason I’d reject it: they believed that she thought she was in her own home, but they did not think that Jean threatened her, and therefore she would not have had the right under the castle doctrine to shoot him.
“Despite the strong assertions from some that her story was not remotely believable, it’s the story she maintained from minute 1. No one has proposed any other credible motive.”
I think that given the evidence that dozens of others in her building had accidentally parked on the wrong floor and went so far as to put their key to the lockplate, the jury likely DID believe she thought she was hearing an intruder in her own apartment, especially because the faulty latch caused the door to swing open. I think they found that she still had no right to go in gun drawn.
That’s what I was actually trying to say, even though I didn’t say that. Not that she was advocating it, but that she wouldn’t be allowing it if she didn’t believe that there was, as you said so much better than I did, that “there was some evidence introduced at trial that could conceivably support” it.
Clearly the jury agreed with the above. And really, it would open a can of worms in the future if they had bought the defense argument.
@maya54 said:
Exactly. And she didn’t. And a good, innocent, minding his own business man paid the ultimate price for that.
Heard parts of an interview with two jurors this morning who said they believed her when she said she thought she was in her own apartment and that this was a “mistake”. They said that impacted the sentence they gave her and that the max of 28 years would have been too long.
It is interesting to see the reactions to the younger brother and apparently the judge giving her a hug. Is it a display of forgiveness based (in this case) in their Christian faith or is it a sign of white privilege that would not have happened if the races of the victim and murderer were reversed?
I 100% believe the police offer thought the apartment was her apartment. Now, what she did, while thinking it was her apartment, is the problem. I disagree with someone here stating that she should have not entered the apartment when she heard someone inside; I mean, she’s a police officer! What I would have done is draw my gun and when I see a guy eating ice cream in what I think is my apartment, ask the guy “What the F*** are you doing in my apartment?” Then, the guy would have answered “What the F*** are you doing in MY apartment?” And then, there would have been no physical harm done. If I am a tenant in that building, I am ALWAYS locking my apartment door.
While what the police officer did was a grave error in judgment, many things, including bad decisions on her part, lined up to create this situation.
But suppose that she comes home to her own apartment and there is an intruder who is in fact a bad guy. She draws her gun, opens the door, and the bad guy, who heard her coming, shoots her. This is the scenario we want to avoid. (And we’d like to avoid her shooting the bad guy, too, if possible.) If she calls for backup, and then the police bang on the door and say, come out with your hands up, then shooting can be avoided. And if they
De-escalation should be the choice, if possible.
As to the folks who insist “I would NEVER mistake his apartment for mine. There was a red rug in front of it!”
I live in a neighborhood of single family homes. My part of the neighborhood consists of fairly large homes squeezed together on small lots (zero lot lines) that back to a golf course. The houses are all of a similar era: Tudors, English cottages, stone country French. NONE are identical. They have different wood trim, different paint colors, different stone and brick. Yet all four of us in our family have driven up to the wrong house before realizing we are at the wrong one. D2 once got annoyed that her garage door opener wasn’t working, only to have the owner of that house drive up while she was repeatedly pressing the remote. That house has dark brown garage doors and is a Tudor style home, while our house is a Stone English home with light tan garage doors. But they are situated identically on the lot, with the garage doors in the exact same configuration, and the houses are “sort of similar.” People often ring our doorbell, thinking they are at their friend’s house, only to be told by me that they are a few houses away from their friends’ place.
I am skeptical of people who insist they can’t make mistakes when tired and distracted, especially given the description of this apartment complex and the testimony showing that many people had made the same mistake as Amber (of course minus the killing).
I admit when I had a new white TOYOTA Van, I tried to open the can of other people several times and they tried to open mine. They look so similar and were in the same parking lot. Whoops! Glad none of us ever got upset over it.
The vans weren’t identical—just white and TOYOTA and all newer models. Tiredness dies certainly play a role in foggy actions and decisions.
Re: #134
With cars, going up to the wrong car is somewhat more possible, since other cars may be the same make/model/color within the year range of that design. Of course, this is more applicable to common cars (e.g. a silver Toyota Prius).
Back before RFID chips were put in keys as a theft resistance measure, there were even incidents of people driving away the wrong car, because many car keys had relatively few possible key cut combinations.
Houses may be more similar in newer neighborhoods before there has been much repainting or exterior modification, or where there is an HOA with restrictive rules about paint colors and exterior modifications. An apartment block would be more similar to such a neighborhood than an older non-HOA neighborhood in terms of similarity between apartments.
@ucbalumnus , I kid you not that I saw 5 silver Prius’s parked in a row in a strip mall parking lot in Phoenix, one was my mother’s. I had to beep the car to figure which was hers as I didn’t know her license plate. I’m still not convinced I wouldn’t know my own home or apartment.
Regarding the 10-years sentence: Guyger’s crime is a tragedy that she could have taken steps to avoid, but…
28 years would have been an excessive penalty. Criminal sentences in this country are too long. We will never be successful at reforming convicted persons with our current criminal justices standards. Criminals need to be adequately punished for severe crimes, but as a parole officer and judge once told us at a public forum, most convicted persons will eventually be released. Do we want retribution or do we want a fruitful re-integration into society wherein a convict will be less likely to re-offend? Once again, the Europeans handle a problem better than we. Sentences for similar crimes in Germany and Scandinavia are not as lengthy as ours are. The recidivism rate in those nations are relatively low.
Guyger’s sentence strikes me as about right.
While not remotely similar to walking into the wrong apartment and shooting someone I had a friend in a similar situation. We were at a wedding and after the reception a family member hosted an after party in their Park Ave. condo. My friend took off his suit coat and placed it with others and after a while his wife got chilled and asked to wear his jacket. He retrieved it and gave it to her. About an hour later she felt something in a pocket and reached in to pull it out, it was a bra and it was not hers.
Earlier at the reception my friend and I had stepped out to get some fresh air and a drink at the bar and were gone for guite a while. When his wife found the bra she assumed he had been with another woman earlier and reacted as such. They had a big fight, ended up getting another, separate hotel room for my friend, and she switched flights home the next day, resulted in a divorce. Obviously this was not the first issue in the marriage.
At the brunch in the morning (which neither of them attended) one of the bridesmaids came in and asked if anyone had grabbed the wrong suit coat the night before, her husband got home and realized he had the wrong one (and she was missing her bra).
We had someone mistakenly enter our apartment while in college, so I know it happens.
I’ve also come home at night to find my door ajar and have had the kids wait in the car while I checked out the house and figured out what was going on. I did not immediately jump to the conclusion that someone was about to kill me and I needed to be ready to kill. I was more in investigative mode… Hmm? Did I leave the door unlocked? Did it blow open? Does anything else seem awry? I slowly walked in the door, looking around, checking things out.
I think these kinds of things actually happen fairly often without resulting in violence, and that’s why I’m having trouble believing AG’s story.
If she had been drunk or high when this happened, I’d find the story more believable. But it’s hard for me to believe that a trained police officer not only missed so many cues, but responded so contrary to her training both during the murder and immediately after (the failure to render aid, the extremely odd 911 call, and the texts to affair partner) simply because she was tired…
I do not have any ideas as to what actually happened or what her motive could have been, but it would require suspension of disbelief for me to buy her story.
Just explaining why some don’t find it believable. It’s not that we don’t believe people make mistakes; it’s that the story just does not make any sense at all.