It is impossible to believe that she was banging on what she thought was her own door, and then upon its opening she immediately shot Jean who somehow was 12-15 feet away (no blood near doorway, but shell casings found there). Carrying all that equipment and also presumably concentrating on finding and inserting her key, it is not hard to imagine that she could have missed the red half moon shaped doormat.
NYT implied that her tox screen had come back negative (“police official said Officer Guyger was not intoxicated at the time of the shooting”). The coroner will have run a tox screen on Jean, but we don’t know the results yet.
Going to the wrong door was obviously a tragic mistake. Sad story for sure, but the protesters are going to make relations between police and minorities even worse, which will lead to more minority deaths as police slow walk response time in certain neighborhoods.
@ucbalumnus: Not only do many favor legalization, but pot tends to mellow one out. Could, however, explain lack of response or slow response to alleged officer’s orders.
I don’t see evidence that this was anything other than a tragic accident. I can understand if there are manslaughter charges, but I don’t believe this was murder, and I certainly don’t think there was anything premeditated about it.
A charge of “murder” in Texas does not include “premeditation” as an element of the crime. (In Texas, a murder charge is the equivalent of second degree murder in many other jurisdictions. Texas calls “first degree murder” = “capital murder”–a charge which does include premeditation as an element of the crime.)
Police may already know definitively whether the door was in fact ajar. Highlights one reason why people shouldn’t be so quick to give credence to supposed witness accounts. There is generally no penalty for witnesses who either misremember or outright lie, as we saw in the Michael Brown case, regardless of the consequences in the arena of public opinion.
While I agree that much is unknown, it is clear that the doors shut automatically without any applied pressure & that the officer never mentioned in either of her differing versions that the door was propped open.
That in conjunction with 3 other witnesses who claim that the officer banged on the door yelling “Open up, let me in” & the fact that the officer placed her key in the lock, make an open door seem very unlikely. Especially because the officer had to put down her vest & lunchbox to attempt to open the apartment door.
At this point, the only faulty memory or “misremembering” appears to be on behalf of the officer who has changed her story.
@Publisher We can “scrub” or delete all we want. It just becomes hidden from the general public. It can often be revealed with a subpoena, or the help of a good hacker.
@Publisher - I wouldn’t read too much into the fact that the doors in the building closed “automatically.” Doors like that usually close as a result of a torqued return spring in the hinge mechanism (I have installed a few myself). The point of maximum potential (stored) energy in the spring will be when the door is wide open. When released, the conversion of stored into kinetic energy as the door swings shut is expressed as momentum in the door itself, which slams shut and allows the latch mechanism (which is also spring-loaded and requires force to overcome internal friction and stored energy in its spring) to engage.
If the door is, by contrast, gently closed, much of that torqued energy in the return spring is simply dissipated into the hand and arm of the person closing it. People can try it themselves on, for instance, fire-rated doors between garage and living spaces in many homes. Bottom line, if Jean wanted the door to be open (even without propping it open with an extended deadbolt), and even under accidental circumstances in which the door wasn’t allowed simply to swing shut from point of maximal stored energy, the door easily could have appeared closed but in fact have been open (the latch mechanism not engaged). Slight misalignments as well in the hanging of the door or the placement of the latching mechanisms could also create conditions where only firm door closings would engage the mechanism.
About witnesses, two of the earwitnesses were roommates and so were not independent accounts. I haven’t seen the third, but presumably the report emerged after media coverage. The DOJ report on the Michael Brown incident did a nice job showing many of the circumstances under which almost 30 (iirc) supposed eyewitnesses got it wrong.
How are the two roommates (sisters) in two different rooms not “independent accounts” ? Just because they reported hearing similar things ?
As for the apartment doors which close without additional pressure being applied (will not stay open unless propped open), there has been no indication whatsoever that the apartment door did not & does not operate properly–or we would have heard about it ad nauseum at this point.
The officer is relying on a reasonableness defense in an attempt to get off without being convicted. Her best chance is if the door was open & she was surprised by an intruder in what she “reasonably” believed was her apartment. Texas has a “castle law” which allows one to shoot & kill home intruders even though no threat is present.
Because they talked to each other before speaking with anyone else. Note that there needn’t have been anything nefarious. It could just have been some variation of:
“Did you hear that?”
“Yeah, sounded like a bang and I then I heard some people talking.”
“Well I was in the front room and it was definitely someone banging on a door, and I heard a woman’s voice.”
“Oh yeah, maybe, sure. But I was talking about the gunshot!”
"Yeah, I heard that of course, in fact I heard the voices immediately before the shot. And there were two shots "
And so on…
Again, read the DOJ report on the Brown shooting for multiple versions of similar scenarios.
I read in the news accounts that upon retelling the account to the police, one of the witnesses (perhaps both) was not consistent with the report announced by the attorney for the victim’s family.
I cannot recall for sure, but I believe the attorneys for the Brown family spread the lie of “Hands up, don’t shoot” in the media as well, but perhaps they were careful to let surrogates do it.
@TomSrOfBoston : Yes I know postings can be retrieved. The officer wanted it screened from the general public. (As she wants to protect her family & friends from any repercussions.)
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@Publisher - Nonsense, I have my opinions about the protesters’ blowing up every incident and making it about race, of course.
But as to this young man and the situation, I am just trying to make sense of what could have happened just like everyone else is. You can see my initial post on this thread, and all subsequent posts, and I don’t think anyone could reasonably think I was implying anything bad about Jean’s actions or his character.
Your implied belief that the officer somehow went to his door intentionally as a result of some noise complaint is becoming increasingly unlikely as the evidence comes in, in my opinion. In that belief, you apparently give great weight to self-serving statements of the victim family’s attorneys, while discounting the reported physical evidence of where the shots took place and where Jean was standing. And discounting common sense, I might add.
I initially assumed that this was some sort of struggle at the threshold of the door, after both occupants were startled (officer meeting someone she didn’t expect in an apartment she thought was hers, Jean opening the door to a fully uniformed cop trying to enter what he knew was his space). I surmised that Jean might have reasonably tried to avoid being shot by instinctively trying to redirect the gun. As the evidence came in, I changed my mind, and now on balance I believe that the door was likely ajar or at least the latch not fully engaged, and that she entered the darkened apartment, saw Jean and shot him from a distance.
I don’t think that is justified, as she had the ability to retreat easily. She certainly committed a homicide. Whether it is murder or manslaughter (maybe a heat of passion argument could be made) I’ll leave to the Texas attorneys. But I don’t ascribe any sort of moral intentionality or racism as so many do to her actions; I simply think she is relatively incompetent (hair trigger) and made a terrible mistake for which she is going to pay.
As more evidence comes in, I am of course willing to revise my thinking, but so far I think my scenario is more likely than yours. We’ll see as things unfold!
BTW, can you link to the report of what the third witness said? I can’t seem to find a reference.
I’ve been looking into the news stories to try to find the “third witness.” I suspect it may be some confusion arising out of this reporting (emphasis added):
However, as to the accounts by the two earwitnesses mentioned only by the attorney for Jean’s family so far as I can tell, see reporting here (emphasis added):
So, either the police are lying about what at least one of the earwitnesses reported or the story changed at some point after the incident and presumably before both earwitnesses spoke to the attorney for the victim’s family.
Also, if you read the second link above, it is pretty clear that the “Guyger changed her story” theme going around is way overblown, and probably a misrepresentation. The only change I can see is with respect to accounts on the search warrant versus the arrest affidavit. However, the search warrant was filled out within hours of the incident before Guyger was even interviewed and so really only tells us the quick impressions of the officers on the scene in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. It does not reflect either what Guyger said or the results of any investigation into the evidence (they couldn’t even look into the evidence prior to the search warrant’s being obtained).
Additionally, under Texas law, the reality of the outcome should be between a conviction for murder or no conviction.
In cases like this, defendants are normally charged with murder not manslaughter. The officer, it has been asserted in various news articles, has received preferential treatment by being charged with only manslaughter. Fortunately, a grand jury will have final say on the ultimate charge that the officer will face.
A manslaughter conviction could occur as a result of a plea bargain, or as a result of a jury trial if manslaughter remains the charge or, if charged with murder, the jury agrees only on convicting for the lesser included offense of manslaughter.
Most concerning, however, is the possibility that the officer could walk without being convicted under a “reasonableness” defense. Something that might prompt one to research the meaning of the word :irony" in a dictionary. After all, what is reasonable about the senseless killing of an innocent man in his own apartment ?
I want to make a distinction for @SatchelSF about race in this case.
I don’t think she shot him because he was black. I think how this investigation has unfolded (or not) is influenced by the fact that the victim was black and the shooter a white officer. So in that sense I absolutely think race is an issue in this case.