<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A little over a year ago, a tragic shooting occurred in Dallas, Texas. I wrote about it at the time<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s human nature to, when an innocent\nperson is killed, assume a victim and a villain. In this case, I think I can safely say, we\nhave two victims. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I can sympathize with and grieve for the dead young man, Botham Jean. I\u2019ve been \u201con his side of the doorway,<\/a>\u201d so to speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I\u2019ve also been on Amber Guyger\u2019s side of the doorway<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The case went to trial last week, and\nwent to verdict early this week. \nFormer-officer Guyger was convicted of murder, and sentenced to ten\nyears in prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the risk of oversimplification,\n\u201cmurder\u201d is the criminal killing of a human being, generally with malice (evil\nintent). A lesser offense is\n\u201cmanslaughter,\u201d which implies the reckless killing of someone you didn\u2019t intend\nto slay. On the other side of the scales\nof justice is \u201cjustifiable homicide,\u201d which basically means you were right to\nkill the deceased. But there is also the\nlesser-known \u201cexcusable homicide,\u201d which essentially says, \u201cIn the bright light\nof 20\/20 hindsight, you shouldn\u2019t have killed him, but within the totality\nof unusual circumstances, any reasonable and prudent person might have made the\nsame mistake, and therefore the killer should be held harmless.\u201d<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Watching the defendant\u2019s\ncross-examination last week, I cringed when I saw what I knew would be a\nturning point in the trial. One source quoted the brief exchange that seems to have hurt\nGuyger\u2019s case the worst:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “\u2019When you aimed\nand pulled the trigger at Mr. Jean, shooting him in center mass exactly where\nyou are trained, you intended to kill Mr. Jean,\u2019 (prosecutor) Hermus said. \u2018I\ndid,\u2019 Guyger said.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under Texas law, a finding\nof intent to kill is essential to a murder verdict. In a self-defense shooting, our purpose is to\nshoot to STOP, that is, to stop the opponent from killing or crippling us. \u201cShoot to stop,\u201d as I\u2019ve preached for\ndecades, is not a figure of speech from the lexicon of political correctness;\n\u201cshoot to kill\u201d versus \u201cshoot to stop\u201d goes to the heart of state of mind. State of mind, in turn, is what makes or\nbreaks a self-defense plea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the leading experts on deadly force law today is attorney Andrew Branca, author of \u201cLaw of Self Defense.\u201d While the trial was going on, he made an excellent point on a great strength for the defense, the fact that the Texas Ranger who led the investigation determined that within the cookie-cutter architecture of the building where Jean and Guyger each resided, a huge number of other residents had also mistakenly gone to a wrong apartment thinking it was their own. Branca reasoned<\/a> \u2013 correctly, I think \u2013 that this showed that any reasonable and prudent person under the circumstances in question might have thought they were in their own apartment when they entered the not-fully-closed door in question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cshot to kill\u201d thing may,\nironically, have been itself the death wound to her self-defense plea. Injudicious remarks and postings of macho\npolice memes on her social media, presented during the sentencing phase, didn\u2019t\nhelp her any either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Please read the links \u2013 the comments\nattached to each will be instructive, too \u2013 and feel free to share your\nopinions here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note that a lot of the early\ncommentary was off base. Many thought that the death might have been the result\nof a lover\u2019s spat between Jean and Guyger; it turns out they didn\u2019t even know\neach other. Reporters at the time made\nmuch of her not noticing vases of flowers and a red doormat at Jean\u2019s\napartment; it turns out that those reporters saw memorial flowers left in\nBotham Jean\u2019s memory after the shooting. \nAnd, ask yourself, how often you look down at your feet or the floor as\nyou walk down a hall to the door of a hotel room or apartment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some other elements were in play, too,\nbut I\u2019m out of space here so we\u2019ll look at that next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A little over a year ago, a tragic shooting occurred in Dallas, Texas. I wrote about it at the time. It\u2019s human nature to, when an innocent person is killed, assume a victim and a villain. In this case, I think I can safely say, we have two victims. I can sympathize with and grieve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5999"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6001,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5999\/revisions\/6001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}