TX - Former Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger, indicted for Murder of Botham Shem Jean #5

[TristanP]

That is a tired old claim that is false and about 40 years outdated.

I bet Laquan McDonald’s family and many residents of the city of Chicago would disagree with your opinion. PD lied, lied, and lied some more until they were finally forced to reveal the truth.

 

[mickey2942]

I wonder how many of AG's colleagues actually think and believe that she was totally in the "right" on this, and how many think that she is a total airhead, ditzy blonde, and glad she is off the department.

I bet not one would admit that what she did was wrong, and completely stupid. And of course, Mr. Texas Ranger wanted to testify that AG was completely justified in her actions.?

Glad Judge Tammy shut that down.

 

[Gardenista]

I bet I know what she's going to say:

"I didn't see the red mat. I was focused on getting home after a long day. I had saved so many lives. Protected so many people from bad guys. I put my key in and it fit. But something was weird about it. The key didn't turn but the door was unlocked. And I smelled the devil's weed!! That put me on instant alert! I believed a burglar had possibly broken in! So I cautiously entered, not sure d he was there or not. When I opened the door I yelled: "Police! Show yourself!" It was sort of dim and but I suddenly saw a figure of a man. So I yelled, "Police! Freeze! Show me your hands!" But he ignored my direct and clear commands. Then he began rushing toward me in the dimness with his hand raised! I had no choice! I was in such fear for my life! So I shot him!!

When I discovered it wasn't my home I was horrified! I immediately called 911 and checked to see if he was alive. I checked for a pulse. Looked for the bullet hole. Tried to make sure his head was elevated. I prayed of course, that God would save him.

But he died. I will never be able to live with what I've done. My sadness for his family is endless. I'm sooooo sorry. It was a terrible accident. If he had only just obeyed my clear commands he would still be here today! But he was probably so stoned he couldn't think straight..."

That's pretty much what she already said.

 

[10ofRods]

That is a tired old claim that is false and about 40 years outdated.

Perhaps it varies by region/jurisdiction? I was surprised to see the claim here, mostly because where I work, police are pretty keen on internal investigations (and in fact, they hire people like me to go in and assess police culture from time to time, when they think something is rotten in Denmark). I’ve interviewed many a LEO who has openly broken that code.

However, there have been some stations that were pretty...antiquated. BTW, my statement was an attempt to rephrase what a lot of WSers were saying, and I believe they were pointing at Dallas and gave some facts to support their views.

 

[gitana1]

That is a tired old claim that is false and about 40 years outdated.

You're our expert so we are going to rely on your statements but there are a lot of articles and witness accounts that it exists and still occurs. I don't know how true it is, but:

1. "The blue wall of silence is different.
It refers to the unofficial oath of silence within departments. Cops don’t rat on cops. That blue wall is one of many factors that further pushes the widening divide between the world as seen by law enforcement and the world experienced by the citizens whom officers are sworn to protect.
For my entire FBI career, I was dedicated to protecting that blue wall. But when I testified last year against Roy Oliver, the officer who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in the shooting death of black teen Jordan Edwards, I was reminded of why I decided to leave my loyalty to that wall behind."​

Why an ex-FBI agent decided to break through the blue wall of silence

2. Some of its officers ran into legal trouble in the wake of Hurricane Katrina: Some ultimately pleaded guilty to charges in the shooting of six people, and the Justice Department charged others with covering it up. Hundreds simply deserted the force during the 2005 storm. An officer killed an unarmed man during a raid in 2012. The department was placed under a federal consent decree that year, and public trust in the New Orleans police hit rock bottom. Its commanders were looking for a way out.

They needed to change their culture, said former New Orleans superintendent Michael S. Harrison, who will take the top police job in Baltimore next month. “The culture of policing was the ‘blue wall of silence,’ keeping secrets even when people do things wrong,” Harrison said. “That’s an old culture.” When police misconduct becomes public, Harrison said, “we get black eyes. It takes us years to recover from that. Sometimes you never get the citizens' trust back.”
So the New Orleans police devised EPIC — “Ethical Policing Is Courageous.” New Orleans created an expectation that officers should step in when a colleague is misbehaving — assaulting a citizen, lying on a report, planting evidence — and stop the bad acts before they happen or else report them.

The Baltimore Police Department has struggled with its own internal wall of silence, most notoriously in a federal investigation of the department’s gun task force, which was accused of planting evidence and covering up its own misdeeds. Two detectives were convicted of robbery and racketeering and six officers pleaded guilty to charges including robbery and obstruction of justice. Harrison said in an interview that he was not closely familiar with that case but would address internal corruption when he arrived in Baltimore.

Other cities have noticed the impact of EPIC and are taking steps to adopt the program and take down their own blue walls, including Honolulu; Albuquerque; Baton Rouge; and St. Paul, Minn., Noel said.​

https://www.washingtonpost.com/crim...way-stop-misconduct-remove-blue-wall-silence/

And then there's just narratives about LE lying and creating false evidence in general which is super disconcerting. Espeically for those of us who back LE:

3. The New York Times published an article yesterday that documents the persistence of lies told by police to gain a conviction. Through their investigation, the Times discovered that in more than 25 instances since 2015, judges or prosecutors concluded that a New York City police officer likely presented false testimony. Such cases—most of which are sealed—were identified through interviews with lawyers, police officers and current or former judges.
The Times’ article highlights the common lies about which police testify, including: saying they saw a gun in a suspect’s hand or waistband when it was actually out of view; saying they witnessed an arrest for which they were not actually present; claiming they watched a drug deal occur, only to later recant or be proven to have lied. In two recent cases, officers appeared to have given false statements about eyewitness testimony. “These cases,” says the Times, “are particularly troubling because erroneous identifications by witnesses have been a leading cause of wrongful convictions.”​

The Prevalence of Lying by Police is a Problem for the Innocent

4. Lying is apparently a big enough problem that some jurisdictions are creating do not call lists: These Prosecutors Are Refusing Hundreds of Cases from Blacklisted Cops


You still hear about it happening a lot:

5. "Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, wrote an article in The San Francisco Chronicle decrying a police culture that treats lying as the norm: “Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America.”
The New York City Police Department is not exempt from this critique. In 2011, hundreds of drug cases were dismissed after several police officers were accused of mishandling evidence. That year, Justice Gustin L. Reichbach of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn condemned a widespread culture of lying and corruption in the department’s drug enforcement units. “I thought I was not naïve,” he said when announcing a guilty verdict involving a police detective who had planted crack cocaine on a pair of suspects. “But even this court was shocked, not only by the seeming pervasive scope of misconduct but even more distressingly by the seeming casualness by which such conduct is employed.”

Remarkably, New York City officers have been found to engage in patterns of deceit in cases involving charges as minor as trespass. In September it was reported that the Bronx district attorney’s office was so alarmed by police lying that it decided to stop prosecuting people who were stopped and arrested for trespassing at public housing projects, unless prosecutors first interviewed the arresting officer to ensure the arrest was actually warranted. Jeannette Rucker, the chief of arraignments for the Bronx district attorney, explained in a letter that it had become apparent that the police were arresting people even when there was convincing evidence that they were innocent. To justify the arrests, Ms. Rucker claimed, police officers provided false written statements, and in depositions, the arresting officers gave false testimony.​

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/why-police-officers-lie-under-oath.html

 

[HongKongPhooey]

Agree with the above.
No, she should pay reparation to the family, although they will likely go after the PD as well. If they can prove the Officer was not handled correctly after her first shooting incident, they may have something, IMO. Time will tell.

Amateur opinion and speculation

Does it cost a lot of money for people to bring a civil claim in the US? If it does, the family may not be able to pursue it. I find it sad that this even enters the equation. The law should take care of justice, not civil action. We don't have so much of that over here tho, so it's hard to get my head round it

 

[Rocco]

Does it cost a lot of money for people to bring a civil claim in the US? If it does, the family may not be able to pursue it. I find it sad that this even enters the equation. The law should take care of justice, not civil action. We don't have so much of that over here tho, so it's hard to get my head round it

If I'm not mistaken, most of the time the cases are taken on a contingency fee basis. You only pay a percent of what is awarded if the attorney wins the case. If they lose, you pay nothing. It's a hefty percent, from what I understand---like around 40%.

 

[ReadyorNot]

In her defense on that shooting, the suspect took her taser.

I don't know if I believe that. She claims he took it, he said he did not... and that resulted in a plea with just a 2-year sentence so take that for what its worth.

 

[MsFacetious]

I don't know if I believe that. She claims he took it, he said he did not... and that resulted in a plea with just a 2-year sentence so take that for what its worth.

It's a shame she never seems to have a body cam on during these incidents...

 

[ReadyorNot]

This is very true. And if someone actually believes in ethics, telling the truth, and breaks the "Blue Wall", that person is obviously "NOT" part of the "TEAM", and eventually is bullied until they quit.

So, honest officers have to go along or lose their entire career, pension, and everything else.

I have to give credit to Officer Nguyen... Admitting that he moved those slippers is BIG.

 

[Isabelle]

I am hoping the prosecution will ask AG if she attempted to render aid to the victim.

 

[CrimeDawg123]

There was talk yesterday with the WFAA commentators that AG is probably going to be the first witness this morning and that it is very possible that they will continue with defense witnesses tomorrow, Saturday. If I were a sequestered juror, I'd definitely want to keep working on Saturday. It must be awful to be a juror on this case.

 

[iluvmua]

Of course I would not be surprised if they find her guilty of murder.

If they follow the law, then they should not

 

[mickey2942]

I am hoping the prosecution will ask AG if she attempted to render aid to the victim.

While simultaneously texting and worrying about losing her job. It wasn't until the other officers arrived that one asked for a towel to use as a pressure bandage.

I noticed that AG didn't have a drop of blood on her, when she was talking on her phone in the hallway after the incident.

One question, did the testimony of Botham Jean's neighbor, who admitted that he had also been lost in the apartment complex hurt the case for the prosecution? That is pretty huge to me.

Next up, Southside Flats paints every floor a different fluorescent color. Floor three: neon orange, floor four: blazing green.

 

[Longtime_lurker2019]

Of course I would not be surprised if they find her guilty of murder.

If they follow the law, then they should not

Can you explain how you arrived at that conclusion?

 

[CrimeDawg123]

Of course I would not be surprised if they find her guilty of murder.

If they follow the law, then they should not

I disagree with you. I think the law shows she is guilty of murder because she clearly acted with intent to kill him (the definition of murder in Texas) and that her actions were not reasonable.

However, I am guessing the bias of one or more jury members with respect to police officers will result in a hung jury, and that this will never be resolved. This case goes to the core of the conflict we have in this country. There are some people who believe a police officer should be absolved of wrong-doing because they have chosen to serve.

Would you agree that had she not been a police officer, she'd be found guilty? In fact I think she'd be in jail as we speak having never seen the light of day after the incident. There are two standards - one for LE, the other for the rest of us.

 

[ilovewings]

i just watched a snippet of the opening statement of the defense (on Court TV)- the attorney said that Bo was coming at her and he was menacing and he was shouting
"hey hey"--- and he's twice her size (these are words from the def attorney to the jury)

do you believe that, because I don't believe it for a second- I don't think Bo had time to shout anything and the testimony from the medical examiner's testimony seems to refute the defense's contention that he was coming at her and at that point she shot him. The trajectory of the bullet as demonstrated by the ME and prosecutor seems to suggest
otherwise.

Thoughts?

 

[CrimeDawg123]

i just watched a snippet of the opening statement of the defense (on Court TV)- the attorney said that Bo was coming at her and he was menacing and he was shouting
"hey hey"--- and he's twice her size (these are words from the def attorney to the jury)

do you believe that, because I don't believe it for a second- I don't think Bo had time to shout anything and the testimony from the medical examiner's testimony seems to refute the defense's contention that he was coming at her and at that point she shot him. The trajectory of the bullet as demonstrated by the ME and prosecutor seems to suggest
otherwise.

Thoughts?

No I don't believe it. I doubt he had time to do more than say "Hey hey WTF" type of thing. The evidence doesn't support that he was going towards her. It seems most he did was stand up.

But even if he go towards her in a menacing, shouting way, he had every *advertiser censored* right to do that. He had the right to protect himself from this crazy, armed intruder.

 

[BeachSky]

Defense opening
“he leans down as he approaches her”

pfttttt.......
The fact that he fell (flat) backward cancels that out! MOO

 

[Via Marple]

Yeah, same. Born & raised in Dallas, work and live here too....so not right across the street, MY BAD, but off the same street just 4 min. walking distance!! And just stating, for the victim to have door unlocked maybe he felt somewhat safe because of the police station being only 4 min away from him??!!

Finding this 4 min walk rather surprising, since she was on the phone for 16 between leaving work and arriving at the garage. The car trip must have been really slow.

No, I don't think she feared for her life. I think she was in an angry mood, in part related to the convo she had just had with her 'partner'. She knows the law and the Castile Doctrine, so she knew she could shoot him if he was in 'her' apt., so she did. No duty to retreat, so she didn't. She didn't fear for her life---she shot him out of anger because she perceived him as someone who had the nerve to break into 'her' apt---- she was a cop with a gun and she didn't have to tolerate that.

Oops---wrong apt.

My impression based on the evidence so far, is very similar.

After the oops, I also suspect her emotional state was not remorse, but fear... For herself and the consequences. Perhaps she didn't think she was such a good shooter.

We know she went into his apartment and killed him. Those are undisputed facts. The question is why? Her explanation is unreasonable and defies all logic and common sense.So absent any mental defect or influence of mind altering substances, there's only one thing left. INTENT! She intended to do it. The circumstances prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

There's no way to go inside a person's head and see what their intent is. So we have to rely on the circumstances.

BBM
No mental assessment after the incident, and just basic toxicology testing, I guess.

I am surprised that there has been no CCTV evidence presented at all. Surely a new block like that must have cameras installed. In downtown Dallas too, like a few of you have pointed out it is not a safe area.

Did the investigators really do such a thorough job? What the prosecutor has presented so far, have been pretty much public knowledge. Not much investigation needed to get them.

I expect there will be a lot of crocodile tears and and an Oscar worthy performance of remorse from her on the stand. She has to make up for not rendering aid and for texting while he laid there bleeding to death.

She will have to. She'll be begging for her freedom basically.