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9th September 2018, 03:12 PM | #321 |
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9th September 2018, 03:17 PM | #322 |
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9th September 2018, 03:17 PM | #323 |
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The scenario I have in mind is:
Tired woman off 12 hour shift mistakes her apartment door for some other. The door's unlocked, she walks in, the apartment is dim, a strange man is there (probably reacting very surprised, maybe coming towards her) and she freaks out and shoots him. I'm not saying that's how it went down, but that's one way it could have gone down, and I don't see manslaughter there. I definitely don't see murder. |
9th September 2018, 03:17 PM | #324 |
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9th September 2018, 03:18 PM | #325 |
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9th September 2018, 03:20 PM | #326 |
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She obviously talked initially and she has since been talking to the Texas Rangers. The Rangers said yesterday that the delay is because they are investigating some things that she told them about the incident. They won't say what those things are.
I don't know if things are different for the police union if the officer was off-duty. |
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9th September 2018, 03:20 PM | #327 |
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9th September 2018, 03:21 PM | #328 |
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9th September 2018, 03:22 PM | #329 |
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9th September 2018, 03:24 PM | #330 |
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9th September 2018, 03:26 PM | #331 |
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9th September 2018, 03:28 PM | #332 |
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9th September 2018, 03:28 PM | #333 |
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Not necessarily. While she fumbles with keys that don't work in a locked door, he hears the fumbling and heads for the door. She hears noises, draws her gun and when the door opens she thinks "bad guy in my house!" Bang! Not too different.
By your scenario, she would have opened the unlocked door and entered with gun drawn suspecting a burglar, without calling for backup and possibly without identifying herself (we don't know about that). Just as weird. |
9th September 2018, 03:28 PM | #334 |
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9th September 2018, 03:29 PM | #335 |
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9th September 2018, 03:30 PM | #336 |
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As has already been pointed out. We do not know yet how the door was opened.
If it opened for her, she may have walked into a dim room still under the impression that it was her own apartment and been startled by someone who could have been equally as startled and felt the need to react quickly. I am not claiming that is what happened- but at this point it is at least as equally likely than scenarios wherein she gunned down the occupant at his front door. |
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9th September 2018, 03:31 PM | #337 |
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9th September 2018, 03:31 PM | #338 |
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"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" -Mark Twain "Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all" -Rosencrantz, on Hamlet |
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9th September 2018, 03:32 PM | #339 |
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It's different in that she doesn't have to enter the apartment. As soon as she hears noises, she should pull out her gun and back away from the door. She would not be in reasonable fear for her life with a door between her and someone else AND carrying a gun.
Quote:
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9th September 2018, 03:35 PM | #340 |
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9th September 2018, 03:36 PM | #341 |
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Originally Posted by CNN
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9th September 2018, 03:37 PM | #342 |
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The man with one watch knows what time it is, the man with two watches is never sure. |
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9th September 2018, 03:37 PM | #343 |
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Depends on if you normally lock it or not. But this happened in Dallas, so I'm assuming she would lock her door. That would be a red flag, but not one that would necessarily make you run for the stairs. If she believed it's really her apartment, the fact the door is unlocked door might put her in a suspicious frame of mind. And anecdotally, I often forget to lock the front door when I'm in a rush. Finding it unlocked when I got home wouldn't mean much, but I don't live in an apartment and there's not much crime in my neighborhood.
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9th September 2018, 03:40 PM | #344 |
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"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" -Mark Twain "Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all" -Rosencrantz, on Hamlet |
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9th September 2018, 03:40 PM | #345 |
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9th September 2018, 03:43 PM | #346 |
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9th September 2018, 03:44 PM | #347 |
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9th September 2018, 03:49 PM | #348 |
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Does she have to claim that? Or is the burden on the state to prove that fear for her life wasn't her state of mind? After all, if she's presumed innocent, the state must prove the crime and in this case, that would mean proving she had a non-reasonable fear for her life.
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9th September 2018, 03:50 PM | #349 |
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9th September 2018, 03:50 PM | #350 |
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That's what I said. Unless she was being coy when she said she was at the wrong apartment but didn't finish the sentence with 'and he attacked me', it would be murder. Her state of mind is irrelevant to her intention, barring what a reasonable person would constitute as an imminent grave threat.
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"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" -Mark Twain "Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all" -Rosencrantz, on Hamlet |
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9th September 2018, 03:56 PM | #351 |
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"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" -Mark Twain "Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all" -Rosencrantz, on Hamlet |
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9th September 2018, 03:58 PM | #352 |
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9th September 2018, 04:01 PM | #353 |
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The man with one watch knows what time it is, the man with two watches is never sure. |
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9th September 2018, 04:03 PM | #354 |
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"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" -Mark Twain "Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all" -Rosencrantz, on Hamlet |
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9th September 2018, 04:06 PM | #355 |
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9th September 2018, 04:09 PM | #356 |
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It's not an overreaction if she legitimately feared for her life. It's tragic because she got the apartments mixed up, but forgetting which door is yours is not something you go to prison for. It's not a criminal act, in and of itself. It led to a chain of events that ended in a guy's death, but the initial act wasn't criminally negligent. I think that's important. She made an innocent mistake and things went from there. The key thing is that it was an innocent mistake.
In other words, she did a non-criminal thing that put her in a certain state of mind. Or that's what she'll probably argue. And if it went down like in my scenario, I think she'll win that argument. |
9th September 2018, 04:19 PM | #357 |
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At the very least she should be ditched from the cops and banned from owning a gun for a very long time
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9th September 2018, 04:20 PM | #358 |
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"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" -Mark Twain "Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all" -Rosencrantz, on Hamlet |
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9th September 2018, 04:26 PM | #359 |
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The standard for justifying self-defense is what a reasonable person would interpret as being an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. Unless she is hiding those four magic words, 'and he attacked me', the wrong apartment thing doesn't matter. Her fears, prejudices, tendency to 'freak out', simply don't matter.
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"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" -Mark Twain "Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all" -Rosencrantz, on Hamlet |
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9th September 2018, 04:26 PM | #360 |
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