Not today. Court is done for today.
State rested its case. Defense presents tomorrow, and they're going to work on Saturday as well.
All they need is one juror to sympathize with her sob story about being overworked. Unfortunately, I don't think this jury will come to an unanimous decision.Basically this. Common sense says their is no way this isn't an open and shut case regardless of who the race of the people are. Unless your inebriated its no excuse for you not to see that's not your spot before shooting someone.
I haven't made a secret of my position that this case is definitely murder and that the supposed defenses Guyger is putting forward shouldn't even have been mentioned to the jury. Being mistaken as to whose house you're standing in is, in my conception of the universe, per se unreasonable. That is to say, I would be in favor of a bright-line rule that says unlawfully entering the home of another person is unreasonable as a matter of law and that all mistakes flowing from that first mistake are similarly unreasonable.
But I am not on the bench, and if I had been called for that venire, I would never have been seated on the jury. So it's just like, my opinion, man.
My question for those of you who disagree is: how many mistakes of fact does she get to string together before the accumulation of mistakes becomes one giant, steaming pile of unreasonable?
Wrong floor
Wrong apartment
Didn't see that door mat
Why is this door open?
For me, those 4 are already stretching her theory too far, but it gets so much worse when she tries to graft on a self defense claim to her mistake of fact claim. She now says she feared for her life, but Jean was armed only with ice cream, and he was literally a choir boy. He was an accountant whose hobby was singing in church. So where does that fear for her life come from?
I suspect the real explanation is that, once she was mistaken about whose house she was in, she wasn't necessarily more scared than she was convinced that she was entitled to kill an intruder. If it'd been her house, then Texas law would be on her side, which is another great argument for my bright-line rule. If you're entitled to kill an intruder then you have to be perfectly certain of whose house you're in.
And it raises the question of what the law says about Jean's rights. If Jean had been armed with a gun instead of his ice cream and had killed Guyger, he likely wouldn't even have been referred to a grand jury. Texas law, in many ways, makes the rights of the resident vastly superior to the rights of the intruder. I am making an assumption here, but I don't think many of Guyger's supporters would be really chill about overturning the castle doctrine.
One other problem I have with Guyger's defense: reasonableness can be judged from the standpoint of the average person, but the jury is also entitled to judge Guyger as a person supposedly professionally trained in the reasonable use of deadly force. She's not the average person making an average mistake. She's supposed to be less trigger happy than this.
If all this sounds like I'm unsympathetic to Guyger, I don't mean it that way. I feel sure that she hates what happened and would undo it if she could. But I am unsympathetic to what I see as logical and legal gymnastics in her defense and in her supporters' statements.
All they need is one juror to sympathize with her sob story about being overworked. Unfortunately, I don't think this jury will come to an unanimous decision.
It could be any of them honestly. Except for maybe the asian since they don't like to ruffle feathers.Probably the 2 Whites.
It could be any of them honestly. Except for maybe the asian since they don't like to ruffle feathers.
All they need is one juror to sympathize with her sob story about being overworked. Unfortunately, I don't think this jury will come to an unanimous decision.
Not to be hard on them but I feel like the prosecution did a terrible job. I pray they manage to get her to slip up when she testifies otherwise she's gonna walk.To be totally honest..
I feel that the prosecution DIDNT do a great job...
Maybe because that didnt have much to work with...
IT HAS TO BE UNANIMOUS
WHETHER ITS GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY.
IF THEY ALL CANT AGREE
ITS A MISTRIAL AND WE DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN
WITH A NEW JURY.