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I rent UHaul trucks to my customers. UHaul of course buys boatloads of Ford and GM truck chassis. When I give the customer the key they ask me "which truck?" I used to tease them "whichever one the key fits!" before pointing it out wherever it is parked. Until one day, one of the customers went out, walked past the truck I pointed out to another one, fired it up, and drove away. Had to go back and change the contract which was a nuisance. Now I don't say that anymore.

K.Mooneyham wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:28 pm

I still find it absolutely weird that about 1/7th of the residents who were asked if they had gone to the wrong apartment said they had.

I don't.

WildBill wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 3:01 pm

ELB wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 1:11 pm

WildBill wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:00 pm ...
If he didn't have any arrests I don't think they would know.

I Bing'ed his name for Texas arrests, turns out "Joshua Brown" is a VERY popular name under which to be arrested. Too many for me to sort through.

I don't know the laws in Texas, but usually the attorney can impeach a witness if they are a felon.

That's what I was thinking. At the very least I would think the defense would want to get before the jury the fact that the witness is a drug dealer (and presumably not a fan of police) for when the jury is evaluating his credibility.

WildBill wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:00 pm ...
If he didn't have any arrests I don't think they would know.

I Bing'ed his name for Texas arrests, turns out "Joshua Brown" is a VERY popular name under which to be arrested. Too many for me to sort through.

Paladin wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 10:26 am ...
That's a really long way to go to buy drugs. From what WFAA says the 3 drove over 300 miles from Louisiana to steal drugs from Brown.

Perhaps because they had done business with him in the past and thought he had a lot of drugs to steal?

Interesting.

Did the prosecution know their witness against a police officer was a drug dealer? Did the defense lawyers know?

I wonder if this will work its way into the appeals.

She was convicted of the same offense - first degree murder - that Gerald Goines (of "botched raid" infamy) is facing in Houston.

Grayling813 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 30, 2019 5:56 pm

ELB wrote: ↑Mon Sep 30, 2019 3:15 pm I haven't been able to follow the trial in detail, but I just went through some news stories, and … whatever happened to the neighbors who claimed that Guyger pounded on the door and called Botham Jean by name? That featured in more than one story (and I believe in this thread too?), yet the only testimony from neighbors I found were two women whose first inkling something was not right was hearing two loud sounds that took them a moment to identify as gunshots. At least one of them explicitly testified that she did not hear anyone shouting/pounding before the gun shots.

Also found this:

Jurors on Tuesday and Wednesday heard from Texas Ranger David Armstrong, who led the investigation into the shooting. Armstrong testified that his team interviewed 297 of the 349 residents of South Side Flats.

He said 46 of them told investigators they had walked to the wrong floor and put their key in someone else’s door, according to The Dallas Morning News.

I think she screwed up, and she should be accountable for that, but...manslaughter, not murder.

And none of them shot the other tenant.

And if they had,…mistake of fact, manslaughter.

I haven't been able to follow the trial in detail, but I just went through some news stories, and … whatever happened to the neighbors who claimed that Guyger pounded on the door and called Botham Jean by name? That featured in more than one story (and I believe in this thread too?), yet the only testimony from neighbors I found were two women whose first inkling something was not right was hearing two loud sounds that took them a moment to identify as gunshots. At least one of them explicitly testified that she did not hear anyone shouting/pounding before the gun shots.

Also found this:

Jurors on Tuesday and Wednesday heard from Texas Ranger David Armstrong, who led the investigation into the shooting. Armstrong testified that his team interviewed 297 of the 349 residents of South Side Flats.

He said 46 of them told investigators they had walked to the wrong floor and put their key in someone else’s door, according to The Dallas Morning News.

I think she screwed up, and she should be accountable for that, but...manslaughter, not murder.

As far as I know every police officer - and every good student of self-defense - is taught to shoot to stop a threat, not to shoot to kill. Thus there is no intention to cause death even though that is a possible outcome of using deadly force. I would guess her academy training and her in-service training was oriented to shoot-to-stop. There should be training records on this.

Note that while on duty she previously had shot a suspect who survived, and took him into custody. In other words, a shoot-to-stop.

Thus the prosecution will have to show that she not only intended to stop what she perceived to be a threat, but she actually intended to kill him, that death was the desired outcome.

Now if she posted on various gun forums that she personally equated firing a handgun in self-defense to be the equivalent of intending to kill someone, that shooting someone will cause death (versus death being a side effect of stopping a threat), and the DA finds these posts, then that could go a long way towards showing intent to kill. Recall that Charles Cotton once pointed out that those who equate any unintended discharge with a negligent discharge have effectively set a higher bar for their own defense If they are ever prosecuted for an unintended discharge... and their forum posts come to light. I would bet a similar effect would be in play here.

Soccerdad1995 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 10, 2018 5:22 pm

ELB wrote: ↑Wed Oct 10, 2018 3:55 pm There were two people involved in a shooting with no witnesses their interaction other than the survivor. In figuring out what happened every type of evidence about both actors is relevant until investigators examine it and determine it is not. Deciding which kind of evidence is not relevant in advance because you’ve already prejudged who the is the victims and who is the perpetrator is laying the tracks of a railroad, not to mention putting a hole in the case big enough for a defense attorney to drive an acquittal through.

With any luck, the Texas rangers are calm and professional enough to consider everything, and then rule in or out as the evidence directs.

I understand, but surely there are limits here? For example, when we have a case where someone ambushes a police officer and kills them, is it common to execute a search warrant at the dead officer's home, and then publicly release information about anything illicit that may have been found there? If so, then by all means the police should do the same thing here. But I did not think that was standard procedure.

Was the police officer ambushed in his home? I would expect it to be searched, sure. ETA: and if the searched turned up evidence of drug use, he (or his heirs) could certainly expect his whole life to be examined for all kinds of relationships.

This police officer in this incident had her home searched too, albeit by consent rather than warrant, which seems to keep getting overlooked.

There were two people involved in a shooting with no witnesses their interaction other than the survivor. In figuring out what happened every type of evidence about both actors is relevant until investigators examine it and determine it is not. Deciding which kind of evidence is not relevant in advance because you’ve already prejudged who the is the victims and who is the perpetrator is laying the tracks of a railroad, not to mention putting a hole in the case big enough for a defense attorney to drive an acquittal through.

With any luck, the Texas rangers are calm and professional enough to consider everything, and then rule in or out as the evidence directs.

On 9/11 the DA got a warrant to seize the locks on both Guyger's and Jean's doors. The keys have RFID chips in them that operate the locks, and the locks have internal data perhaps showing when and how they were opened (e.g. by key from outside, from the inside, was door shut or not, etc). Also data being collected from elevators. Story doesn't say so, but perhaps the elevator requires a resident's key to be used.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2 ... s-da-hopes

I can personally vouch for how the timelines of actual events can get jumbled in the memory.

There are a lot of people who have no business being on a jury.

Killadocg23 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 12, 2018 9:25 am Being tired from working a 14hr shift is no excuse. How many thousands of people work 14hr shifts everyday and don’t go to the wrong apartment and shoot somebody in their OWN apartment. Just wow.

Not an excuse, and jury still out on what exactly happened here, but fatigue is not a trivial factor either. The military and commercial air services came to grips with this a long time ago because when a pilot makes a fatigue-induced error that kills, it's immediate, spectacular, and takes a lot of people and $$$ with him. Hence flying hour restrictions are in place. The commercial trucking industry has sleep/drive restrictions. It appears to me the work shifts for doctors in training and in ERs are often pretty brutal, actually, and it's been accepted for a long time that it's part of being a doctor in those circumstances. Coincidentally perhaps, there seem to be a high rate of errors in hospitals. But the results of erroneous medicine happen to individual patients, one at a time, and are not always fatal,, and thus are handled individually. So short of cutting off the wrong leg they don't make a newspaper headline like crashing an airliner does.

Cops would seem to be in a similar situation as doctors -- long shifts, sometimes double shifts, probably most fatigue-induced errors are small and not very noticeable to the public at large. Applying duty hour restrictions to cops (and medical personnel) will drive up costs substantially, so I don't see anyone making a push for this any time soon.

Jusme wrote: ↑Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:38 am
... Coming into, what she thought was home, and someone suddenly appearing, probably gave her tunnel vision, and she drew and fired, more as a reflex, that anything else. … suddenly being approached by someone in her "home" might cause her reaction. ...

Based on available info so far, this.^^^^ Shocked/scared, didn't notice furniture, decorations, paint scheme, just apparent "threat."