"all that is required is that a person reasonably believes his or her life is threatened."You guys are hung up on bad semantics here. Brad's statement "all that is required is that a person reasonably believes" is incomplete. It should read "all that is required is that a person reasonably believes his or her life is threatened." Whether or not you reasonably believed it was your place is just an aspect of the total circumstances which a jury will use to answer the question I have now correctly worded for you.
Nah. Cops need real guns, just everyone shouldn't be a cop .
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"all that is required is that a person reasonably believes his or her life is threatened."
No, I understand that completely.
But what I see this as not being applicable in this case, was the cop, supposedly, went into this guys unit.
Claiming you/he/she felt threatened, when she criminally (trespass/BE) went into that apartment, seems to me, to negate her "claim" of being threatened.
She instigated the threat to begin with. How can she use self-defense as a reason to shoot?
The other side will be that people make mistakes and she reasonably thought she was at her house, and that someone had broken into it. Upon being confronted with the intruder she reacted and shot the man.
I think the part that should get her here is that state law says that you can not use deadly force to protect yourself or your property if you are 'otherwise engaged in criminal activity', and it does not have a 'reasonably believed' before the criminal activity part. The law does not care if she knew or reasonably believed that she was committing a crime, only if she was, and by at least her most recent statements she was trespassing.
(a) It is a defense to prosecution that the actor through mistake formed a reasonable belief about a matter of fact if his mistaken belief negated the kind of culpability required for commission of the offense.
(b) Although an actor's mistake of fact may constitute a defense to the offense charged, he may nevertheless be convicted of any lesser included offense of which he would be guilty if the fact were as he believed.
Maybe, but not likely. That would appear to run into "Mistake of Fact". It actually does care in terms of criminal liability. That will have to be debated.
https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/penal-sect-8-02.html
This is what I have been trying to get across. Her defense will be that she reasonably thought it was her residence. Getting off on the wrong floor is reasonable. What matters is what happened after she got to the door and if her story is accurate.
It was his house and she entered with a gun. How was it even valid to ask the question?Who said they believed he was a threat to her? I think you are confusing asking the question with suggesting he was. Your outrage is unfounded. For her to be able to justify shooting him she would have to prove she reasonable believed he was a threat. There is nothing wrong with asking that question, and it in no way means we are accusing him of being such.
This will most definitely be something that a judge and jury will have to debate, in the end this is going to set a new precedence. I personally believe that the bar for using deadly force needs to be fairly high. I feel strongly that we can not allow 'I was wrong' to be an affirmative defense for murder. Taking another's life should be a last resort not a first response.
What I'm most afraid of here is that she is being charged with Manslaughter because in Texas you can not get probation for murder, but manslaughter can carry as little as 2 years probation, so the DA is going to push for 2 years probation on a manslaughter charge.
I would rather she get convicted of a lesser charge than to beat a higher charge as has happened all to many times across our legal system.I think they can still go after murder as they are still investigating.
I would rather she get convicted of a lesser charge than to beat a higher charge as has happened all to many times across our legal system.
I think the part that should get her here is that state law says that you can not use deadly force to protect yourself or your property if you are 'otherwise engaged in criminal activity', and it does not have a 'reasonably believed' before the criminal activity part. The law does not care if she knew or reasonably believed that she was committing a crime, only if she was, and by at least her most recent statements she was trespassing.
With the exception of certain crimes like statutory rape, the law does very much care that a person knows he or she is committing a crime. If she believed she had permission to be in the apartment at the time she pulled the trigger, then she did not commit criminal trespassing.
edit: clarification - you just have to understand what you are doing not that what you are doing is a crime (e.g., you have to know you are entering property without permission, but you don't have to know it is a crime to enter property without permission). However, for something like statutory rape, ignorance of the person's age is not an excuse.
With the exception of certain crimes like statutory rape, the law does very much care that a person knows he or she is committing a crime. If she believed she had permission to be in the apartment at the time she pulled the trigger, then she did not commit criminal trespassing.
Even more reason to not live in an apartment. People can now just walk into your place, kill you, say "oopsie wrong place!" and then get off.
(I say this assuming she'll never go to jail, which is likely)
No, it has to be reasonable to believe that they had permission to be in the apartment. I am going to hope that the laws holds people to a higher standard for killing someone than 'oops, my bad.' If the laws holds that she had the right to kill someone because she is too stupid to figure out she was not in her own apartment I'm going to change my stance to full repeal of the 2nd amendment. At that point I'm fairly sure our society is simply to stupid to be allowed to own guns, or perhaps any pointy object at all.
Bullshit, is does matter.It does not though. You are 100% correct that reasonable people will consider the same thing you are. Any jury will also have this same fact pointed out to them.
What you seem to be stuck on is that she was not actually in her house, but, as I have tried to explain, that does not ultimately matter in her fear of safety.
Bullshit, is does matter.
You keep going on about this. I told you give me an example in Texas anywhere anytime, that someone has used this defense.
No one has supported that nonsense you speak.
I am done with you.
Typically, mistake of fact is a regular defense, rather than an affirmative defense. In other words, where relevant, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant acted with criminal intent rather than through reasonable mistake. The defense can argue that the defendant acted because of a reasonable mistake, leaving the prosecution to establish otherwise.
Not quite. Criminal trespass requires knowledge that you don't have permission to be there, so if you walk into an apartment thinking it is yours, you are not guilty of trespassing.
Murder/manslaughter, however, are focused on whether you have knowledge that the action you are taking might kill someone. The relevancy here with regard to her mistake is whether she has a justification for the killing - a reasonable belief of fear of serious harm from an intruder in her own home.
And you can fuck off. I told you twice to give me an example in Texas where this insane defenseCareful, you are about to get some really angry responses telling you how wrong you are.
And you can fuck off.
Piss off.Dude, chill. I left you alone, and you are not the only one that is arguing against his point. I said the last thing I wanted to say, and you posted again to which I did not respond. Relax and move on man. Ill leave you be.
If Guyger is charged with murder, Lollar said, she could argue that she made a "mistake of fact."
With a murder charge, defense attorneys can also say Guyger was defending her property at nighttime, that she acted in self-defense and that she was stopping a burglary in progress.
All of those arguments could be couched with a main theory of a defense: that she made a "mistake of fact." She was wrong in believing there was a burglary because she said she mistook Jean's apartment for her own.
In Great Britain, the cops don't have any guns.
So if a cop sees a crime he just goes "Stop! Or I'll say stop again!"
Wow, crime must be out of control there.