An Important Lesson About Intent

This is why your intent should be to stop an attacker rather than kill an attacker. The Daily Mail reports that "Amber Guyger is denied parole six years after ex-Dallas cop wrongly shot and killed black man eating ice cream in his apartment". You might remember this case. Guyger, a Dallas police officer at the time, was busying texting her partner as she drove into the parking garage of her apartment building, driving past the third floor where she lived and up to the fourth floor. Still distracted, she walked to an apartment that she thought was hers but was not, noted that the door was ajar, and burst in and shot a man eating ice cream on his couch in his apartment. Although Guyger claimed the man had rushed at her, forensics showed that the man was either seated or cowering when she shot him. She was subsequently tried and found guilty of murder, apparently with the jury rejecting the option of finding her guilty of manslaughter.

    In the article discussing her denial of parole, the Daily Mail reports:

    For years, she has repeatedly tried tried to appeal her conviction, claiming that her mistaking Jean's apartment for her own was reasonable, and therefore, so too was the shooting.

    Her lawyer tried to get the appeals court to acquit her of murder or substitute in a conviction for criminally negligent homicide, which carries a lesser sentence.

    But Dallas County prosecutors argued that the error was not reasonable, that Guyger acknowledged intending to kill Jean and that 'murder is a result-oriented offense.'

    The court's chief justice, Robert Burns III, and Justices Lana Myers and Robbie Partida-Kipness concurred with prosecutors, disagreeing that Guyger's belief that deadly force was needed was reasonable.

    In a 23-page opinion, the justices also disagreed that evidence supported a conviction of criminally negligent homicide rather than murder, pointing to Guyger's own testimony that she intended to kill.

    'That she was mistaken as to Jean's status as a resident in his own apartment or a burglar in hers does not change her mental state from intentional or knowing to criminally negligent,' the judges wrote.

    'We decline to rely on Guyger's misperception of the circumstances leading to her mistaken beliefs as a basis to reform the jury's verdict in light of the direct evidence of her intent to kill.'

More:

• "Ayoob on Amber Guyger"