Proof you need to watch what you say online

GEM said:

10 year sentence. That will seem heavy to some and light to others.

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The Brother of the man she killed, in his own apartment, even gave her a hug. Like the people that pray for the killer of “mass shootings”, they are more forgiving than I could be.

It really doesn’t matter to me if the killer ever posted anything anywhere. She went into someone’s home and killed them, simple.

A great object lesson for those who bluster than anyone who breaks into their house is "leaving in a box". Anything you've ever said on social media is likely to be dredged up if you get yourself in a jam.

Her life is pretty much ruined but she has one; still. She is probably early thirties and her life can be somewhat resurrected. To think that a prosecutor wouldn't utilize social networking sites at their discretion is way naive. It is a fact of life in 2019. Civil servants, in particular, should probably abstain from making outrageous statements in a platform that is clearly one-to-many.

First things first... In today’s world privacy is pretty much a myth... Because of that I will not post anything on line (or write anything...) that I would not be willing to put up on a billboard in my front yard...

From personal experience it is most unfortunate to have threatened publicly someone that you end up killing later... In my case, it was another officer that did the threatening- not me (thank heavens...). The family of the deceased still accused me of doing just that in the subsequent inquest...

The fact that I’m writing this is proof that the inquest found the killing justified. That long ago incident was the only time I ever fired a single shot in 22 years on the job. Hope I never have to use a weapon on the street ever again...

I've commented on all the folks who happily proclaim that they will disobey new ban laws and/or lie to the authorities. Despite what you think of the bans - announcing that you will say that you lost the gun, etc. is not the best ploy if you become a test case.

ilbob said:

I suspect, but do not know, that there was some level of dysfunction going on here WRT the shooter. I am not suggesting she was doped up or drunk, although I suppose that is possible. There are times one's mind wanders off into never-never land and one is operating on auto pilot. In such a situation when something unexpected happens the response might not be ideal.

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Her tox screen was clean.

Basically she was horny and tired. She parked on the fourth level, open to the stars, went to an apartment with a red door mat which she did not have. Third level parking, where her apartment was located had another level of parking above it.

But she was so busy trying to set up a booty call with her married patrol partner she ignored all the warning signs.

Kleanbore said:

You seem to have been surprised to discover that, when one is taken fo court in either a criminal case or a civil case such as divorce, things that the individual has said and done in the past become evidence.

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On the contrary, I have been on the other side of this coin and have seen how pervasive and ridiculous it can be. I am in no way shape or form surprised by this. My situation became a one-sided mud-slinging campaign designed to excite the locals and interfere with jury selection, then an intentional game of prolonged courtroom motions to delay which racked up court costs which was intended to put me into a financial bind, all of which culminated in a plea offer which was financially and reasonably a better option than a courtroom trial because the options were unsupervised probation or risk a misdemeanor conviction with potential jail time attached. The entire charge was a fabrication of lies and misrepresentations by a pissed off meth cook who supplied free product in exchange for “eye witness testimony”. I fully understand the faults failures and ridiculous BS of the modern court system. The law says innocent until proven guilty, but in reality it ends up being innocent until driven into a no-win situation where you pay several thousand dollars to defend yourself whether you are guilty or not. No system is perfect, but our societal changes are certainly getting some airplay on the judges benches, in the jury box, and is being orchestrated by a liberal society. I can see a railroad when it happens, and sadly it is almost every time now. It may be a big railroad it may be a small one, but there truly is no impartiality in modern times. Innocent until proven guilty is dead. Guilty from day one until declared innocent, and still portrayed by media as guilty is the new norm.

It is far too lengthy to go into the ins and outs of Criminal or Civil rules of procedure but not everything that one says is in fact admissible in court but often that evidence IS admissible in things like grand jury proceedings or pre-trial hearings.

Anything that the defendant says in a criminal case to anyone else using whatever method (aside from privileged communications) is potentially admissible and that includes social media by subpoena. Anything that the defendant says is defined as not being hearsay at all.

However, there is a filter in that the information has to be relevant to the case at hand and more probative than prejudicial in nature. Thus, someone posting that they did not like Justin Bieber in a self defense case with nothing to do with the case fact is probably not admissible in a jury trial nor their posted opinions on marriage, politics, government, etc. In other words, anything likely to cause the jury to believe that the person is a bad person but not adding to any factual evidence that they did in fact do the crime is usually ruled inadmissible. However, evidence that is very probative is usually highly prejudicial as well but the "truthiness" quotient usually wins out--example would be an online threat to someone that was actually assaulted by the defendant.

In addition, there is something called character evidence that gets tricky in admissibility as it can be used to rebut claims of good character by the defense or it can be admissible if it shows a pattern of behavior that makes something more likely to be true (kind of a special case of prejudicial versus probative). Habit is a bit more confusing but generally it has to be demonstrated as a basic characteristic of someone and not something that a person does only sometimes.

Civil cases have a bit more relaxed standard as does a bench trial before a judge so often the net is wider in these sorts of cases and there is no right against self incrimination in a civil case but the form of the rules are the same even if the interpretation is a bit different.

I

WestKentucky said:

On the contrary, I have been on the other side of this coin and have seen how pervasive and ridiculous it can be. I am in no way shape or form surprised by this. My situation became a one-sided mud-slinging campaign designed to excite the locals and interfere with jury selection, then an intentional game of prolonged courtroom motions to delay which racked up court costs which was intended to put me into a financial bind, all of which culminated in a plea offer which was financially and reasonably a better option than a courtroom trial because the options were unsupervised probation or risk a misdemeanor conviction with potential jail time attached. The entire charge was a fabrication of lies and misrepresentations by a pissed off meth cook who supplied free product in exchange for “eye witness testimony”. I fully understand the faults failures and ridiculous BS of the modern court system. The law says innocent until proven guilty, but in reality it ends up being innocent until driven into a no-win situation where you pay several thousand dollars to defend yourself whether you are guilty or not. No system is perfect, but our societal changes are certainly getting some airplay on the judges benches, in the jury box, and is being orchestrated by a liberal society. I can see a railroad when it happens, and sadly it is almost every time now. It may be a big railroad it may be a small one, but there truly is no impartiality in modern times. Innocent until proven guilty is dead. Guilty from day one until declared innocent, and still portrayed by media as guilty is the new norm.

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If you are arguing that powerful people with money and influence can bend a system to damage the weak, that's not news and not even unique to our system of justice. Ever so it has been, everywhere.

Do you believe she was railroaded? I do not. Her attitudes as expressed publicly and entered into evidence did properly influence the jury's decision. How much? No one can ever really know for sure, but one thing that has been said repeatedly is she presented herself as having committed homicide, but with a legal justification. That legal justification was discarded because of the facts of the case and quite possibly her expressed attitudes. After that, all that remains is her guilt.

One thing I'd also say as demonstrated by this case: If an innocent man in his own home cannot be free from death at the hands of an agent of the state, freedom is just a mirage. She HAD to be found guilty and notwithstanding the generosity of her victim's 18 year old brother, justice, though light, was done.

Kleanbore said:

We know an attorney whose house was burglarized in her absence after she had posted that she would be traveling.

TWICE!

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That's an attorney I would definitely never hire.

Jeff White said:

No one has commented on the content of the social media posts that were used. The meme she shared:

Stay low, go fast. Kill first, die last. One shot, one kill. No luck, all skill'.

Popular in the military community and widely shared. I would imagine there are a lot of young soldiers and cops who could be in quite a bit of trouble if they were involved in a questionable shooting.

Memes like that are popular throughout the shooting community.

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In all honesty, I replied earlier after not having really followed the case. Like I said, I found the entire situation sorrowful. I also didn't expect a miracle but I guess some people might consider the ten year incarceration a miracle. She might have a difficult time of it as it is. I maintain that even memes like the one you referenced are probably best left unsaid in public settings during these tumultuous times.

Jeff White said:

These posts along with text messages that appeared racist (I say appeared because I don’t know her and I’m not about to make a judgement based on a news article) were used to convict her...

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I thought she was convicted because she shot an unarmed dude in a home she had no business being in.

Does online behavior have implications for one's legal, personal, and professional life? Absolutely. But I'm curious what you're basing the notion on that social media posts are what could have turned this shoot into a lawful one.

Jeff White said:

They felt they were critical to the case or they wouldn’t have fought the motion to suppress them.

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One would hope that a defense attorney would move to suppress anything that might damage their case or client, within the bounds of the law. Social media posts would be one example out of a very big bucket within that duty. If you're saying one ought to be aware that actions and words have consequences, I agree. But I don't think we can discern anything more specific from this case in particular. None of us are likely to find ourselves in the situation that former officer Guyger found herself in. And if we did, no social media post history could be the silver bullet to a not guilty verdict.

And this why I don't have Facebook, Twitter or instagram.
My only media footprint is here.

Jeff White said:

No one has commented on the content of the social media posts that were used. The meme she shared:

Stay low, go fast. Kill first, die last. One shot, one kill. No luck, all skill'.

Popular in the military community and widely shared. I would imagine there are a lot of young soldiers and cops who could be in quite a bit of trouble if they were involved in a questionable shooting.

Memes like that are popular throughout the shooting community.

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? I must be sheltered as that is something I definitely would not recommend putting on social media or even stating to friends.

Jeff White said:

I have not stated absent the social media and texts she would have been acquitted. My whole point is that the prosecution felt it was necessary to get them before the jury even in an open and shut case like this.

They felt they were critical to the case or they wouldn’t have fought the motion to suppress them.

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Goes to the state of mind for the defendant and to demonstrate the defendant's apparent desire to kill first to anything that risked her life.
What it appropriate in open warfare is not the standard applied to police actions. If I was judge in the case, I might allow it in depending on the relevant caselaw in Texas. It would be admissible in my state absent any indication that it was a joke, quoting someone else, etc. It is prejudicial but also probative in the case facts that have been reported in the media about the shooting.

Doesn't motive or intent still play a role in the system?

You can dig up all you want on past statements but in the moment, on the day it happened, wasn't she just a tired preoccupied person who made a grave mistake?

Honestly 10 years for murder is light. It was her fault, she went into someone's residence and killed them dead for no justified reason. The only defense being she thought it was her house. She essentially broke into their home and then shot them dead, practically a home invasion, it was just by accident.
If the man had done the same to her in her apartment it would have been 25 to life if found guilty of murder or the death penalty. It would have had to be manslaughter or less to even get near that sentence. Being a female officer in a male dominated profession probably one of only a small number and so well known in the department, the investigating officers would have likely had the reports so skewed against him for shooting an officer nevermind a female officer that the punishment would have probably been significantly harsher than an average murder sentence.

In fact one of the big things I notice in the criminal justice system is how much lighter the women in general get treated for the same crimes. Most violent crime is men, but when it is a woman they have to be really bad to even get an average sentence. Men that commit murder have the death penalty on the table almost right away with it considered or applied especially in a place like Texas, and it almost never is applied to even women committing premediated murders.
I hear all about the discrimination when it goes the other way, but nobody mentions how much lighter the justice system is on women.
Men get that many or more years most of the time for the lesser charge of manslaughter.
It is that way on many issues, from criminal, custody, divorce, and many other things. The court system is biased towards women. The judge determines the sentence most of the time so it is not even just that we as society have more sympathy for women, there is a clear bias even in the people that do it for a living.
I mean what would she have received with a manslaughter charge probation and time served or a couple years?
If she had not said some bad things online maybe she could have recieved a slap on the wrist for breaking into the home of and killing a man in his own home for no reason intentionally aiming at him and pulling the trigger with deadly purpose?


Sure we could all avoid more trouble if we acted politically correct all the time, put our tails between our legs and talked like we were at a job making a living, but that is a rather sad existence even in your personal space online isn't it? I mean we barely even have freedom of speech anymore, anything you say at or off work can impact your career or because we have laws protecting classes when it comes to employment have you assumed to be violating racial, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or other protected classes even if you never do anything wrong professionally but say things on your free time.
Freedom of speech just barely exists, because its technically allowed and we don't have outright hate speech or other laws to grow and encompass more and more over time like in Europe and other places. It is kinda sad if you can't even spout some stupidity online to let off steam or be humorous anymore.
Also the more people that become politically correct the tighter the standards everyone else will be held to, it moves the bar and expectations over in a gradual erosion of even being able to express yourself. The people ranting over the top politically incorrect things make your level headed comments seem sensible. If everyone becomes politically correct zombies guess what the new standards of society will become?

Jeff White wrote:
"Personally I think it was a tragic accident and manslaughter would have been a more appropriate charge..."

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While you're entitled to your opinion, the people who heard and considered the totality of the evidence - not just bits and pieces quoted out of a news article - concluded otherwise.

Good Ol' Boy asked:
Doesn't motive or intent still play a role in the system?

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Yes it does. And she testified in court that she went in with the intent to kill whomever was on the other side of the door.

You can dig up all you want on past statements but in the moment, on the day it happened, wasn't she just a tired preoccupied person who made a grave mistake?

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No.

At least not according to the people who listened to all the evidence and not just the sound-bytes that happened to support their perspective on the case.

Zoogster said:

Sure we could all avoid more trouble if we acted politically correct all the time, put our tails between our legs and talked like we were at a job making a living, but that is a rather sad existence even in your personal space online isn't it? I mean we barely even have freedom of speech anymore, anything you say at or off work can impact your career or because we have laws protecting classes when it comes to employment have you assumed to be violating racial, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or other protected classes even if you never do anything wrong professionally but say things on your free time.

Freedom of speech just barely exists, because its technically allowed and we don't have outright hate speech or other laws to grow and encompass more and more over time like in Europe and other places. It is kinda sad if you can't even spout some stupidity online to let off steam or be humorous anymore.

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Freedom of speech =! freedom of consequences for one’s speech. I don’t know where you live so the laws may be different than the US, but can you give one example of what you’re talking about, where the government fined or jailed a person solely for an opinion they held?