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Amber Guyger, Police Officer Who Shot a Man to Death in His Apartment, Found Guilty of Murder |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=51645"><span class="small">Bobby Allyn, NPR</span></a>
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Tuesday, 01 October 2019 12:54 |
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Allyn writes: "A Dallas jury has found former police Officer Amber Guyger guilty of murder for fatally shooting a neighbor who lived in the apartment directly above hers last year. She had testified that she entered Botham Jean's unit after a long day at work, thinking it was her own home and that he was an intruder."
Fired Dallas police officer Amber Guyger leaves the courtroom after a jury found her guilty of murder Tuesday. Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean, an unarmed 26-year-old neighbor, in his own apartment last year. She told police she thought his apartment was her own and that he was an intruder. (photo: Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News/AP)
Amber Guyger, Police Officer Who Shot a Man to Death in His Apartment, Found Guilty of Murder
By Bobby Allyn, NPR
01 October 19
 Dallas jury has found former police Officer Amber Guyger guilty of murder for fatally shooting a neighbor who lived in the apartment directly above hers last year. She had testified that she entered Botham Jean's unit after a long day at work, thinking it was her own home and that he was an intruder.
The jury took five hours to decide Guyger had committed murder, rather than a lesser charge of manslaughter. Jurors will begin considering sentencing options Tuesday afternoon. Guyger faces a possible penalty of up to 99 years in prison.
She is the first Dallas police officer to be convicted of murder since the 1970s.
Prosecutors maintained that Guyger, who is white, committed murder when she overlooked signs that the apartment she entered wasn't her own — the wrong floor, the smell of marijuana coming from the apartment, a bright red doormat — and shot Jean, a 26-year-old black accountant who was sitting in his living room eating ice cream when Guyger killed him last September.
"There was no other floor mat like this is the entire building. This sticks out, literally, like a red thumb," lead prosecutor Jason Hermus said during closing arguments Monday, displaying the doormat to the jury. "And she walked up to it and stood on top of it."
But in tearful testimony last week, Guyger said she was "scared to death" when she opened what she thought was her own apartment door and saw the silhouette of a man she mistook for an intruder.
"I was scared whoever was inside my apartment was going to kill me," she told the jury. "No police officer would want to hurt an innocent person."
Guyger lived on the third floor of an apartment complex just south of downtown Dallas. Her lawyers said she was in uniform and had just finished a 13-hour workday when she mistakenly opened Jean's door.
"What was going through Amber's mind was just, 'I'm going home,' " defense lawyer Robert Rogers said. " 'I'm exhausted, and I'm going home.' "
Guyger testified that she had put her key in the door and realized it was unlocked. Thinking someone had broken in, she drew her gun and entered the apartment.
Guyger said she ordered Jean, "Let me see your hands," and that he instead started to move toward her. Prosecutors countered that nobody in the apartment complex heard her instruct Jean to raise his hands.
Within seconds of opening the door, she fired two shots at Jean. One of the bullets struck him in the chest, killing him.
Guyger then called 911 and told the operator over and over: "I thought it was my apartment."
The case transfixed observers around the country for the delicate questions it presented. Was the shooting a noncriminal accident equal to a "tragic mistake," as Guyger's lawyers argued? Or were Guyger's mistakes so reckless that they constituted manslaughter, or so intentionally negligent that it amounted to murder?
In deciding that she was guilty, the jury, about half of whom were African American, sided with the prosecution.
Others have described the facts of the case as the latest example of a white police officer killing an unarmed black man. Civil rights groups rallied behind Jean, a native of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. And many police officers came to the defense of Guyger, who was fired after the shooting.
During her testimony, Guyger seemed to cast aside race as a factor. The encounter was "not about hate," she said. "It's about being scared."
To prosecutors, Guyger's distraction led to a crime.
Just before Guyger entered Jean's apartment, she had a 16-minute phone conversation with a fellow officer, Martin Rivera. Authorities say the two had a romantic relationship and that they had been swapping sexually explicit messages.
Prosecutors argued that Guyger was so absorbed with those communications that she was too preoccupied to realize she was heading toward the wrong apartment.
In cross-examining Guyger, prosecutors emphasized that her training as a police officer should have informed her to back away from the door, hide and call for backup if she had suspected an intruder.
Guyger had her police radio, and she lives just two blocks from police headquarters, so she could have had other officers arrive quickly, prosecutors pointed out. Had she done that, Guyger was asked, might Jean be alive today?
"Yes, sir," she said.
Before jurors began their deliberations Monday, Texas District Judge Tammy Kemp allowed them to consider what is known as the "castle doctrine" as a possible defense, despite the objections of prosecutors who called the move "absurd."
Similar to self-defense laws known as "stand your ground," the Texas statute says a person is justified in using deadly force if someone enters or attempts to enter a person's own home.
"It may have been a stretch for Judge Kemp to allow that jury to consider it," Tim Powers, a former Texas prosecutor and judge, told NPR.
The judge's decision raised a unique set of legal facts that experts said has not been tested in Texas courts: considering a "castle doctrine" defense in a location that is not one's "castle."
"This is a case of first impression, which means we don't have any precedents of this where the mistake of fact defense merges with the castle doctrine," said Peter Schulte, a Texas defense lawyer and former prosecutor.
But in the end, the jury rejected the controversial use of that legal standard as a possible defense. Both Powers and Schulte think the issue will be raised during Guyger's expected appeal.
In the state's closing arguments on Monday, prosecutor Hermus said the only way a defendant can claim self-defense to murder is when there is no other reasonable alternative.
Hermus said that was not the case when Guyger shot Jean.
"Self-defense means you're acting defensively," Hermus said. "She became the aggressor. That's not self-defense."
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Bernie Sanders' Fund-Raising Haul: $25.3 Million in Third Quarter |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=47782"><span class="small">Paul Blest, Splinter</span></a>
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Tuesday, 01 October 2019 12:54 |
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Blest writes: "In recent weeks, the Democratic primary for president has essentially turned into a three-person race between Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders. But while Sanders' campaign is already being written off by some pundits, fundraising totals released on Tuesday indicate he's not anywhere close to finished."
Since 2016, as the Democratic field has expanded, Bernie Sanders has maintained a significant fund-raising advantage among college students in Iowa. (photo: Michael B. Thomas/AFP/Getty Images)
Bernie Sanders' Fund-Raising Haul: $25.3 Million in Third Quarter
By Paul Blest, Splinter
01 October 19
 n recent weeks, the Democratic primary for president has essentially turned into a three-person race between Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders. But while Sanders’ campaign is already being written off by some pundits, fundraising totals released on Tuesday indicate he’s not anywhere close to finished.
The Sanders campaign reported raising a whopping $25.3 million in the third quarter of 2019, which ended Monday. That’s up from the $18 million he raised in both of the first two quarters of 2019, and more than he raised over the same period in 2015 during his first campaign for president. Last month, the Sanders campaign announced it had hit one million donors; the campaign also told Politico its average donation over the third quarter was “just over $18.” The campaign also said that the most common occupation among its donors was teacher, and that some of their donors’ top employers include Walmart, Amazon, and Starbucks. (You mean to tell me your average Starbucks barista doesn’t subscribe to Howard Schultz’s political philosophy??)
Sanders’ numbers are an indication that his grassroots support and fundraising prowess is still strong, despite the fact that the campaign hasn’t been able to break out ahead of the pack. Most recent national polling has shown Sanders either in third or in a virtual tie for second with a surging Warren behind Biden. (The caveat here, of course, is that we’re still more than four months away from the Iowa caucus.)
Although most campaigns haven’t released their fundraising totals yet (the deadline to report to the FEC is Oct. 15), South Bend, IN, Mayor Pete Buttigieg also announced on Tuesday that he had brought in $19 million over the third quarter. The Buttigieg campaign told the Wall Street Journal that its average donation over this period was $40. Despite Buttigieg’s own enormous fundraising (unlike Sanders and Warren—during the primary, at least—Buttigieg is not swearing off big donor money in financing his campaign), his polling has been mired in the mid-single digits nationally.
We’ve contacted the campaigns of Biden, Warren, and Sen. Kamala Harris—whose struggling campaign is reportedly going through a reshuffle—for details on their third quarter fundraising totals, and will update when and if we receive them.
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FOCUS: Bernie's Path to Victory |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=47735"><span class="small">Eric Blanc, Jacobin</span></a>
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Tuesday, 01 October 2019 11:57 |
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Blanc writes: "Don't worry about the naysaying pundits and polls. Bernie Sanders's road to victory is through mobilizing the kind of voters who don't usually vote. Whether or not he can pull it off is up to us."
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders shakes hands with supporters following his event at Plymouth State University on September 29, 2019, in Plymouth, New Hampshire. (photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
Bernie's Path to Victory
By Eric Blanc, Jacobin
01 October 19
Don’t worry about the naysaying pundits and polls. Bernie Sanders’s road to victory is through mobilizing the kind of voters who don’t usually vote. Whether or not he can pull it off is up to us.
t shouldn’t be surprising that the corporate media has recently ramped up its drive to isolate and attack Bernie Sanders. Nobody ever said that taking on the entire political and economic establishment would be easy.
By insisting that Bernie’s star is fading, liberal pundits, the Democratic establishment, and their progressive proxies have done their best to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, which has then been borne out in recent polls.
But the news isn’t all bad — far from it. We’re still early in the race, with plenty of time for Joe Biden to continue putting his foot in his mouth and for Elizabeth Warren to falter under increased scrutiny as a front-runner.
But Bernie’s path to the White House ultimately doesn’t depend on what the media says or what his political rivals do. It depends on us. By continuing to build a deep grassroots infrastructure to turn out an unprecedented number of disaffected voters, we can win.
The dirty secret of American democracy is how few people take part in elections, especially primaries. Faced with political institutions dominated by the ultra rich, many people understandably feel that it’s a waste of time to participate. In the 2016 presidential primary, for example, the overall turnout was only 28.5 percent — and even this number was significantly higher than normal.
Nonvoters are disproportionately poor, young, and nonwhite. In the 2016 general election for president, more than half of nonvoters earned less than $30,000 yearly, about the same percent were people of color, and 50 percent were under thirty.
Because nonvoters tend to favor redistributing wealth and rebuilding a strong welfare state, the fate of democratic socialist candidates usually hinges on maximizing turnout. By galvanizing just enough new volunteers and voters, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her June 2018 primary by besting Joe Crowley 16,898 to 12,880 (out of 241,570 registered Democrats). Bernie is right to argue that “if we can significantly increase voter turnout so that low-income people and working people and young people participated in the political process, if we got a voter turnout of 75 percent, this country would be radically transformed.”
That’s why polls are not prophecy. Not only do they frequently oversample the wealthy and elderly, their projections are based on normal electioneering rather than insurgent working-class campaigns.
Consider an example from across the pond. Polls had Labour Party leftist Jeremy Corbyn down by twenty points less than two months before the June 8, 2017 general election. On June 7, some had him down by thirteen points. Yet an unexpectedly high turnout of 78 percent — the largest in twenty-five years, driven by youth and people of color — upended everybody’s expectations and brought Corbyn within only two points of victory.
Closer to home, we can look to Bernie’s March 2016 upset in the Michigan primary. On the eve of the vote, Bernie was losing by as much as thirty-seven points in the polling, which gave him less than a 1 percent chance of winning. Bernie nevertheless won Michigan (and made Nate Silver eat crow) by doubling the expected youth turnout (of which he won 81 percent) and winning an unexpected number of black and working-class voters, sweeping those who were “very worried” about the US economy.
Whenever the latest mainstream media hit piece gets you down, remember that the main obstacle facing the Bernie movement is not corporate media smears. A larger number of people today get their news online than they do from television — among working people, particularly the young and nonwhite, traditional media’s influence has bottomed out. Millions more watched Cardi B’s conversation with Bernie than the first presidential debate.
Nor is the problem, as pundits claim, that Bernie is “too radical” for the American people. A solid majority, including in “red states,” already support progressive legislation like taxing the rich, Medicare for All, and a Green New Deal. Not only does Bernie beat Donald Trump by a large margin in poll after poll, but there are compelling reasons why he’s much more likely to defeat Trump than any Democrat to his right.
The fundamental roadblock standing between Bernie and the White House is the following: tens of millions of young people and workers remain politically unengaged. Sanders has made activating nonvoters a central part of his campaign’s strategy to win. But this “apathy” — better understood as political resignation — is a difficult nut to crack.
Every week I canvass for Bernie at Brooklyn College, a working-class commuter school where most students remain reluctant to stop and talk or register to vote. Politicians always make promises that they don’t keep, why should now be any different?
With families to support, multiple jobs, and classes to boot, this feeling of being “too busy” for politics is common. The daily indignities of working and living under capitalism breed a sense of powerlessness, compounded by the US trade union movement’s dramatic decline. Absent a strong culture of working-class organization, it’s rational for people to seek individual solutions to collective problems.
Ideally, Bernie would be running for president at the apex of a decades-long upsurge in labor and socialist organizing. But we’re in virtually the opposite situation today, despite a promising uptick in public- and private-sector strikes.
Fortunately, the vast majority of those who stop and talk at Brooklyn College agree to support Bernie by the end of our conversations. Whether it’s health-care costs, tuition fees, looming climate catastrophe, or institutional racism, virtually everybody we speak with has some deeply felt personal grievance addressed directly by Bernie’s platform. Our multiracial crew of canvassers is growing weekly.
This, then, is the $64,000 question facing Bernie’s movement: Within the short window of the next four-to-six months, can we recruit and train enough new volunteer organizers to turn out millions of nonvoters to the polls?
The campaign is already making strides forward: Bernie has the most volunteers, the most individual donors, the largest fundraising numbers, the most views on social media, and the largest rallies. But we should have no illusions about how much more work it will take. Since Bernie’s main bases of support — young, low-income, nonwhite — are traditionally the least likely to vote, we face the biggest challenges in terms of turnout, but also by far the most room for organizational and electoral growth.
Unlike with traditional electoralism, the beautiful thing about Bernie organizing is that building this campaign is, in itself, a win for our side. Every new volunteer you recruit, and every new voter you convince, becomes part of an insurgent grassroots movement for environmental, economic, and racial justice.
Political openings like this don’t arise very often — we need to seize the moment to rebuild working-class power by leaning on the Bernie campaign to elevate labor militancy and rebuild an organized socialist Left rooted in the multiracial working class. Regardless of the electoral outcome, only disruptive collective action by millions can force the ruling class to meet our most pressing demands. An accurate measure of the growth and strength of that movement won’t be spelled out on FiveThirtyEight.
So ignore the punditry, and take the polls with a grain of salt. For the first time in US history, we have the real possibility of electing a democratic socialist to the White House. It’s up to us to make it happen.
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FOCUS: William Barr and Mike Pompeo Are Now Fully Implicated in Trump's Trainwreck |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Tuesday, 01 October 2019 11:06 |
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Excerpt: "U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took part in a July phone conversation between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that is at the heart of a House of Representatives impeachment inquiry, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday."
William Barr. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
William Barr and Mike Pompeo Are Now Fully Implicated in Trump's Trainwreck
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
01 October 19
The office of the president*, the Department of State, and the Department of Justice are now all involved.
 top the news. I want to get off. First, from the Wall Street Journal via Reuters:
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took part in a July phone conversation between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that is at the heart of a House of Representatives impeachment inquiry, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
This opens up Pompeo for a lot of questions. Can he verify the whistleblower's complaint, and how involved was the Secretary of State with the decision to stash the call onto the Secret Server? Moreover, it appears that the entire executive branch might end up collapsing into a mud pile. From The New York Times:
President Trump initiated the discussion in recent weeks with Mr. Morrison explicitly for the purpose of requesting Australia’s help in the Justice Department review of the Russia investigation, according to the two people with knowledge of the discussion. Mr. Barr requested that Mr. Trump speak to Mr. Morrison, one of the people said. It came only weeks after Mr. Trump seemed to make military aid to Ukraine contingent on Mr. Zelensky doing him the “favor” of helping Mr. Barr with his work... Mr. Barr flew to Italy last week and met with Italian government officials on Friday. The Justice Department spokeswoman would not say whether he discussed the election inquiry in those meetings, but former Justice Department officials said that Mr. Barr would need to ask foreign countries for cooperation in turning over documents pertaining to the 2016 election.
And, in case if you were wondering how far up shit-creek Barr has gone, well, if the Washington Post is accurate, he's found the headwaters at the very least.
Attorney General William P. Barr has held private meetings overseas with foreign intelligence officials seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that President Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intelligence agencies’ examination of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the matter...
Barr has already made overtures to British intelligence officials, and last week the attorney general traveled to Italy, where he and Durham met senior Italian government officials and Barr asked the Italians to assist Durham, according to one person familiar with the matter. It was not Barr’s first trip to Italy to meet intelligence officials, the person said. The Trump administration has made similar requests of Australia, these people said.
It's become plain at this point that the ongoing "review" of the origins of the investigation into the Russian ratfcking of the 2016 election has as one of its primary purposes developing an alternative narrative to the plain fact that the Russians wanted to help the president* become president*, and that he accepted their help, and that this alternative narrative then will be used to discredit the revelations in the whistleblower's complaint, and that this project now commands the attention of, at the very least, the office of the president*, the Department of State, and the Department of Justice. The line for the rollercoaster at Depositionland is getting longer by the minute.
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emember when pundits used to argue that Elizabeth Warren wasn’t 
