Reason.
A jury in Texas on Tuesday convicted a man of murdering a local police officer in a case that pitted no-knock raids against the right to self-defense.
Marvin Guy, who waited in jail for over nine years before his trial, was found guilty of murdering Detective Charles Dinwiddie, whom Guy said he mistook for an intruder after a SWAT team in 2014 smashed his bedroom window and tried to break into his home with a battering ram during a 5:45 a.m. drug raid. The panel declined, however, to convict him of capital murder and instead opted for murder, meaning they did not agree—at least not unanimously—that Guy knew he was shooting at law enforcement.
The raid was the product of a no-knock warrant, which police pursued in response to a tip that Guy had been dealing cocaine, and which allowed them to break into Guy’s apartment without first identifying themselves.
On May 9, 2014, before the sun rose, about two dozen officers arrived at Guy’s residence. The team struggled to fully penetrate the door with their battering ram; something was blocking it from behind. One officer accidentally detonated his stun grenade, inflaming what was already a raid rapidly going awry.
Guy, who lived in a high-crime area, said he was woken up and assumed the police were criminals trying to break into his home. He had allegedly been on edge about such a situation: One of his neighbors had reportedly been victimized similarly a week before when an intruder choked her after forcing entry by way of her first-floor window. Guy allegedly hit four officers, killing Dinwiddie and prompting police to fire over 40 rounds in return.
The prosecution, however, theorized that Guy had somehow come to know the police were coming and that he’d set a trap to “ambush” them.
I hear it again and again and again and again, and it’s just as silly every time I hear it. Due process. Let a judge issue a warrant. I’d rather be judged by a jury of peers than carried by pall bearers. Americans have the right of due process. Gun confiscation laws are okay as long as the government has followed due process requirements.
This example is why I don’t believe you can trust due process or any aspect of the American judicial system. It doesn’t matter whether he was dealing cocaine. It doesn’t matter if they wanted to play soldier boy that early morning. If they had wanted to grab evidence, they could have waited until daylight and monitored him for movement from the home and then gone in and grabbed whatever they wanted.
As it stands, a cop is dead and he will be in prison for much of the rest of his life.
And here’s the thing. A prosecutor and jury did all of this by intent. The prosecutor wanted him in prison because we can’t have men defending their homes, not even in Texas. The jury followed all instructions given to them by a corrupt judge.
There’s your due process. How do you like it? If someone slams their way into your home, lay down and submit. You cannot defend your family because you may go to prison.
Again, how do you like this?