Family of Bothan Jean awarded $100 million (shot by officer Guyer when she entered wrong apt)

[Demovictory9]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/us/botham-jean-guyger-texas-police-killing-trial.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bk4.Y6-0.0mv81XnrtFSb&smid=url-share

A federal jury on Wednesday awarded nearly $100 million to the family of Botham Shem Jean, a Black man who was eating ice cream and watching television at home in Dallas when he was shot dead by a white police officer six years ago.

Amber R. Guyger, the officer who killed Mr. Jean, used excessive force and violated Mr. Jean’s constitutional rights, the jury concluded. It ordered Ms. Guyger to pay civil penalties to Mr. Jean’s family of $60 million in punitive damages and $38.65 million for their loss and suffering. The civil trial was held in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The shooting in 2018 set off widespread anger and protests, helping to sharpen focus on the use of violence by law enforcement officers against unarmed Black people in the United States.

[multigraincracker]

1. All funding for LE needs to be tied to Civil Rights training, weekly classes by Civil Rights Attorneys.

Those $100million settlements add up.

[jaxexpat]

2. It is meaningless! Headline should read, "jury awards fantasy penalty to be paid by indigent prison inmate....

attorneys say, 'justice has been done with straight face (and my invoice is in the mail)'."

Where is the deterrent? Where is the justice? Why does anyone in this country presume lawsuits are proper responses to all offenses, even capital crimes. Why, are we composed of folks with such low thresholds for critical thinking skills that we actually believe a ridiculously high dollar amount award is anything but a shameful display to advertise greed as the national justice of choice? Hell, they won't even jail Guliani for thumbing his nose and refusing to "pay until broke" for his treason.

Courts are simply a willing participant in fraud when they use their courtroom time to showcase this sort of "entertainment". There is no "honor", your honor, when you slam your gavel down on this shit.

We all know that if the black dude, the one she drunkenly killed, had been the shooter, he'd be on death row, if not already executed.

[Liberal In Texas]

3. From the article:

It was unclear whether the Jean family would ever see any of the money, but its legal team said what mattered more was holding Ms. Guyger liable in a civil court.
“I think this jury sent the message loud and clear, that they are not going to tolerate police brutality,” Daryl Washington, one of the family’s lawyers, told reporters. “And I think that message is going to be heard not only in Dallas, not only in the state of Texas, but throughout this country.”
Ms. Guyger was fired by the Dallas Police Department after the shooting. She was found guilty of murder and sentenced in 2019 to 10 years in prison.

She is going to get out one day and maybe this judgement will follow her around for the rest of her life.

[jaxexpat]

7. Yeah, I read that too. Okay, but so what? Why didn't the court just say that? And what's it really worth?

What part of being levied an unpayable (but ultimately non-mandatory) fine isn't meaningless? It's not accountability. At most, it's just a perverse exercise in ambiguity so people can feel satisfied they've done the hard work to quantify...............something unquantifiable. Is the absurdity of "great deliberations to fabricate appropriate numbers" as an exercise in justice not apparent? I think it would be better if we'd all just agree to acknowledge that meaningful justice is difficult. Yet it is impossible without a restoration of balance. The universe demands it, and cultures become lost in the weeds of indistinction without it.

BTW, everyone is followed by their past actions. That's life. If she'd been sentenced to climb a mountain, carrying a crushing weight every day, that would be legendary, even mythical, impossible but not meaningless.

[harumph]

8. I cannot recommend your comment enough.

It's "performative justice" - not proper justice. It only serves to shove events like this down the public's memory hole - because, you know, it's been adjudicated. It's like a substitutive ritual of some kind that we as a culture indulge.

[Dumpy]

6. Police officers never pay for wrong doing

The taxpayers usually pay these lawsuits. End qualified immunity and force police officers to taken out mal-practice insurance like doctors, nurses and dentists. If they screw up too much and become uninsurable, they will lose their job.

[multigraincracker]

9. That is why I'm also calling for another item include with "Police Funding".

Create a national data base of ALL LEOs that list all complaints by citizens and previous discipline actions for every LEO. As it now stands, bad cops can just get hired by another department within the state or out of state.

Of course there is no justice, just us. We can stand up to a reduce the injustice.

While many of these fines are reduced or thrown out. Departments are already finding very hard and expensive to purchase insurance. In some communities there is no longer insurance available at all after a few settlements.Both the fines and insurance cost come back on us and the taxes we pay.

The ultimate responsibility always goes back to an elected official, Sheriff, Mayor and Governor. Make that an issue in electing those that hire and defend bad cops.

[Stargazer99]

4. Our society cannot handle the truth that this thread shows how sick this society is

Pride in country?....maybe it is time to grow up and be honest

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R

[republianmushroom]

10. Dallas city tax dollar at work.