The recent killing of a man by a Dallas Police Officer resulted in many people rushing to judge the officer without evidence or facts. Please allow me to lay out what the media reported as of September 9, 2018.
An off-duty female Uniformed Dallas Police Officer entered what she believed was her apartment.
The apartment she entered is actually one-floor below her apartment.
She shot and killed what she thought was an intruder.
The Dallas Police Department turned the investigation over to the Texas Rangers for investigation.
The is no law against mistakenly entering an apartment that you believe is yours. If I ever received a call where a person entered what they believed was their own apartment and it was one floor below their actual apartment I would not arrest anyone. I would tell the 'victim' that he can request the District Attorney to file charges, knowing that it would be very unlikely that a charge would be filed.
There are no known eye-witnesses. The only person that may know what happened inside of the apartment is the officer who did the shooting. We do not know what, if anything, the man did that caused the officer to believe her life was in immediate danger.
Many people will say that the officer should have turned on the lights or should have recognized that she was not in her own apartment. I disagree. I don't live in the world of should.
If I came home and found my apartment door unlocked (which may have been the case) I would have been alarmed. If I came home and my key did not work, I might be frustrated enough to force open the door to 'my' apartment.
When inside my apartment, if I saw a man, I would believe that he was a burglar. It the lights were turned off, but I could see him, I would not turn on the lights because I don't want to become a clear target. I also would have had both hands pointing my weapon at him and not been able to turn on the lights.
Unless the officer confesses or creates some elaborate lie, I doubt that there is a winnable case. The evidence at the crime scene might contradict some elaborate lie, but if the officer's statement is clear and concise, I doubt that a case can be proven.
As for a charge of manslaughter, when an officer is the only witness and the officer probably was in fear of life, there is no crime of manslaughter.
I also believe that the Dallas Police Department will find cause to fire the officer, regardless of guilt.
