No knock raid leads to death no drugs found
A no-knock raid is a law enforcement technique designed to search for incriminating evidence while taking suspects by surprise. However, on the morning of May 9, it left one officer dead and another injured.
Now prosecutors in Killeen, Texas, are hoping to impose the death penalty on the suspect, 49-year-old Marvin Louis Guy (pictured above), in spite of the fact that no drugs were found.
The Washington Post writer Radley Balko looks at why this may not be such a good idea.
"Perhaps this was a major drug operation that justified a pre-dawn, no-knock raid. But it doesn't seem like it from the evidence found," Balko said. "I'd imagine that a good percentage of households in Texas have at least one firearm and that a good percentage of households elsewhere in America have cellphones and a set of walkie-talkies [items found in the raid]."
While there was a drug pipe found at the scene, this "suggests drug use, not distribution," and Balko rightly points out that while an informant "saw white bags of cocaine transported in and around the house," criminal informants are not typically that reliable.
"But all of that is mostly beside the point," Balko concludes. "The fact that the police didn't find any drugs in the house suggests that Marvin Louis Guy didn't know he was shooting at cops. Drug dealer or no, unless he had a death wish, it's unlikely that a guy would knowingly fire at police officers when he had nothing in the house that was particularly incriminating."
Still, the Killeen Police Department lost one of its own in 47-year-old Officer Charles "Chuck" Dinwiddie, and that isn't lost on the prosecution, notes KWTX. The outlet originally broke the news prosecutors would be seeking the death penalty in spite of the probability that Guy, awakened at 5:30 a.m/ by the no-knock raid, was simply shooting wildly at what he believed to be armed intruders.
His gunfire also struck the femur of Officer Odis Denton, 37, who underwent surgery and was later released from Scott & White Hospital.
Guy also shot two additional officers, who were unharmed due to the bullets striking protective gear.
While the evidence presented thus far does not indicate that police had substantial reason to believe Guy was a drug dealer, the case is still in the early stages of being tried, so it'll be interesting to see how it develops.
What do you think, readers? Should the prosecution push for the death penalty, or did the police's unsuccessful no-knock raid justify the early morning gunfire?
[url=http://www.inquisitr.com/1475259/no-knock-raid-leads-to-dead-officer-but-no-drugs-prosecutors-pushing-for-death-penalty-anyway/#IjbYL8MSv4rSlikt.99]Source[/url]
The irony is that they want him to die for killing an officer when they broke though his window early in the morning and found nothing, yet Darren Wilson is still free after killing Michael Brown. There's no justice in corruption
4 Comments • Newest first
It's pretty scary. I don't want to sound like someone that's obsessed with conspiracies, but we are slowly turning into a police state. There needs to be a lot more accountability and we're simply just not seeing it anymore. The legal system protects law enforcement too much to the point of crazy scenarios like this occurring. Truth be told, this is the fault of a broken system; it is without question that a more efficient, guarded and level-headed approach to the situation would have kept this law enforcement officer alive and spared everyone else the legal drama that is about to come.
[quote=baddenboy12]If the officers and their overseers took an objective look at what happened, they could easily tell that this is no one's fault (maybe the informant), but rather a fault in their system's methodology. You have to account for these kinds of possibilities when taking action on "suspects". What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty?[/quote]
I wholeheartedly agree with you, but I'd doubt they'd listen to reason. It was 5:30 in the morning and they're breaking down windows, not doors. Anyone in their right mind would immediately assume it was an intruder. What's even worse is that this has happened before, except to a white man, and the jury refused to indict him, even after admitting to shooting police: [url=http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/02/08/texas-man-who-killed-police-officer-during-no-knock-raid-will-not-face-murder-charge-grand-jury-refuses-to-indict/]source[/url]
If the officers and their overseers took an objective look at what happened, they could easily tell that this is no one's fault (maybe the informant), but rather a fault in their system's methodology. You have to account for these kinds of possibilities when taking action on "suspects". What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
And this is why you have a warrant.