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Byrd V. Babbitt

In one corner we have capital police officer Lt. Michael Byrd and in the other the scattered ashes of his victim the late Ashli Babbitt. A quick review, Babbitt is dead and Byrd is black. Had the reverse been true and known, our nation’s capital would look like downtown Minneapolis.

The Babbitt homicide[*] has bothered me. I offer the opinions of a noted law professor and California police officer.
Professor Johnathan Turley [1]:

At the time, some of us familiar with the rules governing police use of force raised concerns over the shooting. Those concerns were heightened by the DOJ’s bizarre review and report, which stated the governing standards but then seemed to brush them aside to clear Byrd.

The DOJ report did not read like any post-shooting review I have read as a criminal defense attorney or law professor. The DOJ statement notably does not say that the shooting was clearly justified. Instead, it stressed that “prosecutors would have to prove not only that the officer used force that was constitutionally unreasonable, but that the officer did so ‘willfully.’” It seemed simply to shrug and say that the DOJ did not believe it could prove “a bad purpose to disregard the law” and that “evidence that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment cannot establish the high level of intent.”

I note the Department of Justice has adopted James Comey’s old Hillary Clinton standard, if you first cite the applicable law you then free to ignore it.
So the Byrd case flunks the academic tower view. Howabout the cop of the street [2]. err patrol car view:

We now know what has long been an open secret, that it was Lt. Michael Byrd of the U.S. Capitol Police who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6. In his interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, Byrd was inconsistent in his grasp of the facts, self-contradictory, and ill-informed on the law governing police use of force. If this is how he performed under Holt’s gentle questioning, it’s easy to speculate on how he would hold up under cross-examination by a competent and even mildly aggressive attorney, and I am more confident than ever that the government will settle with Babbitt’s family rather than risk a trial featuring Byrd as the key witness.

Reminds me of an old news story the the DC police of had problem with officers with impaired literacy.  Does seem to fit the case of Lt. Michael Byrd.  How many others?

* Homicide: the intentional killing of a human being by another. Self-evident

*