Dear Editor,
A Judicial Travesty
Many years ago O.J. Simpson was acquitted of a dual murder that he most certainly committed but which was never proven in court. He may not have done the crime, although he almost surely had. It was a travesty of the first order on our legal system. We now have a similar upending/injustice in Dallas County with the conviction and 10-year sentence for a Dallas police officer who mistakenly and tragically shot and killed an innocent, good man in his apartment in that city.
This injustice is the obverse of that earlier California failure in the judicial system, and it is plainly political now. A fine man was killed – a terrible tragedy, like a car crash, A car crash is just as fatal as a gunshot, but it is not a crime. This horrible thing was clearly a tragic mistake. The police officer has the responsibility for her actions; there should be consequences. A good man is dead. It’s a terrible tragedy, but in no way is it murder. She didn’t even know the man. Multiple residents in their building said that they too has sometimes mistaken their apartments, etc. She had come off a 12-hour shift at work and had had a drink on her way home. What happened then was terrible indeed; a fine man was killed, but it was an accident, not a crime.
Dallas County and the City of Dallas have experienced profound social and political shifts in the past 25 years. Both are as liberal as Austin, and both have heavily minority-based positions of authority: county commissioners, city commissioners, mayor, chief of police, district attorney, etc. Wednesday’s issue of the Dallas Morning News was filled with approving statements of the verdict and sentence, e.g., “this was the best outcome for the city.”
This former police officer was a sacrificial lamb to that community. I pray that this travesty will be overturned by the courts or that some other legal remedy may exonerate her.
El Sellers
Fairfield, Texas
