Hell it may in fact be what happened. I mean what if they upped her Prozac 3 days prior.... ?
Or what if she was going thru "the change"? I didn't catch how old she was. I assume near 48, right there in that window. There's all kinds of drugs out there they write scripts for for that. But that's speculation on my part. I'd sure look if I was her counsel. Blame it on the system and make her the victim.
As discussed, when you face a charge of criminal or culpable negligence or one of the 50 terms states use for the 4-5 levels and so on, it pretty much just matters whether you did it or not. And she did it. Also as discussed, she is free to put all sorts of police professionals experts on to show that she was not negligent or reckless because any good officer would have done the same thing under those circumstances. Good luck with that though, the prosecution fully intends to do the same. Have at it. Then she needs to start getting real about a plea but prosecution might not be willing since they need a conviction to hold their head up in the community.
Of course, as I said, she is also facing a higher charge where some showing of intent would be required. I and I see that El Concho does as well, assume that that pretty much is going nowhere so the lesser charge is where she is at risk. Even the proscutor did not want to charge her that high but went back and upped it when the community mob demanded more. Her utterances after she fired are clear evidence that she had no intent. She fucked up. Nevertheless the higher charge will still be in her defense, and she has to defend against it, and they jury has to see reasons why it does or does not apply. That's why I said, they need to be careful about having an obnoxious defense team who says excessive or politically incorrect things about the victim because the jury could still lash out and conclude things that are nor necessarily fully supported by the law.
In regard to what the defense will actually do, last I heard, a few days ago, they were planning to put on a defense that was mindboggingly stupid. They were pursuing a defense that says the victim was attempting to drive off and even though she fucked and not intend to shoot him that if he had driven off he would be a fleeing felon or would have been dangerous to others given his state of mind so she had the legal right to fire even though she made a mistake. Whoaaaaaaaaaaaa. do not try this game at home.
They also, last I heard, are planning to put her on the stand. They figure she is highly remorseful and her best shot is to appear remorseful if only for a reduced sentence. Their call. Except they want her to just show up and cry a lot and express all sorts of sympathy to the family. In reality though if her defense team is working all sorts of convoluted arguments about what she intended to do or what she was entitled to do under the law they have to cross examine the bejessszus out of her.
She is looking at 2-4 years. Actual in the slammer time. With longer actual sentences being longer but providing for early release. I repeat though, the defense needs to be careful about being too obnoxious and aggressive and talking about dirty toenails and that type of thing. And they need to be careful about highly convoluted defense arguments because it undermines their argument that their client really accepts that what happened was wrong and she is remorseful for it.
What a mess. Hopefully, they have gotten some real lawyers in the last couple weeks. Rittenhouse had a disastrous team in the beginning too. Best thing he did was to get rid of them.
