True Crime Stories

  I am not sure how I stumbled across this story but it is once again another one that I have absolutely no idea how I ever missed. Maybe over the years we have all just been numbed by stories of police shootings that we do not even notice them; maybe, despite the fact that it was said to make national attention, it really did not as much as we would like to think. Police shootings are not a new thing, nor were they in 2016 when this one occurred. But, let's be fair in stating that most of the high profile cases we hear about are cases that involve a white officer and a black victim. Later I will get into studies that have been done and maybe show you why this is true. However, before we jump into this case I have a few things I want to delve into first. If you are a regular reader of this blog you may, or may not, have noticed that very few of the blogs mention the race of anyone involved. I have only done so when it was relevant to the story and off the top of my head...

Not long ago I read the book "A Warrant to Kill" by Kathryn Casey.  It was about the shooting death of Susan White by Harris County Texas Sheriff deputy, Joseph Kent McGowen.  I had also seen several episodes of different shows pertaining to this case in the past such as 48 Hours and American Justice.  Per usual though I do not take a case to blog about solely based on one book or even a television show.  I do not simply use one website or one news article.  I dig, and dig until I find all of the information that I want or can find so that I can at least attempt to show all sides of a crime.  If you have read many of my blogs here, you know that I am not one to believe that all those convicted are guilty, but I also most definitely do not believe all that are convicted are innocent. There have been several cases in which I have expressed my views that the person convicted was in fact guilty as charged, however, I disagreed with the tactics taken i...

As I have stated previously often how I come about finding cases to blog about is by watching television shows or seeing news articles.  I then generally put them on a list and when I decide to start working on this again I go through the list.  That is not to say that every case or story on the list makes the cut, and initially I was not sure about this one. At first glance this case comes off as a justifiable police shooting.  It is not until you dig a little deeper and open your mind, as well as remember there are laws to follow, that questions arise. In this case there are just too many questions to ignore. When I first began to dig into this case, the first article I read was pretty cut and dry.  Simply put it reported an Albuquerque officer involved shooting of 19 year old Mary Hawkes. She had been suspected (although later all but confirmed, however, her death makes that moot as there was no conviction) of auto theft and had ran from the police. The res...