VT woman on video cutting cop’s throat with knife acquitted

[HCM]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/woman-slit-throat-aqcuitted-attempted-murder-article-1.1815198

Vermont woman shown on video cutting cop’s throat with knife acquitted of attempted murder


A Vermont woman who sneaked up behind a police officer while under arrest and allegedly tried to slit his throat with a knife was found not guilty of attempted murder.
Jennifer Berube, 40, was acquitted of attempted second-degree murder and a lesser charge of attempted aggravated assault on Friday by a jury in Rutland, a city in western Vermont about 60 miles south of Burlington.
Berube and her former husband, John MacLean III, were arrested in December 2012 for trying to use a stolen credit card, the Times Argus newspaper reported.
While in police custody, Berube, who was homeless and hooked on heroin at the time, believed she heard MacLean trying to hang himself with his shoelaces in his holding cell, the Times Argus newspaper reported.



In a bid to help, she slipped a Leatherman tool out of a hidden jacket pocket and attacked Officer Damon Nguyen with it.
Surveillance footage from inside the station house showed Berube grabbing Nguyen by the neck with a 2-inch blade in her hand before getting overpowered by several other officers.


Nguyen suffered a cut near his jugular vein and was treated at a hospital.
He has since recovered and was back on the job.
It took the 12-man jury less than two hours to acquit Berube.
During the trial, her defense attorneys argued she was merely trying to scare the officer, not kill him.
"She's an RN. She knows how to use a knife. If she wanted to kill she would have plunged the knife right in," attorney Daniel Sedon told the Times Argus after the verdict.

[DocGKR]

WTF??? Was the jury insane?

[HCM]

WTF??? Was the jury insane?

I can only guess 12 man jury and attractive female defendant = acquittal.

[HCountyGuy]

Fucking bullshit.

[GardoneVT]

“she slipped a Leatherman tool out of a hidden jacket pocket and attacked Officer Damon Nguyen with it....”

-so this means she was placed into custody with a Leatherman tool? To think,James Bond only had his watch!

[WobblyPossum]

This was from a few years ago. The officer involved is a friend of mine. My understanding of the issues with the trial is that the jury waffled on whether or not the state proved intent to kill. Aggravated assault was an option but it blows my mind the jury didn’t convict in that.

The assailant has since changed her name and is regularly cited for retail theft in the community along with her boyfriend.


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[GardoneVT]

This was from a few years ago. The officer involved is a friend of mine. My understanding of the issues with the trial is that the jury waffled on whether or not the state proved intent to kill. Aggravated assault was an option but it blows my mind the jury didn’t convict in that.

The assailant has since changed her name and is regularly cited for retail theft in the community along with her boyfriend.


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Thanks for the context. I’m no doctor,but I’ve stayed at enough Holiday Inns to know a knife attack to the neck shows dedicated intent to kill.

[blues]

That's one giant WTF? Seriously. I guess "attempted" and "intent" no longer have any meaning. Unfuckingbelievable.

[WobblyPossum]

This is the VT statute for Aggravated Assault: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/13/019/01024

Subsection (2) reads: “attempts to cause or purposely or knowingly causes bodily injury to another with a deadly weapon;”

That’s not “serious bodily injury.” It’s just plain “bodily injury” which is defined as such in a previous section: “Bodily injury" means physical pain, illness, or any impairment of physical condition.

“Deadly weapon” is defined as such in the statute covering the carrying of weapons in prohibited places like court houses: “Dangerous or deadly weapon" means any firearm, or other weapon, device, instrument, material or substance, whether animate or inanimate, which in the manner it is used or is intended to be used is known to be capable of producing death or serious bodily injury.

Based on the assailant’s use of the leatherman to cut Damon’s throat, it was a deadly weapon. The cut, if it caused pain, was bodily injury. Thus, the assault caused bodily injury to Damon with a deadly weapon which is the exact wording of the statute for Agg Assault. Beats the crap out of me why they charged the assault as “attempted” and not completed and how the jury could acquit on it. I can, somewhere in the part of my mind that handles rationalizations of bad outcomes and decisions, understand how the jury acquitted on attempted murder. I can’t rationalize how they acquitted on the agg assault.


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[Shoresy]

This was from a few years ago. The officer involved is a friend of mine. My understanding of the issues with the trial is that the jury waffled on whether or not the state proved intent to kill. Aggravated assault was an option but it blows my mind the jury didn’t convict in that.

The assailant has since changed her name and is regularly cited for retail theft in the community along with her boyfriend.

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I'm not privy to the contents of the trial or deliberations, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how they could manage that given the information that *is* publicly available.

This is a pretty solid WTF moment...

[lwt16]

The assailant has since changed her name and is regularly cited for retail theft in the community


Eh, she probably doesn't mean to do that either.

I'm sure the members of the jury wouldn't mind if she helped herself to their belongings when she tires of shoplifting.

[blues]

She should go on the road with OJ.

[BehindBlueI's]

Attempt Murder is so incredibly hard to get filed here, and that proving intent beyond a reasonable doubt is why.

[blues]

https://previews.123rf.com/images/konstantynov/konstantynov1305/konstantynov130500053/19563377-headless-man-holding-his-head-on-white-plate.jpg

"I hand it to them on a platter and they tell me it's a weak case."

[Qaz98]

Saying she is an RN, and therefore knows how to kill, is the dumbest statement. That's like me saying, I'm a veteran so I know how to use a firearm.

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[Greg]

I think homeless and hooked on heroin kinda stomps all the credibility one might accrue as an RN.

[Hambo]

Saying she is an RN, and therefore knows how to kill, is the dumbest statement. That's like me saying, I'm a veteran so I know how to use a firearm.

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She was an RN before she became a homeless drug addicted asshole. Be that as it may, if I were the guy she cut I wouldn't be pissed at her. I'd be pissed at whoever searched her and failed to find the knife.

[BehindBlueI's]

Be that as it may, if I were the guy she cut I wouldn't be pissed at her. I'd be pissed at whoever searched her and failed to find the knife.

I'd be pretty pissed at both.

[olstyn]

She was an RN before she became a homeless drug addicted asshole. Be that as it may, if I were the guy she cut I wouldn't be pissed at her. I'd be pissed at whoever searched her and failed to find the knife.

Seems to me that it's legitimate to be pissed at both the person who failed to find the knife *and* the person wielding it.

[Hambo]

I'd have settled things with her immediately, after which I'd have felt pretty good. Because I'm a happy guy. :D But I do have a problem tolerating fuck-ups.

[JohnO]

Don’t forget these are the people (jurors) who elected Bernie Sanders!

[Erick Gelhaus]

Sickitating! Sadly, not at all surprising.

[VT1032]

The assailant has since changed her name and is regularly cited for retail theft in the community along with her boyfriend.

Hopefully, she'll resist arrest one of these times and you all can "scare" her back...

The jury is fucking nuts, no way around it.

[fixer]

Wow. This is like the Hillary defense finally going into practice.

[PD Sgt.]

Attempt Murder is so incredibly hard to get filed here, and that proving intent beyond a reasonable doubt is why.

Very true. While most people with common sense would realize that the likely result of slicing someone’s throat, or shooting them multiple times about the torso would be death, it is hard to prove to a jury that that was the intended result. You almost need external evidence like the actor yelling, “Die m-f er!” Even then it is dodgy.

We once had an officer injured as the result of a purposeful assault, and the jury found the defendant not guilty. When polled later the jurors actually stated that they believed the assault took place, but that being assaulted and injured was part of an officer’s job and should be expected.

[Peally]

Another state to stay the fuck away from for your own legal and physical safety.

[Erick Gelhaus]

Another state to stay the fuck away from for your own legal and physical safety.

Had to go there to finish grad school. Nope, not likely to return.

[psalms144.1]

More evidence that the entire NE of this country has gone so far left that it's unsalvagable. God help me, I HAVE TO get out of this asylum...

[awmp]

WOW! What a mess!

[Larry Sellers]

Spend a weekend in a lake house with a woman who's headed to southern TX to do pro bono legal representation for kids who "Trump locked in cages"

Shockingly she resides in DC...

[Zincwarrior]

So this person was not convicted of anything? Thats not logical. (wanders off scratching head).

[WobblyPossum]

So this person was not convicted of anything? Thats not logical. (wanders off scratching head).

Correct. She was acquitted of all charges.

[HCountyGuy]

I really want the jurors to explain their reasoning for that decision, because it’s outright BS. This kind of crap scares the hell out of me.

Imagine some whack job liberal (Okay I repeated myself) stabbing or shooting a Trump supporter and then using the “Well I wasn’t trying to kill them” defense and more jurors like the ones in this case granting a pass. Call it a reach but you know it’s not far from a real possibility given the daily occurrences in this country.

[TAZ]

Im confused. Haven’t served on a criminal jury, but does the jury get to consider aggravated assault as an option or just what the DA brings to the table.

As cynical as this may sound, it looks like that community is getting exactly what they deserve.

[HCountyGuy]

Im confused. Haven’t served on a criminal jury, but does the jury get to consider aggravated assault as an option or just what the DA brings to the table.

As cynical as this may sound, it looks like that community is getting exactly what they deserve.

An earlier post by someone who knows the officer involved mentioned aggravated assault was presented as an option, yet they still acquitted.

ETA Quote:


This was from a few years ago. The officer involved is a friend of mine. My understanding of the issues with the trial is that the jury waffled on whether or not the state proved intent to kill. Aggravated assault was an option but it blows my mind the jury didn’t convict in that.

The assailant has since changed her name and is regularly cited for retail theft in the community along with her boyfriend.


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[Chance]

I believe this is the video. Not 100% - the dates on the story are a little hard to track.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrRK1xI6eks

[WobblyPossum]

This is just a guess for why the jury acquitted on Aggravated Assault but it’s the best I came up with: A local newspaper reported the charges as Attempted Murder and Aggravated Assault causing serious bodily injury. If that is correct, and the specific subsection of the agg assault statute that was charged was the subsection that involved causing serious bodily injury, and not the subsection I explained earlier involving causing any bodily injury with a weapon, the jury would likely not have considered the cut on the neck as serious bodily injury. If the injury was not serious bodily injury, then the state did not prove each element of the crime for that specific subsection.

BBI had a good explanation of what SBI actually is in the thread about the FBI agent that had the ND in the bar.
Chance, that is the video of the incident.

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[HCountyGuy]

I believe this is the video. Not 100% - the dates on the story are a little hard to track.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrRK1xI6eks

After watching that there shouldn’t have been a trial, just an autopsy and an ass-chewing for the officer(s) who didn’t search her adequately.

[blues]

^^^You've got to be f'n kidding me. What the fuck is in the water in VT to acquit that psycho bitch?

[Totem Polar]

I remember that video; that’s some FUT, right there. The nuances of charging are above my pay grade, but walking on that clearly observable assault should not be an option.

[TAZ]

Wow. I guess the latter part of my initial post makes more sense. That community deserves exactly what it gets. When that crazy broad flips her lid again and actually kills someone I wonder how loud the gnashing of teeth will be that the police let the community down. No retards! You let yourselves down.

[Gadfly]

And shit like this is why the guy who said he was gonna kill me, as he tried to kill me, got plead out to a misdemeanor. You just never know what a jury will do.

I watched some Justice Files type show last night. A cold case on a rapist was featured. After many many years, a DanA hit was found that linked the guy to multiple violent rapes. The guys lawyer said he would plead to 30 years. One victim refused the 30 year plea. In the end, he got life. But what that victim did not seem to realize is he could have just as easily walked on some BS technicality. 30 year sentence where he will have to serve at least half seems like a safer bet than rolling the dice.

Anyway, I have seen all kinds of confusing shit in 20 years on the job. This is somewhat shocking, but over the years, not much surprises me these days. Juries are stupid. (They let OJ walk, remember)


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[Bart Carter]

Next thing you know a 6 time deported illegal will kill a U.S. citizen and be found not guilty of anything. Oh wait ... :rolleyes:

[blues]

Next thing you know a 6 time deported illegal will kill a U.S. citizen and be found not guilty of anything. Oh wait ... :rolleyes:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aljrqE7uxOY/maxresdefault.jpg

"What intent? I told him he missed a spot when he was shaving. I was just helping him out."

[mongooseman]

Welcome to the wonderful world of law enforcement.

[Kan S LaTrans]

What The Actual Fuck?

No, I am serious. I mean...What...The...Actual...Fuck?

Smoker chud doesn't "try" to cut an officer's throat...she actually "cuts" his throat proximal to what she as an RN would have known is his jugular...and the prosecution table can't prove intent?

Have the Vermont juries all gone Birkenstock and Batshit?

[Ronin_Jedi]

She was only trying to the poor officer by trying to perform a tracheotomy. But he moved his head to soon.

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