A jury has apparently found Chandler Detective Dan Lovelace "not guilty" in the murder of Dawn Rae Nelson.
I have to say that I'm somewhat surprised, although I was never comfortable with them convicting the guy of murder. Manslaughter? Sure. But not murder.
She was caught in the act of commiting a felony (filling a fake prescription) and then attempted to commit felony flight. Does that mean she deserved to die? No. Do I have a whole lot of sympathy for her?
No, I don't.
Maybe that makes me a bad person. But to me, he didn't just outright kill her in cold blood. He was trying to make an arrest and things got out of hand. Its not right, but I just don't buy murder.
I think the prosecution got greedy going for murder. If they had charged him with a lesser charge, they may have gotten a conviction. Granted, the judge gave the jury that option and they still came back "not guilty". But I still think it may have been easier to sell them on a manslaughter charge outright.
Ultimately, I think that's why Scott Peterson will be found "not guilty". The prosecution never should have gone for first degree murder of Laci and Conner. A more believable scenario is that she found out about his affair, they got into an argument, things got out of hand and he accidentally killed her. That's not murder one, and THAT jury does not have the option to find him guilty on a lesser charge.
My personal opinion is that he deserves the death penalty. Any slimeball who could kill his pregnant wife shouldn't be allowed to walk the earth. I just don't know that the prosecution will be able to sell a California jury on murder one.
Back to the story at hand--I'll be interested to read more about the Dan Lovelace jury decision when the details come out.
Posted by geekchik at July 9, 2004 04:27 PMJust remember, obey cops in Chandler!
Posted by: James at July 9, 2004 05:28 PMFrom personal experience, Chandler P.D. is on a powertrip and needs to be put in their place. Obviously the INS and Internet porn scandals failed to do that.
It is my belief that when a person becomes a police officer, they assume a certain amount of risk that the ordinary citizen does not; therefore, they should be held to a higher standard of the use of deadly force than the average citizen.
This was a slam dunk case in my opinion and the jury failed all of us. A private citizen, in the same situation, would have been easily convicted.
Luckily, Lovelace's superiors saw through the bullshit defense arguments and fired Lovelace for not following procedures and quickly settled a civil suit to the tune of 1.9 million.
We can only hope that the Arizona Peace Officers Standards and Training board revokes Lovelace's certification as well so this trigger happy cowboy is reduced to Mall Cop.
When Chandler police officers attended ex-cop Dan Lovelace's preliminary hearing on murder charges, they couldn't help but worry about someday finding themselves in his position.
After three days of lengthy and sometimes highly technical testimony, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge James Keppel found probable cause to try Lovelace on second-degree murder and endangerment charges in the shooting death of Ahwatukee Foothills mother Dawn Rae Nelson.
Posted by: Alvin at November 5, 2004 01:25 AM