Well, first I personally think he was guilty, just not of felony assault, as the intent wasn’t there. Discharge in a compact area for sure, but the state doesn’t have any charges above assault and below felony assault, so I can see why the state had no choice except to charge ADW.

Do I think you’d have the same outcome had the defendant been some mid 30’s average male? I’m not sure.

My line of thinking was that he as an off duty officer was that he would have been found guilty because he should have know it was stupid. Which he certainly had to have thought.

But they acquitted him, which makes me think they might have found my hypothetical defendant not guilty as well.

But I also think the jury might have, as a group, given Dolan more slack merely due to the recent bullshit the police have had to deal with over the last few years. Almost as if this was an opportunity to make things fair.

But it’s also well within the possibilities that if the defendant was a lay person, the jury would find that they had made a gross mistake, but lacked the intent as well.

You truly never know how the juries will go without having sat on a jury before.