Terry Turner was released from the Caldwell County Jail on May 8. Turner gained notoriety in 2021 after shooting and killing an unarmed man, Adil Dghoughi, who had become lost on his way home in the middle of the night and had pulled into Turner’s driveway to use his phone to get his bearings. It took almost two weeks to arrest Turner and just over two years to put him on trial, where he was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder. 

The wheels of justice can’t turn on a crooked road, and the twisted nature of the criminal justice system was evident from the morning of Turner’s deadly decision. A Caldwell County Sheriff’s Department investigator who had “multiple disciplinary actions taken against him,” according to District Attorney Fred Weber, advised Turner that morning that he wouldn’t have any legal trouble (that investigator, Jeff Ferry, also gave testimony at the trial). It took growing international attention and pressure from the media, prompted by Dghoughi’s loved ones, to get the authorities to issue an arrest warrant for Turner. After his arrest, the amount of time he spent in the county jail before making bail was comparable to a long brunch. 

Furthermore, Dghoughi’s brother said that investigators asked him questions that sounded like they were trying to portray his brother as a bad man. And the testimony that Dghoughi’s girlfriend gave in Turner’s trial revealed cruel manipulations in the Caldwell County interrogation room.

During the trial, Turner’s attorney asked the jury to be kind. He reminded them that the potential punishments Turner could face would mean giving up his firearms so he could never go duck hunting again and losing the ability to go camping outside Caldwell and adjacent counties if he got probation.

And in the end, the jury gave Turner a suspended sentence, allowing Judge Chris Schneider to decide how much time the convicted killer would spend in jail and how much would be spent on probation. Schneider put Turner on 10 years probation, ordered him to pay a $10,000 fine, and spend a total of 180 days in jail: 140 days in one stretch and then four days a year – two days for the anniversary of the killing and two days for Dghoughi’s birthday – each year for the term of his probation.

The Texas Penal Code classifies manslaughter as a second-degree felony – a level of crime that warrants “imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for any term of not more than 20 years or less than 2 years.” 

Even by the State of Texas’ standards, the punishment was lacking.

Turner testified during his trial that when he saw a strange car in his driveway, the first thing he thought was that someone was doing something bad and perhaps trying to steal his belongings. That fear led him to grab his gun and confront the imagined threat – Dghoughi, unarmed, in a car that was backing away from his house. 

Dghoughi had come to the United States from Morocco to seek an education – something that was very important in his family.

He had received a master’s degree in business administration and finance and could have been well on his way in the pursuit of “the American dream.” All the potential that a human life holds was drained out of him when Turner, afraid that someone was stealing his stuff, sent a bullet through Dghoughi’s upraised hand and into his head. 

One of the terms of Turner’s sentence is that he has to go to therapy.  Maybe he will be able to work through whatever has made him so frightened and so focused on his worldly possessions that he felt like he needed to shoot an innocent man who was simply trying to find his way home.

BY ROBIN BLACKBURN