Amber Guyger, Ex-Dallas Police Officer, Is Guilty of Murder for Killing Her Neighbor
Ms. Guyger killed an unarmed black man, Botham Jean, in his own apartment on a different floor from hers. She faces up to 99 years in prison.
DALLAS — The case was unusual from the very beginning: An off-duty police officer in Dallas said she came home from work one night last year, and, believing she had found an intruder inside her apartment, shot the man inside.
But it quickly became clear that the officer, Amber R. Guyger, who is white, was in the wrong apartment. And the man she shot was not an intruder, but her neighbor, Botham Shem Jean, a 26-year-old black accountant who was watching television and eating ice cream in the apartment he rented directly above Ms. Guyger’s.
On Tuesday, Mr. Jean’s family braced themselves for the possibility that his death would be treated like many others across the country, in which police officers have been cleared of wrongdoing in the killings of unarmed black men. But that moment never came: A Dallas County jury found Ms. Guyger, 31, guilty of murder, choosing the more serious conviction over a lesser option of manslaughter.
The verdict set off a scene of jubilation across the courthouse in downtown Dallas, a diverse city with a history of racial tensions with the police. Mr. Jean’s mother, Allison Jean, stood up in the courtroom, raised her hands in the air and celebrated with a prayer: “God is good.” In the hallways, supporters shouted an affirmation: “Black lives matter.”
The case did not fit into the familiar narratives of police killings in which officers fired their weapons on duty. But it was widely viewed as a test for whether there was anywhere in America where black men could be safe, if not in their own homes. With Ms. Guyger’s tearful testimony that she was afraid for her life when she saw a silhouetted figure in the darkened living room, the guilty verdict was seen by many activists as a step toward police accountability, and a rebuke of the stereotype that black men are inherently scary.
“This case looks very different than many of the other cases where juries have looked at black victims and not valued their lives,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, a racial justice organization.
Mr. Robinson added that the case could serve as a warning that white people cannot get away with “hurting black people and, at the end, claiming fear.”
The fact that Ms. Guyger was not immediately arrested, and was initially charged with manslaughter, helped spark protests in the days after the shooting.
“This case exposed what’s wrong about how the department handles police shootings,” said Changa Higgins, the head of the Dallas Community Police Oversight Coalition. “It does represent a big shift in the idea of how we hold officers accountable when they murder.”
The trial unfolded in a diverse city — Dallas is 42 percent Hispanic, 29 percent non-Hispanic white and 24 percent black — that notably has people of color in nearly all of the major leadership positions. The mayor of Dallas, the police chief and the Dallas County district attorney are all black, as is the judge who presided over this case. Of the 12 jurors and four alternates, seven are African-American, four appear to be white and five are of other races and ethnicities.
“People in Dallas County worked hard to create an environment where justice is possible,” said S. Lee Merritt, a civil rights lawyer who represents Mr. Jean’s family, contrasting the situation with other cities, like Ferguson, Mo. There, a grand jury made up of nine white people and three black people decided not to indict a white police officer in connection with the 2014 shooting death of an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown.
Mr. Merritt also represented the family of Antwon Rose II, an unarmed black teenager who was killed while fleeing a traffic stop in East Pittsburgh, Pa., last year. In that case, the white officer was acquitted by a majority-white jury.
“You have a progressive judge, which produced a diverse jury, and a district attorney that ran on a platform of police reform,” Mr. Merritt said. “That’s what’s different.”
The Guyger prosecution follows decades of tensions between minority communities and the police in the Dallas area.
In one case from the 1970s, a Dallas police officer was convicted of murdering a 12‐year‐old Hispanic boy during a game of Russian roulette.
Only three years ago, on a warm July night in 2016, five police officers were killed when a black man set out to target white police officers in downtown Dallas, turning a peaceful demonstration against fatal police shootings across the country into a scene of chaos and bloodshed.
And last year, a white former police officer in a Dallas suburb was found guilty of fatally shooting an unarmed black 15-year-old with a high-powered rifle. In that case, the officer was sentenced to 15 years in prison, one year for every year of the boy’s life.
The shooting of Mr. Jean in September 2018 ignited protests and calls for justice, with demonstrations outside Police Headquarters and inside City Hall. After weeks of community tensions and accusations of preferential treatment for the police, a grand jury came back with the increased charge of murder. By that time, she had been fired.
During a weeklong trial, prosecutors sought to paint Ms. Guyger as careless and aggressive on the night she entered someone else’s home, pulled her service weapon and opened fire. Her defense lawyers argued that she made an unfortunate but understandable mistake during a “perfect storm” of circumstances that ended in tragedy.
Originally from the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia, Mr. Jean had moved to Dallas to work for PwC, the accounting firm, formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers. Aware of the dangers of being a black man in America, his family said, he was careful to wear Ralph Lauren dress shirts and drive the speed limit to avoid even routine encounters with the police. He had a big smile and sang at church.
“Botham was the best that we have to offer,” Benjamin Crump, a civil rights lawyer representing the family, said at a news conference after the verdict. “But it shouldn’t take all of that for unarmed black and brown people in America to get justice.”
Mr. Jean lived in an apartment in downtown Dallas, and Ms. Guyger lived directly below him on the third floor.
Ms. Guyger was returning home from a long day of work when she said she accidentally parked on the wrong floor of their complex’s garage. As she walked down the fourth-floor hallway, she said, she did not realize that anything was amiss, nor did she notice the red doormat outside Mr. Jean’s door.
The door strike plate was defective and not fully latched, according to the defense, allowing Ms. Guyger to enter using her own keys.
When Ms. Guyger noticed someone inside, she said, she drew her gun and shouted, “Let me see your hands.” She testified that Mr. Jean was walking toward her and shouting “Hey” when she fired her weapon twice, striking Mr. Jean once in the torso and killing him.
“I was scared he was going to kill me,” she told jurors.
Her testimony conflicted with prosecution witnesses, including neighbors who said they did not hear verbal commands and a medical examiner, who testified that the bullet had a downward trajectory, indicating that Mr. Jean was either getting up from a seated position or was “in a cowering position” when he was shot.
After the verdict, Ms. Guyger sat quietly at the defense table. Her mother began crying audibly.
The jury, which will decide the length of punishment, began hearing testimony in the sentencing portion of the trial Tuesday afternoon. Ms. Guyger faces between five and 99 years in prison.
Prosecutors sought to draw the jury’s attention to past social media posts by Ms. Guyger, including a post, “Kill first, die last” that she had saved to a page for “quotes and inspiration.”
The prosecution also highlighted a text they said Ms. Guyger sent while working at a parade celebrating the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When asked when the festivities would end, she wrote: “When MLK is dead … oh wait …”
Mr. Jean’s mother also testified on Tuesday, her voice dropping to a whisper when she recalled the moment she found out her son had died. She told the jury that she has often been sick and unable to work since the loss of her son, whose birthday fell during the trial. He would have been 28.
“My life has not been the same,” she said. “I cannot sleep. I cannot eat.”
Marina Trahan Martinez reported from Dallas, Sarah Mervosh from New York and John Eligon from St. Louis.
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