Jury deliberates fate of former Texas police officer who shot & killed man in his own apartment

A jury on Monday afternoon was deliberating the case of a Dallas police officer who fatally shot her unarmed neighbor in his apartment last year.

Closing arguments in the murder trial of Amber Guyger in the fatal shooting of Botham Jean were completed earlier Monday on what would’ve been Jean’s 28th birthday. The trial began a week ago.

Guyger has testified that she mistook Jean’s apartment for her own after a long shift and that she believed he was a burglar. The 31-year-old Guyger has said she feared for her life.

In closing arguments, Guyger’s defense team said that prosecutors are relying on “sexting and speculation” to convince jurors that the former Dallas police officer was unreasonable in killing Jean in his own apartment.

A week of testimony revealed Guyger had a sexual relationship with her partner on the force and texted him before and after the shooting, including two texts sent while she was reporting the shooting to a 911 dispatcher.

Her lawyers have said she was tired after working long hours and wasn’t paying attention to the many cues that prosecutors say should’ve tipped Guyger off that she was on the wrong floor, in the wrong apartment. Jean’s apartment was on the floor above Guyger’s.

When she took the stand during the trial, Guyger testified that she hates herself and asks for forgiveness every day. She never meant to take an innocent man’s life, she said.

Prosecutor Jason Fine seized on her testimony in his closing arguments — specifically, her assertion that she would never want anyone to endure what she’s gone through — before attacking Guyger as an unreasonable person who decided to kill Jean before she opened his apartment door.

“Are you kidding?” Fine said, crumpling up a piece of paper from which he was reading. “That is garbage. Most of what she said was garbage.”

The case isn’t about politics or supporting police, he said; it’s about whether Guyger reasonably believed Jean meant to harm her. Not only did she miss myriad signs that she was on the wrong floor, Fine said, but she missed signs that Jean posed no threat.

“Because most burglars, what they love to do, they break in without using any force at all … and then you know what they like to do? They like to plop down on your couch, have themselves some ice cream, smoke some weed and watch some TV,” Fine said, referring to testimony about Jean’s actions in the minutes before he was killed.

Stand your ground at play?

Though prosecutors objected to the defense applying castle doctrine or stand your ground laws in the case because Guyger was in Jean’s home, not the other way around, the judge allowed it, and the defense leaned on it in closing arguments.

Attorney Toby Shook asked jurors to consider the evidence from Guyger’s perspective: She thought she was at her apartment, found the door open, went inside and discovered a large man in what she thought was her living room. She felt her life was in danger, Shook said, and acted accordingly.

“The law recognizes that mistakes can be made. It’s always tragic. The law’s not perfect. It’s tragic, but you have to follow this law,” Shook told jurors. “Who would not have sympathy for Botham Jean? Wonderful human being — died in these horrible, tragic circumstances. Who would not have sympathy for his family or anyone in that position? Everyone does, but that is not part of your consideration as a jury.”

Shook accused prosecutors of working to produce an emotional verdict — by introducing Guyger’s past affair, her text messages, how she contacted police and the manner in which she conducted CPR on Jean. The prosecution’s assertion that she did not follow police protocol is also moot because she was off-duty and believed she was walking into her own apartment at the time, Shook said.

“You can be angry with her. You can hate her, but you can’t convict her because that’s no evidence as to the decisions that were made in that apartment,” Shook said.

Fellow defense attorney Robert Rogers focused on the sacrifices Guyger made as a peace officer, describing her as “an ordinary and prudent person who made a mistake.”