Case against cop who killed her neighbor heads to jury

A Dallas police officer’s belief that she was in her own apartment when she fatally shot a neighbor in his home is “absurd,” a prosecutor said during closing arguments at the officer’s murder trial Monday. Assistant District Attorney Jason Fine said Monday that Amber Guyger was “an intruder” in Botham Jean’s home when she killed him last September.

The jury heard closing arguments from attorneys for the prosecution and the defense Monday. They were expected to begin deliberations Monday afternoon.

Guyger tearfully testified last week that she mistook Jean’s apartment for her own after a long shift. Speaking publicly for the first time about the events of that night, she said she feared someone had broken in and that she opened fire using her service weapon when a silhouetted figure walked toward her in the dark apartment

In her testimony Friday, Guyger, 31, repeatedly apologized for killing Jean.

“I hate that I have to live with this every single day of my life and I ask God for forgiveness, and I hate myself every single day,” she said as she looked across the courtroom at Jean’s family.

Guyger should have known she was in the wrong apartment, Fine said Monday, calling her claims “garbage.” He said the case comes down to what is reasonable, and what is “absurd.”

“It’s not a mistake. It’s a series of unreasonable decisions,” Fine said.

Prosecutors said Jean, who grew up in the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia, was unarmed and eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream in his living room when Guyger killed him. Fine said self-defense shouldn’t apply because Jean posed no threat.

“He’s not gonna throw the ice cream at her and kill her, he’s not gonna throw the spoon at her and kill her,” Fine told the jury. “He’s sitting there the same as y’all are right now.”

Amber Guyger, right, and Botham Jean.   AP

In a closing statement, defense attorney Toby Shook accused prosecutors of attempting to appeal to the jury’s emotions, but asked them to review the evidence “coolly and calmly” and apply it to the law.

He emphasized testimony from a Texas ranger that many others in the same apartment complex had mistakenly gone to the wrong apartment. He said the state failed to prove that Guyger’s belief that Jean was an intruder in her own apartment was unreasonable, and that “the law recognizes that mistakes can be made.”

He argued that Jean was coming towards Guyger when she opened fire, not getting off his couch as prosecutors suggested.

“A wonderful human being has lost his life, but the evidence shows it’s just a tragedy — a horrible, horrible tragedy,” Shook said.