This week on Impact of Murder, accountant Botham Jean was shot dead in his apartment in Dallas in September 2018 by his police officer neighbor, Amber Guyger.
Guyger was a five-year veteran with the Dallas Police Department when she burst into the home of Bothan Jean and shot him dead.
Guyger lived in the apartment below Jean and had been returning home after a long shift. She was still in uniform but was off duty. She claims she entered Jean’s apartment believing that it was her own, and was startled to discover what she thought was a burglar.
Amber Guyger accused of racism in Botham Jean murder
Guyger believed she was in danger and fired her service weapon at Jean, who was sat on a couch watching TV. Guyger is white, and Jean is Black, which led to accusations of racial profiling, racism, and police brutality on the part of the former police officer.
At Guyger’s trial in October 2019, the prosecution demanded that she be sentenced to at least 28 years in jail, a symbolic number that represented the age Jean would have turned that year. However, in a move that shocked many, Guyger was sentenced to a mere ten years.
In another dramatic move during the trial, Jean’s brother, Brandt Jean, publicly forgave the killer and asked if he could embrace Guyger. The murderer ran to him, leading to an emotional hug on the floor of the courtroom.
In August 2020, Guyger’s lawyers launched an appeal asking that her conviction be overturned and that she be granted a new trial. They argue that their client believed she was preventing a robbery and should be charged with negligence rather than homicide, which carries a shorter sentence.
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Follow the links to read about more shocking killings profiled on Impact of Murder.
Phillip Cabrera burst into the home of his ex-wife and her two children, where he found her friend, Andrew Shepard. Thinking the pair were having an affair, Cabrera shot Shepard in the stomach as the victim held an infant child in his arms.
On February 27, 2012, in Chardon, Ohio, seventeen-year-old Thomas Lane stood up in his school cafeteria and began firing rounds from a 22 caliber handgun. While wearing a T-Shirt with the word “killer on it, he murdered three of his fellow students and maimed another two. Lane pleaded guilty to murder but never revealed his motive.
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This young man was killed/murdered in the prime of his life. He was in his own apartment!! I find it unfathomable that Police Officer Guyger didn’t notice she was on the wrong floor, apartment # wasn’t hers, even when the door opened and she walked in, didn’t observe the FACT that this wasn’t her apartment. I can say many different scenarios of how I would’ve dealt with this situation. I’m not a Police Officer, I’m a white female and I find it hard to believe how an Officer of the Law, notices something wrong when she puts her key into a lock that is supposed to be “HER” apartment and doesn’t do the quick observation of the fact it isn’t. She should’ve been sentenced to life or death in my opinion. 10 years is not Justice to Botham Shem Jean.