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DALLAS – A Texas appeals court on Thursday upheld the murder conviction of a former Dallas cop who was sentenced to jail for shooting his neighbor at his home.
A panel of three state judges ruled that a Dallas County jury had sufficient evidence to convict Amber Guyger of murder in the Botham Jean shooting in 2018.
The 5th Texas Court of Appeals ruling in Dallas means Guyger, who turns 33 on Monday, will continue to serve her 10-year sentence and largely dash her hopes of overturning the 2019 conviction. She will become eligible. on parole in 2024, under his current sentence.
The decision comes in a case that has gained national attention due to the strange circumstances and because it was part of a series of shootings of black men by white police officers.
The judges of the court of appeal did not dispute the essential facts of the case. Guyger, returning home after a long day at work, took Jean’s apartment for his own, which was upstairs just below his. Finding the door ajar, she entered and shot him, later testifying that she thought he was a burglar.
Jean, a 26-year-old accountant, had eaten a bowl of ice cream before Guyger shot him. She was then fired from the Dallas Police Department.
Guyger’s call was based on the claim that she confused Jean’s apartment with hers was reasonable and, therefore, so was the shooting. His lawyer asked the appeals court to acquit him with murder or to substitute a conviction for criminally negligent homicide, which carries a lesser sentence.
Dallas County prosecutors retorted that the error was unreasonable, that Guyger admitted intending to kill Jean and that “murder is a results-based offense.”
The court’s chief justice, Robert D. Burns III, and Justices Lana Myers and Robbie Partida-Kipness agreed with prosecutors, disagreeing that Guyger’s belief that lethal force was necessary was reasonable.
In a 23-page opinion, the judges also disagreed that the evidence supported a conviction for criminally negligent homicide rather than murder, and they pointed to Guyger’s own testimony that she had the intention to kill.
“The fact that she was mistaken about Jean’s status as a resident in her own apartment or a burglar in hers does not change her mental state from intentional or knowledge to criminal negligence,” the judges wrote. “We refuse to rely on Guyger’s misperception of the circumstances which led to his mistaken beliefs as the basis for overturning the jury verdict in light of direct evidence of his intent to kill.”
Defense attorneys could still ask the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals – the state’s highest court for criminal cases – to review the appeals court’s decision. A message to Guyger’s lawyer was not immediately returned.
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