AMBER Guyger, a Police officer in Dallas, returned home on 6th September last year from a thirteen and a half-hour shift.
Parking her car in the apartment block’s multi-storey car park, she walked to her apartment. She found the door ajar. Pushing it open, she drew her gun and walked inside. She saw a large man standing in the hall. Guyger shouted for him to show his hands.
Instead of complying, the man advanced towards her in a fast-paced walk, shouting ‘hey, hey!’ Fearing for her safety, she shot him twice in the chest, with fatal result.
So far, so normal in the American way of dealing with burglars. Guyger reacted instinctively, albeit with the heavy trigger finger that is common to homeowners, law enforcement officers and mardy, unpopular teenagers in the USA.
In America, being shot dead for intruding in someone else’s home usually attracts scant sympathy. The justice system operates a so-called ‘castle law’; your home is your castle and there is little or no requirement for a homeowner to consider what force is reasonable in dealing with a home invader. Few cases where burglars are shot dead ever end up before a jury.
Amber Guyger’s did, because of the important distinction that her victim, a chartered accountant named Botham Jean, wasn’t, in fact, the intruder; Guyger was. Distracted after her long shift, she had driven up to the fourth floor of the car park instead of the third and walked straight into Dean’s home instead of her own. Evidence at her trial showed that the apartments’ layout was confusing; most residents on the third and fourth floors of the block had at some time made the same mistake.
It seems that Guyger recognised almost immediately that she had made a terrible error. She then, discreditably, was moved more to protect her position than to save Dean’s life. Administering some perfunctory CPR with one hand, she texted her partner with the other. “I’m f****d.”
She was. The Dallas Police Department disembarrassed themselves of Guyger’s services, and she was indicted for manslaughter. The charge was subsequently amended to one of murder. On Tuesday, a jury – ten out of twelve of whom were non-white – returned a guilty verdict.
Guyger is today starting a ten-year sentence for her crime.
This factual matrix was not in dispute in the trial. Guyger testified that – however mistakenly – she thought that she was under a real threat of death or serious injury. She acted instinctively in using lethal force and thought she had that right.
The prosecution argued that she should never have drawn her gun. Alongside the pistol in her utility belt, she had both a Taser and pepper spray. She was criticised for failing to radio for back-up.
These points may have had some weight, but do seem to be applying a different standard to Guyger than would be expected of any other American homeowner. Maybe the prosecution also thought they didn’t create much of a case by themselves, because they also set about fairly comprehensive character assassination.
The jury saw text messages and social media posts, purporting to demonstrate a dismissive attitude towards black people, a robust/ sick sense of humour around the use of guns, and – how this was admissible evidence isn’t altogether clear, but looks a bit like Foxy Knoxy’s treatment by prosecutors in Perugia – that she was having an affair with a married man and felt ‘super horny’ earlier on the day in question. By British standards, Amber Guyger did not have an entirely fair trial.
The US justice system jails more people than any other jurisdiction in the free world, and you are particularly likely to be jailed if you are black.
The American courts have demonstrated horrendous unfairness to black defendants and victims. Memories of the 1992 case of Rodney King are still vivid; the assault on an innocent black motorist by LAPD officers that triggered the LA riots was satirised by Spitting Image’s sketch, where an all-hooded jury of Klansmen watch CCTV footage of King’s beating in reverse, while a hooded prosecutor explains ‘you can see the officers helping the n****r to his feet’.
It is less usual for white defendants to be on the receiving end of politically tainted verdicts, and depressing to see the jury’s verdict in Amber Guyger’s case described by campaigners as ‘a victory for black people in America’. It is nothing of the sort. A justice system in which politics matters more than evidence is a victory for no-one.
Botham Dean’s family displayed more dignity. Their grief is natural and unsurprising. What is truly astonishing is that they showed little bitterness towards Guyger and put the Christian virtue of forgiveness conspicuously and painfully into practice. Dean’s brother hugged Amber Guyger and told her she was forgiven.
The Judge, too, descended from the Bench to hug Guyger. She handed the convicted defendant a bible and told her she didn’t want to send her to prison. The ten-year jail term imposed was notably lenient for an offence of murder, in a way that is known to practitioners in British Magistrates’ Courts as ‘giving the benefit of the doubt on the sentence’.
Lenient or not, Amber Guyger should not be in prison for murder. She seems to have been sacrificed to expiate the guilt of the whole American system of justice.
Her instinctive use of lethal force inside what she thought was her home has been judged as a proxy for American officers’ excessive use of lethal force against black suspects. In America’s heavily politicised courts, justice itself has been put on trial and found wanting.
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