Amber Guyger… Guilty
posted by Law | October 9, 2019 | In News, OpinionOpen season on unarmed Black men may be closing. On October 2, justice called for its pound of flesh in the case of Amber Guyger, 31, a former Dallas police officer, who was found guilty of the murder of Botham Jean, 27, her neighbor one floor below.
On September 6, Guyger entered the apartment of Botham Jeans, allegedly thinking it was her own. According to ABC News, Jean, an accountant for international auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, was eating ice cream in his apartment when Guyger entered through his unlocked door, and fatally shot him in the chest.
The use of deadly force was certain, right? He was armed and dangerous with a bowl allegedly filled with ice cream, but anything could have been in that bowl, right? We don’t now the ramifications of unlicensed scoop or two of Blue Belle Rocky Road or Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Bean. It gets real in these streets, especially in the Texas September heat.
Please feel free to add your own healthy dose of sarcasm, as I have.
“She wishes she could take his place,” sobbed Karen Guyger, mother of Amber Guyger, according to the Washington Post.
This case is interesting for so many reasons, yet in this tragedy there is a light of hope. This is what many have been calling for: accountability! Accountability for shooting us in the streets, and now in our homes, in our favorite chair, eating our favorite bowl of ice cream.
But I digress.
Accountability is a hat, one size fits all. The Lady Justice has to see us, too.
This is definitely a step in the right direction: as Brandt Jean, 18, brother of the deceased, asked the judge if he could hug the defendant, Amber Guyger. In an emotional embrace, he released Guyer from the weight of her unjust killing of his brother, as reported by the Washington Post.
“I forgive you,” he said from the stand. “Give your life to Christ,” he added.
But Judge Tammy Kemp would levy a sentence of 10 years imprisonment for Guyger’s crime and a bible for her soul.
The lawyer representing the Jean family tweeted on October 3: “10Ys isn’t ‘nothing’ but it isn’t enough.”
Judge Kemp is currently under fire for her presumed leniency and display of affection after serving her sentencing, with an official ethical complaint even being filed according to the Dallas NBC affiliate. According to Dallas News, Guyger potentially faced 5 to 99 years to life. The prosecutor asked for no less than 28 years, as Jean would have celebrated his 28th birthday this year.
Is the blinded Lady Justice peeking from the behind the fold and handing out lighter sentences? Is this white female cop being offered as the sacrifice to appease the gathering protestors, with a Black female judge at the helm, for a crime committed more often by her white male counterparts, which have historically gone unpunished, exonerated or simply unaccountable for the lives they’ve stolen with their badges and privilege?
I will not call this a victory, as there is no winner when a human being loses their life, but I will say this: Black Lives Matter. They do.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.