Botham Jean’s Mother, Family, Oppose His Killer’s Early Release
Killer Cop Amber Guyger Source: Mesquite Jail / Mesquite Jail
There’s not another headline that could be run about Botham Jean that I can think of that would better summarize the callousness and indifference of the American “justice” system than the following: Ex-Cop Who Murdered Unarmed Black Man Became Eligible For Parole On Her Victim’s Birthday.
Such is the case for Amber Guyger, the former Dallas police officer convicted of murder after she shot and killed 26-year-old Botham Jean.
On Sept. 29, halfway into her 10-year-sentence, Guyger was told she was now eligible for parole. Sept. 29 would have been Jean’s 33rd birthday. Eligibility, I’ll note, is only that. Guyger wasn’t actually released that day, which would have added such insult to injury it would have cemented that Black lives do not, in fact, tmatter in America. However, the prospect that she might be released from prison after serving only half her sentence is still very real, and Jean’s family members are speaking up.
From ABC News:
“We have to deal with that sentence for the rest of our lives. So for the person responsible for taking Botham away from us just unjustly and senselessly, the logical thing to do is to have her serve her full sentence,” Allisa Charles-Findley, Jean’s sister, told ABC News in an interview on Monday. “And 10 years, to me, it’s a light sentence for murder.”
Charles-Findley and her family, including her mother and brother Brandt, who publicly forgave Guyger in an extraordinary moment during her sentencing hearing in 2019, all want to see Guyger serve her full sentence and are planning to share their thoughts in interviews with the parole board next week, she told ABC News.
“Brandt’s forgiveness of Amber Guyger does not mean that she does not get to be punished for her crime,” Charles-Findley said. “Forgiveness doesn’t supersede punishment, so whether he forgave her or not, that has no bearing on her serving her full sentence for committing that crime.”
“She has only been in for five years and we have a lifetime left without Botham,” Charles-Findley said this week.
It’s worth noting, I suppose, that at the time of Guyger’s sentencing, Brandt embraced his brother’s killer and told her she didn’t think she should be sent to prison at all. But at 18 years old, he was effectively a child then.
Far more concerning, and infuriating, was the trial judge, a Black woman, Tammy Kemp, who handed Guyger a bible and hugged her like they were sisters. There are just far too many young Black people sitting in prison right now who made horrible mistakes they wished they hadn’t made and could never fathom a judge sentencing them for murder and then, during the same court appearance, embracing them like they were family. Kemp may be a Black judge, but it just really felt like the power of whiteness was on Guyger’s side, and now that she’s eligible for parole, it still feels that way.
Guyger, who claimed she arrived at Jean’s apartment by mistake after an exhausting 13-hour work shift, cried her eyes out on the stage and elicited a lot of sympathy, even from some of the jurors who, unanimously, did not buy her self-defense claim, or the claim that she believed she was at her own apartment despite all of the visible differences between her home and Jean’s, which was on a whole different floor and included a bright red doormat that Guyger did not have in front her her door. Guyger’s tearful mea culpa from the stand was dramatic. The guilt she expressed over her action while on the stand at her trial, was beyond palpable. But it was also just performative, and certainly didn’t dissuade her from unsuccessfully appealing her conviction multiple times.
In 2021, Jean’s mother, Allison Jean — who was notably far less forgiving of Guyger at the time of her trial — reiterated her opinion that Guyger needed to serve out her sentence in full.
“Amber Guyger needs to sit where she is in prison and accept responsibility for what she did to my son, my family, my country, my world,” she said.
Her words are as true today as they were then, and the family concurs: Forgiveness simply does not equate to an early suspension of justice, especially when it’s so easily arguable that the sentence Guyger was given wasn’t just to begin with.
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