Botham Jean was killed on September 6, 2018. The case is finally going to trial this month.
BY NewsOne
A jury has officially been selected for Amber Guyger — the off-duty police officer who killed Botham Shem Jean in his own in Dallas home back on Sept. 6. Now, Guyger’s team are reportedly searching for a a defense and their latest lie they will sell to the jury is her killing of Jean was a “mistake of fact.”
According to Dallas News, “Guyger’s attorneys are expected to argue that she isn’t guilty of a crime because she made a ‘mistake of fact,’ meaning she believed something to be true but it wasn’t.” The “mistake of fact” argument is often used in Dallas courts and Dallas defense attorney Russell Wilson said, “Mistake of fact is the same thing that you’re hearing when you hear the police say, ‘We thought he had a gun.’”
Back in August, it was reported a new motion by the state said the defense “would argue that her use of deadly force was justified as deadly force in self-defense.” However, the state says that argument requires reasonable “belief that would be held by an ordinary and prudent person in the same circumstances.”
Obviously, an ordinary person would not gun someone down if they went to the wrong apartment.
On Sept. 6, Guyger said that following a long day on the job as a Dallas police officer, she implausibly mistook his apartment for her own and, after ordering Jean not to move, shot him twice before realizing the error of her ways. Her story was met with doubt because of a number of factors, especially her assertion that Jean’s door was ajar. Videos posted on social media by neighbors appeared to show that apartment doors in the building shut automatically, which seemed to indicate that Guyger was lying.
Officer Amber Guyger's claim that Botham Jean's door was ajar when she tried to enter the apartment is being proven false by residents in the building. A resident uploaded a video showing how the door closes after it's opened… (🎥: @RealDLHughley ) pic.twitter.com/Snn9faZwN4
— Atlanta Black Star (@ATLBlackStar) September 12, 2018
In addition to the inconsistencies in her alibis, which have changed several times, Dallas police, of which Guyger was a member for five years before being fired, appeared to be helping to cover up the shooting for their colleague. The department was accused of allowing Guyger enough time to scrub her social media accounts and get her story straight before turning herself in three days after killing Jean. It also gave Guyger enough time to move out of her apartment, which was never searched by police despite five warrants allowing them to do so.