By Aaron Miller-
The uninvited intruding U.S cop who killed a black man in his own home was a killer who ignored protocol, the prosecutor in a murder trial told jurors in the opening of the case on Monday.
Amber Guyer is the defendant in a high profile murder trial immersed in racial tension, recklessness, intent to kill- all issues to be contemplated by a very attentive jury of 4 men and 12 women, all of whom have been sequestered by the judge to avoid outside influence of media coverage and public opinion.
She will hope to convince a jury to either acquit her or convict her of the lesser charge of manslaughter in a case that will grip America throughout its duration.
Her argument will rest on the defence grounds of a genuine human error that she mistook his home on the fourth floor for hers on the third floor, concluding him to be the intruder that she in fact was. With her family of the killer in court- her father, mother, brother in the court gallery, the prosecutor set out the case against the cop whose whole future is on the line after wrongly taking the life of an innocent career man who happens to be black. The race of the victim adds a complex but inevitable dimension to the case because of the series of innocent killings of black men in the hands of reckless police officers in the U.S.
The prosecution set out its case as follows:
“On Sept. 6, 2018, Bo was 26 years old, and he was sitting inside of his apartment, the sanctuary of his own home at the South Side Flats. He was doing no harm to anybody, which was his way,” Hermus said. “As a matter of fact, the evidence is going to show you that he was sitting in his living room in shorts and a T-shirt, watching TV, eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream, which any one of us would have been doing. When all of a sudden Amber Guyger comes through his front door uninvited.”
Hermus said the evidence would show that Guyger’s intrusion frightened Jean, prompting him to get up off his couch and confront the stranger. But before he could take a few steps toward the door, Guyger was “leveling her gun having acquired her target” and firing twice, hitting Jean in the chest. He told jurors the bullet ripped through Jean’s heart, lung and intestine before lodging in his lower back.
CATALOGUE OF CLUES MISSED/MARIJUANA SMELL
Prosecutor Hermus told the jury that when Guyger got to her apartment complex, she parked on the fourth floor instead of the third, where she had lived for two months. When she arrived at what she thought was her unit, she failed to notice the bright red semi-circle welcome mat in front of Jean’s apartment, he said.
Jean’s apartment was also unlocked, messy and smelled of marijuana, three more signs that should have tipped Guyger off that it was not her apartment, Hermus said.
”Despite the clues, she still burst through the door and opened fire, striking Jean once in the chest as he watched television and ate a bowl of vanilla ice cream.
He was in the sanctuary of his home doing no harm to anyone,” Hermus said. “There he lie on his back in his home bleeding to death alone with his killer, he added:
“No opportunity for de-escalation, no opportunity for him to surrender. Bang, bang. Rapid,” Hermus told the jury.
Tracing Guyger’s steps on the day of the fatal incident, Hermus said that despite working a 13 1/2-hour shift on the day of the deadly encounter, she appeared to be planning a rendezvous with her police department partner and lover. He showed the jury text messages Guyger sent her partner moments before the shooting, writing “Wanna touch” and rusing more sexually explicit language in other text messages.
”Even when she reached Jean’s door and inserted a fob key, she failed to notice she was standing on a red mat, Hermus said. He told the packed court that Guyger’s apartment did not have a mat outside the door.
He told the court Guyger also failed to do what she was trained as a police officer to do if confronted by someone she suspected was a burglar: Retreat, take cover and call for back-up.
“And for her errors…, Botham paid the ultimate price,” said Hermus, asking the jury to find Guyger guilty of murder.
Killed: Innocent Botham Jean
EXHAUSTED
Mitigating for Ms Guyger, her defence attorney, Robert Rogers said in his opening statement that Guyger was exhausted from working 40 hours in four days, including a long overtime shift helping a SWAT team arrest three robbers. Rogers told the jury that Guyger was keenly aware that residents of her apartment complex had experienced recent break-ins and car burglaries. Jason Hermus told the jury of four men and 12 women that Guyger had a 16-minute phone conversation with her former partner, with whom she had a romantic relationship, on the way home from work that night after a 13-1/2 hour shift. Hermus argued that during her communications with her partner, Guyger became distracted and confused about where she was. He said:
UNREASONABLE ERRORS AND DECISIONS
“In the last 10 minutes of Bo’s life, Amber Guyger made a series of unreasonable errors, and unreasonable decisions, and unreasonable choices — the kind of choices and decisions that only she could have stopped,” Hermus said.
He said Guyger’s apartment was directly beneath Jean’s fourth-floor unit. Not only did Guyger mistakenly park on the wrong floor of the complex, she walked down a long hallway, passing 16 different apartments but failed to realize she was not headed to her front door, Hermus said.
HIGH CRIME AREA
“Amber was very aware, based on her job, that where she lived was, unfortunately, a high-crime area,” Rogers said.
He described the configuration of the South Side Flats apartment complex, where Guyger had lived for about two months, as “a confusing place” with floors in the parking garage and apartment doors not clearly marked.
“After this incident, the investigators interviewed and learned that 93 tenants had unintentionally parked on the wrong floor,” Rogers said.
He said another 46 tenants who lived on the floors where Guyger and Jean resided had gone to the wrong apartment and placed their key in the door. Rogers said that after working a long shift, Guyger was on “auto-pilot” and didn’t see the red mat at Jean’s door when she inserted the key and noticed that the door was unlocked.
He said Guyger entered the apartment and seeing the figure of a large individual inside coming toward her, yelling, “Hey! Hey!’ and drowning out her orders for him to show her his hands.
He said she was so exhausted she was “on autopilot” and that dozens of other people who live in the same apartment complex reported they had confused floors because all of them are virtually identical. Assistant District Attorney Jason Hermus told the jury of four men and 12 women that Guyger had a 16-minute phone conversation with her former partner, with whom she had a romantic relationship, on the way home from work that night after a 13-1/2 hour shift.
DISTRACTED
Hermus argued that during her communications with her partner, Guyger became distracted and confused about where she was. He said:
“In the last 10 minutes of Bo’s life, Amber Guyger made a series of unreasonable errors, and unreasonable decisions, and unreasonable choices — the kind of choices and decisions that only she could have stopped,” Hermus said.
He said Guyger’s apartment was directly beneath Jean’s fourth-floor unit. Not only did Guyger mistakenly park on the wrong floor of the complex, she walked down a long hallway, passing 16 different apartments but failed to realize she was not headed to her front door, Hermus said
He said another 46 tenants who lived on the floors where Guyger and Jean resided had gone to the wrong apartment and placed their key in the door. Rogers said that after working a long shift, Guyger was on “auto-pilot” and didn’t see the red mat at Jean’s door when she inserted the key and noticed that the door was unlocked.
He said Guyger entered the apartment and seeing the figure of a large individual inside coming toward her, yelling, “Hey! Hey!’ and drowning out her orders for him to show her his hands.