After a jury determined that former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger used excessive force when she shot Botham Jean dead in his home six years prior, the jury sentenced her to pay $98 million.
Guyger, 36, received the civil conviction and punishment five years after being found guilty of Jean’s murder in 2018 and given a ten-year jail sentence.
According to NBC Dallas-Fort Worth, Guyger did not have a lawyer present during the three-day trial. She didn’t have the funds to employ a lawyer, the lawyer who represented her in her criminal trial told the channel.
According to a verdict form, Guyger’s family was given $60 million in punitive damages after the jury determined that he had acted with “malice, willfulness, or callous and reckless indifference” to Jean’s safety and rights.
According to the document, the jury also granted $38 million in compensatory damages for various claims, including loss of earnings and mental distress.
The NBC Dallas Fort-Worth reported that Jean’s family had requested $54 million in damages.
The verdict was described by the family and their legal team as a “powerful testament to Botham’s life and the profound injustice of his death.”
In the statement, they claimed that “this case laid bare critical issues of racial bias and police accountability that cannot be ignored.” “Today’s decision makes it quite evident that law enforcement personnel who commit crimes cannot avoid the repercussions of their acts.
According to Jean’s family’s initial federal lawsuit from 2018, Guyger’s actions on the evening of September 6, 2018, were “clearly excessive and clearly unreasonable.”
At her criminal trial, prosecutors claimed that Guyger, who disputed the accusations, was in uniform but off duty when she returned to her apartment complex in Dallas after working a 13-hour shift.
According to officials, Guyger entered Jean’s flat, a 26-year-old accountant she had never met, thinking it was her own, even though she resided one floor below him.
Jean was eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream in his living room at the time. Guyger stated during her criminal trial that she told him to raise his hands, but he started to shout and move toward her.
“I never intended to kill someone who wasn’t guilty. “I apologize,” Guyger said in his testimony. This is about being afraid, not about hate.
Guyger is Caucasian. Jean was Black and from St. Lucia.
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