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Former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger will remain in prison after a Texas appeals court denied her second appeal to overturn her conviction for Botham Jean’s murder.
After having a previous appeal denied by The Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas in Dallas, Guyger took her request to the Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin. Her attorneys made the argument that her charges should be reduced from murder to negligent homicide.
Since the night of Jean’s death in September 2018, Guyger has maintained that she believed she had entered her own home, one floor down when she entered his apartment. In light of that version of the events of that fateful evening, her attorneys claimed Guyger was acting in self-defense when she shot Jean, believing he was an intruder.
According to WFAA, Guyger’s attorneys once again presented a “mistake of fact” argument during last week’s appeal hearing, but the court said that, in criminal law, the argument doesn’t fit the circumstances of Jean’s death.
The court further ruled that the claim of self-defense doesn’t negate Guyger’s intent to kill Jean.
The decision on Nov. 17 was consistent with what Justices Lana Myers, Robbie Partida-Kipness, and Chief Justice Robert D. Burns III had ruled over the summer.
“That she was mistaken as to Jean’s status as a resident in his own apartment or a burglar in hers does not change her mental state from intentional or knowing to criminally negligent,” the judges wrote.
Following her original appeals court loss, an attorney for Jean’s family told NBC 5 that they were relieved to hear the court’s decision and not shocked by the results.
As it stands, the former Dallas cop will remain behind bars in a Gatesville, Texas, prison, serving a 10-year sentence which would see her released in 2029. Guyger will be up for parole in 2024.
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