Amber Guyger, the former Dallas police officer sentenced to 10 years in prison last year for the 2018 shooting death of her upstairs neighbor, has filed an appeal to get her conviction overturned, according to reports.
Guyger’s legal team hopes to have the murder conviction reduced to a felony count and then get a new punishment hearing, FOX 4 of Dallas reported.
The former officer’s defense lawyers claim Guyger was convicted on insufficient evidence and that a “rational jury” would have concluded her actions were justified, the report said.
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According to authorities, Guyger entered the Dallas apartment of neighbor Botham Jean, 26, and fatally shot him in September 2018. Guyger claimed she entered the apartment by mistake, thinking it was her own residence, and fired at Jean because she thought he had broken into the apartment.
Guyger was fired by the Dallas Police Department after the shooting, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Guyger’s defense team had argued that Guyger was mistaken about which apartment she entered because the layout of her floor and that of Jean’s floor were identical and he lived in the apartment directly above her.
She had also just finished a long shift at work, making fatigue a possible factor in her mistake, defense lawyers had claimed during the trial.
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Of 71 tenants interviewed, 44% said they had entered the wrong apartment on the wrong floor and 23% said had gone to the wrong floor and tried to use their key to enter the wrong apartment, court documents say, according to the newspaper.
Botham Jean’s younger brother Brandt Jean hugs convicted murderer and former Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger after delivering his impact statement to her after she was sentenced to 10 years in jail, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2019, in Dallas. (Associated Press)
Prosecutors argued that Jean had been eating a bowl of ice cream inside his apartment when Guyger entered, negating her claim that he appeared to pose a threat to her.
After Guyger was sentenced last year, Jean’s brother, Bra