Former Dallas cop in wrong-apartment slaying trial testifies in own defense

A former Dallas police officer who said she always wanted to be a cop began testifying in her own defense on Friday on charges that she murdered her unarmed neighbor in his apartment after she entered by accident.

The former officer, Amber Guyger, 31, was coming off a 13-1/2 hour shift when she walked into the central Dallas apartment of Botham Jean, a 26-year-old black PwC accountant, and shot him as he ate ice cream, thinking that he was a burglar in her apartment one floor lower. It is relatively rare for criminal defendants to testify in their own defense at trial since it subjects them to cross-examination by prosecutors who will attempt to poke holes in their story.

Guyger, who is white, told the jury that police work was "the one thing I wanted to do since I was little." She recounted police training that focused on learning to control suspects and the importance of seeing their hands, which kicked in as she spotted Jean.

The shooting, one of a series of high-profile killings of unarmed black men and teens by white U.S. police, sparked street protests, particularly after prosecutors initially moved to charge Guyger with manslaughter, a charge for killing without malice that carries a lesser sentence than murder. In contrast to cases like the killings of Michael Brown in Missouri and Philando Castile in Minnesota, Guyger shot Jean, while she was off duty, rather than while responding to a reported crime.

During the trial, Guyger's defense attorney, Robert Rogers, said she was "on autopilot" after a long workday on Sept. 6, 2018, when she mistakenly parked on the wrong flood in the building's garage and was able to enter Jean's apartment because he had left the door slightly ajar. Assistant District Attorney Jason Hermus told the jury of four men and 12 women that Guyger missed blatant clues that she was not in her own apartment - including the smell of marijuana smoke - because she was distracted after a 16-minute phone conversation she had on her commute home with her former police partner, with whom she had a romantic relationship the previous year, according to her partner's own testimony.

Prosecutors also raised the question of why Guyger did not try to revive Jean after she knew she had shot an innocent man - underscoring to jurors that there are photos showing Guyger outside using her phone at the very moment responding officers worked to save Jean.