DALLAS _ The defense rested its case Monday in the murder trial of former police officer Amber Guyger for killing Botham Jean in his Dallas apartment last year, setting the stage for each side to present closing arguments.
Guyger, 31, has said she mistook Jean's apartment for her own the night of Sept. 6, 2018, and fatally shot 26-year-old Jean, thinking he was a burglar.
Throughout the trial, her defense has presented the shooting as a "tragic, but innocent" mistake. The prosecution has questioned how Guyger missed visual cues that would have told her she was in the wrong apartment and has said Guyger didn't provide proper first aid to Jean after she shot him.
Prosecutor Jason Fine began the state's closing arguments by reading something Guyger said during her testimony: "I never want anybody to have to go through or even imagine going through what I felt that night."
"Are you kidding me?" he said, crumpling up the paper he was reading from. "That is garbage."
He urged the jury to think from Jean's perspective _ for them to imagine coming home from a long day and sitting down with a bowl of ice cream.
He said Guyger missed five key cues when she was standing at Jean's door: the apartment sign, his red door mat, the blinking red light signaling her key wasn't recognized, the lack of a whirring motor sound from the key and the feeling of walking from concrete onto carpet.
"I mean, my God. This is crazy," Fine said. "It was unreasonable _ she should've known she was in the wrong apartment."
He said Guyger decided before she went inside Jean's apartment that she would "execute" whatever was in there. Had Guyger retreated, Fine said, Jean would still be alive.
"Nobody had to die. She caused his death. She acted unreasonably," Fine said.
He implored the jury to "do the right thing," telling them that they are the voice of the community.
"I believe that y'all will do the right thing, that y'all will follow your oath, that y'all will follow the law, apply it to these facts, and render the only, only true verdict, the only just verdict," Fine said, "and that is that this defendant murdered an innocent young man in his home."
Defense attorney Toby Shook told the jury they could not decide whether Guyger is guilty based on "emotion and sympathy."
"That's hard, especially in a case like this," he said. "You'll never see a case like this that's so tragic. So tragic."
He told them they had to look at the case "coolly and calmly."
Shook pointed to prosecutors' suggestion that Guyger didn't do enough to save Jean, saying it was designed to get the jury angry and emotional.
He said the "hard truth" was that no amount of first-aid or proper CPR would have saved Jean.
"He couldn't survive because of the wound he received," Shook said. "CPR wasn't going to help."
Then, he pointed to two texts Guyger sent to her partner, Martin Rivera, while she was still on the phone with 911.
"You can hate her for sending that text. You can be angry with her. You can hate her, but you can't convict her" based on emotion, Shook said.
He said Guyger "made a series of horrible mistakes" the night she killed Jean.
Robert Rogers, another of Guyger's defense attorneys, said the prosecution failed to "do their duty" and show that Guyger wasn't reasonable in her actions.
"We actually, even though we have no duty, we showed you how this was a reasonable mistake," he said.
"The state, what did they bring you? Sexting and speculation," Rogers continued. "Everything that they have done has been to try to distract you and trick you from looking at the law in this case because they know that if you apply it correctly, that Amber Guyger is not guilty."
Court was in session but abbreviated Saturday _ jurors heard only five minutes of testimony before recessing for the day.
Prosecutors and Guyger's defense spent much of the morning in a hearing outside the jury's presence in which the defense tried to certify Craig Miller, a former Dallas ISD chief and former Dallas deputy chief, as an expert witness.
The defense wanted jurors to hear testimony from Miller and Texas Ranger David Armstrong about their beliefs that Guyger was reasonable in shooting Jean based on her belief that he was an intruder in her apartment.
But state District Judge Tammy Kemp ruled that neither of them could offer testimony on Guyger's "reasonableness" the night of the shooting. That will be left up to each juror.
After the prosecution rested its case Thursday, Guyger was her defense team's first witness when she took the stand Friday morning.
She tearfully recounted the night of Sept. 6, 2018, which she said she would always regret. She told jurors she shot Jean because she was afraid.
"I was scared whoever was inside of my apartment was going to kill me, and I'm sorry," Guyger said through tears, her voice shaking. "I have to live with that every single day."
During cross-examination, prosecutor Jason Hermus grilled the former police officer, asking why she didn't call for backup when she heard "shuffling" inside what she thought was her apartment.
