DALLAS _ Amber Guyger missed many chances to realize she was on the wrong floor of her apartment complex before she shot Botham Jean in his home, a prosecutor told jurors during opening statements of Guyger's murder trial.
But her defense attorney said she was simply on autopilot the night of the shooting _ that she had made an "awful and tragic, but innocent" mistake.
Guyger, 31, was an off-duty Dallas police officer who was still in uniform when she killed Jean, a 26-year-old accountant from St. Lucia, at the South Side Flats near downtown. She says she mistook Jean's apartment for her own the night of Sept. 6, 2018, and thought he was a burglar.
The 12 jurors and four alternates paid rapt attention to the attorneys' openings statements and testimony by Jean's sister and two Dallas police officers, including one Guyger exchanged sexually explicit messages with the night of the shooting. Ten of the jurors are people of color and two are white. Eight are women and four are men. The four alternates are all women. Two are people of color and two are white.
Lead prosecutor Jason Hermus told jurors that minutes before the shooting, after she had pulled into the parking garage, Guyger was carrying on a conversation with her partner _ with whom she had a sexual relationship that "ebbed and flowed."
Prosecutors said that throughout the day leading up to the shooting, Guyger and Officer Martin Rivera had been texting about meeting later that evening, after her shift ended. In a text to Rivera, she wrote she was "super horny today," Hermus said.
Later that night, at about 9:30 p.m., she sent him a Snapchat message that said, "Wanna touch?"
But Rivera testified that they were no longer intimate and that they just flirted with explicit photos and messages. He told jurors there was no plan to meet up that night.
Guyger had been on the phone with Rivera as she drove home. At one point, after she pulled into the parking garage, she pulled over to continue the conversation, Hermus said. At 9:55 p.m., the call ended.
At that point, Jean had "less than three minutes to live," Hermus said.
He said Guyger had failed to spot many clues that should have shown her she was on the wrong floor.
She had worked a long shift that day _ 13.5 hours _ before she left the police substation where she worked about 9:30 p.m. But Hermus made a point to say that Guyger spent several hours of her shift indoors at Dallas police headquarters, where she and a few other officers had taken three suspects for an interview.
"I don't want to give the impression that she was running around chasing criminals all day," said Hermus, who stood in front of jurors but glanced back at Guyger at times.
Guyger parked on the fourth floor, backing into a spot in her white Dodge pickup, Hermus said. Then she missed several clues, he said.
One of Guyger's neighbors, for example, had a large decorative planter outside her third-floor apartment, Hermus said, but no such thing was on the fourth floor. Lighted signs displayed the apartment numbers outside each unit.
"She walks past 16 different apartments and fails to register the number 4 on any one of them," Hermus said.
He held up a bright red doormat that Jean had outside his door. Guyger, on the other hand, had no mat _ only gray concrete outside her door, Hermus said.
She entered Jean's apartment through an unlocked door. Once inside, Hermus said, she missed more clues.
He said Guyger failed to notice the smell of marijuana in Jean's apartment. Presumably, hers did not smell of marijuana, he said. And her apartment was neat, Hermus said. Jean's was cluttered and missing a large table near the entryway that hers had.
He said Guyger made a series of unreasonable errors that led to Jean's death.
"For her errors, for her omissions, Bo paid the ultimate price," Hermus said. Jean's friends in Dallas called Jean "Bo," a nickname his family wasn't aware of until after his death.
Jean's family sat on a wooden bench in the courtroom throughout the first day. Jean's parents, Allison and Bertrum Jean sat beside their son, Brandt Jean, who kept his arm around his grandmother. Jean's sister, Alissa Findley, sat on her other side.
Allison Jean and Findley wore red, which was Jean's favorite color. It's often worn by those who support the family and Guyger's prosecution. Guyger wore blue, a color often associated with police officers.
Guyger, seated next to one of her attorneys, Toby Shook, appeared to be watching the attorneys and witnesses as they spoke, with her head turned slightly to the left. She seemed not visibly react.
Hermus noted that Guyger sent two texts to Rivera while she was on the phone with 911. One said, "I need you ... hurry," and the other said, "I f----- up."
Guyger was outside Jean's apartment when first responders arrived.
"She should have made it her point of existence to take care of that man," Hermus told jurors.
Guyger's defense attorney, Robert Rogers, told jurors that Guyger dreamed as a young girl of joining the police force.
Rogers said Guyger "overcame adversity" in her life but he did not provide any details. He also told the jury they would hear from Guyger, presumably meaning Guyger will testify.
He told jurors that Guyger had "firmly and reasonably" believed that she was in her own apartment the night she killed Jean. He also said Guyger fired because her life was in danger.
Rogers described the South Side Flats apartment complex as confusing and said most residents got around "by feel." He said more than 90 residents had reported unintentionally parking on the wrong floor.
He said prosecutors' suggestion that Guyger was planning to meet Rivera after she got home was false and called the prosecutors' display of text messages "a distraction." The two flirted with each other "all the time," but they hadn't had a sexual encounter in months and Guyger was "trying to move on," Rogers said.
Hermus read through the text exchange between Rivera and Guyger, including sexually explicit messages they sent to each other. Rivera said those messages weren't a plan to meet that evening, and that his sexual relationship with Guyger had ended by the time of the shooting.
"(Just) flirting. Teasing, mainly," Rivera said when asked by one of Guyger's attorneys why he sent those messages despite no longer having a sexual relationship with Guyger.
He added that he had never seen or been to Guyger's apartment, which she moved into two months before Jean's death.
"What was going through Amber's mind was just, 'I'm going home,' " Rogers said. "'I'm done with my day of work, I'm exhausted and I'm going home.'"
She was "on autopilot" when she parked on the fourth floor of the parking garage. She did not note that her neighbor's decorative planter was not on the fourth floor, nor did she note the floor mats, Rogers said.
"She's tired, she's almost home, she's walking the same way she's always walked," Rogers said.
Rogers told jurors that Guyger was able to enter Jean's apartment because the lock didn't work because it wasn't installed properly. The door was supposed to lock when the door shut but it didn't.
Once she entered Jean's apartment, Guyger believed she was confronting a burglar, Rogers said. Prosecutors said Jean was sitting on his couch in a T-shirt and shorts watching football and eating vanilla ice cream when Guyger arrived.
"She's trying to process this as she's stepping into her apartment and at the same time, I'm sure Mr. Jean is thinking, 'What is this person doing? Who is coming into my apartment?' " Rogers said. "He's confused, he's wondering what's going on. She's thinking, 'Why is this man in my apartment?' "
He said Guyger had tunnel vision, so she wasn't noticing the differences between her apartment and Jean's.
Rogers said Guyger started to say "Hands!" but Jean drowned her out, yelling "Hey, hey!"
"Why is he yelling at me? Why is he coming at me? Why is the display of my gun not working? He must have a weapon," Rogers said, describing Guyger's thought process. "He must want to kill me because I caught him burglarizing my apartment, and he's getting closer."
After she fired her gun twice, striking Jean once in the chest, Guyger walked over to where he lay bleeding, Rogers said.
"It starts to dawn on her as she approaches Mr. Jean's body what a horrible, horrible mistake she has just made," Rogers said.
The bullet that killed Jean went into his chest and "devastated" his heart and then traveled to his lung, stomach and intestine before lodging in the muscle between his stomach and back, Hermus said.
The path of the bullet showed that Jean was getting up from a seated position when Guyger shot him. Hermus told jurors that he was not a threat. He could have also been in a cowering position, the prosecutor said. He then took a few steps and fell to the ground.
Rogers told jurors the more likely scenario was that Jean was walking toward Guyger and bent down when he saw Guyger's weapon and then fell backwards.
The second bullet went through Jean's wall and outside. Hermus said it was amazing no one else was hurt of killed.
In response to prosecutors' suggestions that Guyger should have been tending to Jean while on the phone with 911, Rogers said Guyger knew she couldn't physically help him and believed his best chance at survival was to get emergency medical services to him.
He acknowledged that she did text Rivera, her partner, while on the phone with 911, calling him her "rock."
He told jurors that prosecutors wanted to hold Guyger to an "impossible standard."
"They are holding her and twisting and turning and making things that are innocent mistakes into evil acts," he said.
Findley, Jean's sister, testified Monday afternoon. Botham Jean was Findley's best friend, she said, and they spoke nearly every day. Her brother was preparing to celebrate his upcoming birthday before the shooting. Hospital officials called her the night of the shooting, and that's how she learned the news.
In the year since her brother's death, Findley said she's still learning to accept it as a reality.
She often calls his phone to this day because the number is listed as a favorite contact. Findley said she still calls his phone sometimes. She wanted to be in Dallas for the trial to get answers, and hopefully closure.
"I miss him every single day," Findley said.
Findley also testified that her brother smoked marijuana because he was diagnosed with ADHD, a disorder than can make it difficult to pay attention. Findley said the medicine her brother was prescribed made him unable to sleep. Marijuana, she said, didn't change her brother's demeanor. It just made him more mellow and laugh more.
The trial got underway about 12:30 p.m., after more than two hours of delays because of a pretrial hearing.
The defense questioned whether Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot violated a gag order by discussing the case in an interview with KDFW-TV.
In the interview, which aired Sunday night, Creuzot spoke about whether Guyger should have been charged with manslaughter or murder based on the facts of the case. He told the station that murder was the appropriate charge.
"And so this issue of manslaughter that it was manslaughter _ I wrote no, this is more appropriately a murder case based on the facts as reported," Creuzot said in the short clip. "I've studied what we have and I feel comfortable going forward on it, but I don't have any idea as to how it will end up."
State District Judge Tammy Kemp was visibly frustrated to learn of the interview, shaking her head. A gag order in the case prevents prosecutors and the defense from publicly discussing the case.
Guyger's defense moved to renew their motion to change the venue for the trial and asked for a mistrial, which Kemp denied. She questioned the 12 jurors and four alternate jurors individually about Creuzot's interview. All told Kemp they had not seen it or any media coverage about the case since they were chosen as jurors. The jury will be sequestered for the entire trial.
After the jury was dismissed for the day, Kemp asked prosecutors to admonish their boss, Creuzot, and tell him the gag order extends to him.
The trial will resume Tuesday morning.
