Amber Guyger Joked About MLK Jr.’s Death, Mocked Black Colleges in Text Messages
When a white ex-Dallas police officer recounted her thinking as she fired the two shots that killed an innocent black man in his own living room last year, she told a jury it was fear, not racism, that drove her to pull the trigger.
“This is not about hate,” she testified in court Friday. “It’s about being scared.”
But after a jury convicted Amber Guyger, 31, of murder Tuesday, prosecutors introduced text messages sent by the former officer that show her making offensive statements. In the texts, Guyger jokes about Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, mocks her black colleagues and discusses a dog that her friend warns “may be racist.”
“It’s okay.. I’m the same,” Guyger wrote back about the dog, just days before she fatally shot 26-year-old Botham Jean in his Dallas apartment on Sept. 6, 2018. One minute later, she texted again: “I hate everything and everyone but y’all.”
Prosecutors will use Guyger’s texts, her social media posts and her disciplinary record as a police officer to argue for a harsher sentence, though they haven’t specified what length of prison term they will request. The jury will decide her sentence, which could range from five years to life in prison, without the possibility of probation.
The sentencing phase of the case will continue Wednesday, and the prosecution and defense will share additional testimony, including from Guyger, who is expected to testify for a second time, The Washington Post reported.
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