A white Dallas police officer was sentenced on Wednesday (US time) to 10 years in prison for killing her black neighbour in his apartment, which she said she mistook for her own unit one floor below.
Amber Guyger didn't appear to show much reaction, at least from the angle of a live camera stream, as the judge read the jury's sentence. It came a day after the jury convicted her of murder in the September 2018 killing of Botham Jean.
Guyger's sentence was met with boos and jeers by a crowd gathered outside the courtroom. "It's a slap in the face," one woman said.
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• Dallas police officer Amber Guyger, who shot and killed neighbour Botham Jean, sentenced to 10 years
Despite the outcry, Jean's younger brother, Brandt Jean, as he addressed Guyger in a victim impact statement after the sentence, told Guyger that he forgave her and that he loved her as he would any other person. He asked the judge if he could hug Guyger, and the two embraced.
"I'm not going to say I hope you rot and die, just like my brother - I personally want the best for you," Brandt Jean, 18, said. "I wasn't going to say this in front of my family or anyone, but I don't even want you to go to jail. I want the best for you, because I know that's exactly what Botham would want."
In extraordinary scenes, Judge Tammy Kemp then got down off the bench, and spoke with Jean's family members and embraced them. Kemp then spoke with Guyger and gave her a Bible. The judge and Guyger also embraced.
As Jean's family walked out of the courtroom, the group that had been outside began a chant of, "No justice! No peace!" Two young black women hugged each other and cried.
Prosecutors had asked jurors to sentence Guyger to at least 28 years, which is how old Jean would have been if he was still alive.
The jury could have sentenced the former officer to up to life in prison or as little as two years.
The basic facts of the unusual shooting were not in dispute throughout the trial. Guyger, returning from a long shift that night, entered Jean's fourth-floor apartment and shot him. He had been eating a bowl of ice cream before she fired.
Guyger said she parked on the wrong floor and mistook Jean's apartment for her own, which was directly below his, and mistook him for a burglar. In the frantic 911 call played repeatedly during the trial, Guyger said "I thought it was my apartment" nearly 20 times.
Her lawyers argued that the identical physical appearance of the apartment complex from floor to floor frequently led to tenants going to the wrong apartments.
But prosecutors questioned how Guyger could have missed numerous signs that she was in the wrong place. They also asked why she didn't call for backup instead of walking into the apartment if she thought she was being burglarised and suggested she was distracted by sexually explicit phone messages she had been exchanging with her police partner, who was also her lover.
The shooting drew widespread attention because of the strange circumstances and because it was one in a string of shootings of unarmed black men by white police officers.
One of the Jean family lawyers hailed the verdict as "a victory for black people in America" after it was handed down Tuesday.
The jury was largely made up of women and people of colour.
- AP