It’s been around eight years since Botham Jean was murdered in his own apartment by an off-duty police officer. More than a year ago, a federal jury ruled that former Dallas police officer, Amber Guyger, should pay nearly $100 million in damages to the family of the man she shot in 2018. Jean’s family is now suing the city to force it to cover that judgment, saying that the city has an “obvious social, moral, and ethical” obligation to do so.
Guyger shot Jean after mistaking his apartment for her own. She told investigators that she thought he was a burglar when she shot him with her service gun. She was found guilty of murder in 2019, and will be eligible for parole this year. (She was denied parole in 2024.) His family filed suit against her and the city about a month after the shooting, but a judge released the city from the case, partly because Guyger was off duty at the time of the shooting.
In 2023, five years after her brother was killed, Allisa Charles-Findley expressed her frustration with the city and its response to Jean’s murder. “Yes we did receive an indictment. Yes, we received a conviction. But the city of Dallas is still fighting us—to the point where it’s almost disrespectful because they refuse to come to the table,” she says. “They refuse to have a conversation with us. Even the current mayor has yet to have a conversation with my family. It only appears to us that they’re covering for their own. They’re backing their own.”…