Its been less than a week since Dallas police officer Amber Guyger was arrested and charged with manslaughter for the murder of Botham Jean—whom she shot in his apartment while she was off-duty. Since that time, Gugyer’s story has changed two or three times. Still, each of her versions of the events includes the unbelievable claim that she entered Jean’s apartment thinking it was her own, saw him lurking in the dark and was thought he was an intruder.
Her defense requires us to believe that she, a petite white woman, was scared for her life because of a big black boogeyman and so she shot him. And it’s supposed to be inconsequential that it was Guyger who was in the wrong in the first place—given that she was in an apartment that was not hers but also in one a completely different floor than her own. We are also supposed to ignore the fact that several witnesses say that they heard Guyger shouting to be let in to the apartment right before Jean was shot.
Since Guyger is using the “scary black person made me do it” defense, it was only a matter of time before Jean, the victim in all this, was portrayed as a violent thug and criminal. And just like clockwork, cue the inquiries into his background and history. Investigators on the case executed a search of Jean’s apartment after the shooting. And, as reported by NBC News, they weren’t even trying to hide what they were looking for.
Investigators said in a search warrant of the apartment of Botham Jean, 26, that they were looking for “any contraband, such as narcotics, and other items that may have been used in criminal offenses.” Investigators later said in a court document that they found 10.4 grams of marijuana during Saturday's search.
Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney and the lawyer for Jean’s family, called this out for what it is—a blatant attempt to ruin Jean’s reputation. “The warrant seems to only be designed for one particular purpose, and that is to smear the victim.” This is unbelievably maddening. After all, Jean was the murder victim. He was in his own apartment. Its completely irrelevant if there were narcotics there or not. That has nothing to do with why Guyger was there in the first place, according to her own statements. That is, unless she plans to change her story yet again.
But really, we know exactly why this is happening and it’s so very predictable. The scarier and more suspicious Jean becomes, the more empathetic and relatable Guyger will seem. The entire point here is to make Jean the criminal and somehow justify his death. This is a common strategy when unarmed black people are killed, usually by police, but even when they are murdered at the hands of white civilians. A menacing photo is dug up from social media, some allegations of past marijuana use, some obscure and irrelevant record of misconduct in school or something. Never mind the fact that Jean was a community and church leader, a college graduate and had a good job at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Those are details that Guyger’s defense will conveniently leave out.
Jean’s background shouldn’t matter here—whether he was a “good” guy or had a criminal record or something in-between. He was a human being, who was in his own apartment minding his own business when Guyger, who didn’t belong there, entered and shot him. And its worth asking if her association with the police afforded her the benefit of the doubt when it came to being arrested, since that occurred three days later, and when it comes to this investigation. After all, investigators should have no reason to search Jean’s apartment for contraband. And they have yet to search Guyger’s apartment. Based on Guyger’s stories, this was just an unfortunate “accident”. Except he was a black man and she is a white woman so racism becomes part of the defense and a reason for Guyger and the police to deny Jean the humanity and justice he deserved.