The imbalance of justice persists
7th October 2019 · 0 Comments
Former Dallas Policewoman Amber Guyger killed a rising star, a young, unarmed, innocent Black man. Botham Shem Jean, 26, was a certified public accountant. He was a servant of Christ, judging from his community and civic work, an award-winning student in college and high school, and a young man who did more for others in his 26 years than most do in a lifetime. Jean was eating ice cream on his sofa in his own apartment, when Guyger burst in gun blazing and shot him dead in his heart and left him to die, while she went outside to wait for 911 respondents. And then she made up a mind-blowing excuse for killing Jean: “I thought he was in my apartment.”
Guyger was one floor down from her own Dallas, Texas apartment. She shot Jean, obviously ignoring the red rug in front of his door, the fact that her key didn’t fit in his door as evidenced by the flashing red light (she claimed the door was cracked open, so why she claimed to have inserted a key… well none of her story made any sense) and the lighted apartment number outside his door, which wasn’t hers.
The murder trial of Amber Guyger ended October 3, 2019, in the jury handing down a 10-year jail sentence. She could have received between 5-99 years. With good behavior, she will be out in five years. Surely, her attorneys will appeal her conviction.
Jean’s family was in court, his parents, sister, brother, grandmother, aunts and uncles. They are natives of St. Lucia. Jean’s mother testified that her son came to the island at least seven times during his collegiate career, bringing a contingent of students to do missionary work with the impoverished on the island. Jean also started a music ministry in high school and continued singing spirituals at Harding College.
What was most widely reported was Brandt Jean’s testimony. The video of Botham’s brother went viral and global, as he told Guyger he forgave her, it’s what his brother would have wanted, and that he didn’t want her to go to jail but rather to find Jesus. He then left the stand and hugged Guyger. It was a display of Christian love that many in the same situation could not do.
Surely Brandt Jean’s forgiveness influenced the jury, which could have sentenced Guyger to a lengthy sentence for the senseless murder of Botham Jean. The prosecution had asked for 28 years, one year for each year Jean would have lived, if his life had not been taken.
In the case of murderer Amber Guyger, justice was not served. Even after his death, it took three days for her to be taken into police custody, and her department argued for weeks she shouldn’t be immediately terminated.
She should have received a heavier sentence because she clearly racially profiled Jean, a practice she was probably used to. The racist spiels on her social media and her opinion of fellow African-American cops, her grousing about having to pull duty at a Martin Luther King Jr. parade, and her joking about the parade ending when MLK Jr. is dead, all point to a cop with a racist view of Black Americans. She claimed she only saw a silhouette not Jean’s face, but she shot him dead in his heart and was aiming for his head, too, as the bullet that lodged in the wall above his head attests.
The case of Amber Guyger is a reminder that for many whites in America, especially those with badges, Black lives don’t matter, that Black lives are still undervalued, that no matter how well you follow the rules, no matter how accomplished you are, no matter your achievements, your life is worth less than a murdering white person’s.
The factual truth is that in America Black Americans are subject to an imbalance of justice that has prevailed since enslaved Africans arrived here 400 years ago. The wanton lynchings, killings, brutality, the assaults by white cops and white citizens on Black people for breathing while Black, the jailing of Black people for insignificant reasons, is still our reality in 2019.
Crystal Mason, an African-American mother of three, was on supervised release after serving time for tax fraud when she filled out a provisional ballot. Mason was sentenced to five years in prison for voting illegally in the 2016 election.
In 2011, Tanya McDowell, a homeless Bridgeport, Conn. mom, was arrested and charged with first-degree larceny for enrolling her then 5-year-old son Andrew in a school in a neighboring community. She wanted her son to attend a good school. For that, she received a five-year sentence and ordered to pay back tuition. She was released after serving two years, but put on probation for three.
L’Daijohnique Lee, a Black woman, was going the wrong way down a one-way street in a Dallas neighborhood last March. Austin Shuffield, 30, was trying to leave a parking lot. He tried to take a picture of her license plate. Lee, 24, threatened to mace him if he didn’t back away.
A bystander video captured Shuffield, who is white, beating Lee in the head. But Lee, the assault victim, was charged by police first. She caught a felony charge for smashing Shuffield’s truck windows, after he beat her like a man. The charges against Lee were dropped after a public outcry.
Police first charged Shuffield with public intoxication, interfering with an emergency call and assault — all misdemeanors. After a week of protests and rallies, they upgraded the recommended charges to the district attorney’s office to include aggravated assault, according to news reports.
In May 2019, when a policeman tried to arrest Pamela Turner, a 44-year old Black woman, she resisted arrest, according to Baytown, Texas police. The cop killed her on the spot, outside of her apartment. No charges were brought against him.
Studies show that African Americans get longer sentences for killing whites. And although cops kill thousands of people yearly, they rarely face charges.
Vox magazine recently reported that an analysis of 2015 police killings by The Guardian found that racial minorities made up 62.7 percent of unarmed people killed by police.
So, America, the imbalance in the so-called American justice system is more glaring today than ever. Some may be happy that Guyger got 10 years for murdering an unarmed Black man, because convictions of white cops who kill Blacks are as rare as a Bigfoot sighting. But only when white cops, who murder Blacks indiscriminately, get the same punishment as any other murderer… only then will justice be served.
This article originally published in the October 7, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
