DALLAS (AP) — A federal judge determined that the city of Dallas is not responsible for an off-duty officer shooting dead a man of color in the victim’s own apartment last year. District Judge Barbara Lynn excluded the city from a civil lawsuit that Botham Jean’s 26-year-old family filed after the Killing by Amber Guyger police on Monday.
With the ruling, the 31-year-old officer becomes the only defendant in the lawsuit that she overused force and that better police training would have prevented the death of Jean.La decision makes a settlement with a strong financial sum unlikely . In his brief ruling, Lynn wrote that he ratified a magistrate’s decision and excluded the city because the lawsuit did not “file a claim on which reparation could be granted.” In October, Guyger was convicted of Jean’s murder and sentenced to a decade in prison.
The officer testified at trial that he mistook Jean’s apartment for hers that she was one level down and thought he was an intruder.
Jean, an accountant from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, ate ice cream when Guyger came in and shot him. Jean’s death attracted national attention due to the unusualness of his circumstances and because it was one of several prominent homicides of black men at the hands of white agents. A lawyer in Jean’s family did not respond to a request for the matter to be made.
