Courtroom hugs after Amber Guyger was sentenced in shooting of Botham Jean test the limits of forgiveness
Amber Guyger got off easy.
Amber Guyger got what she deserved.
It's easy to be in either camp -- or, for the truly ambivalent, be in both camps at once.
One thing is certain: Botham Jean is dead. Guyger killed him by accident, she says, but at best there appears to be considerable carelessness involved.
Which only brings up the very troubling question: Would she have made that mistake if Jean had not been black and she were not white?
Jean, 26, an accountant and native of St. Lucia, was relaxing after work in his Dallas apartment when Guyger, 30, a Dallas police officer, walked in and shot him.
Guyger, who lived in the same building but on a different floor, told authorities she mistakenly had entered Jean's apartment, thinking it was her own. When she saw Jean, she said, she thought he was an intruder and shot him in the chest.
The story quickly went viral on national news and the web, partly because of the tantalizing racial angle.
With that, cue the news networks, the pundits, the politicians and the community activists chanting, "No Justice, No peace!" Put Jean's name alongside Laquan McDonald of Chicago; Walter Scott in North Charleston, S.C.; Freddie Gray in Baltimore; Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; and other black men who have died in questionable encounters with police.
But this case also was tougher than those others. There was no controversy connected to Botham's name before his death. He hadn't been stopped by police on the street or driving his car. He was quietly eating ice cream in his own home.
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