Amber Guyger, ex-officer who killed Botham Jean, granted parole after seven years

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has granted parole to Amber Guyger, the former Dallas police officer convicted of murdering her neighbor, Botham Jean, inside his own apartment in 2018. The board confirmed the decision Thursday, and CBS News Texas reported that Guyger, now 38, will go free roughly seven years into the 10-year sentence she received for shooting Jean, 26, as he sat in his own living room.

The timing carries its own weight: Guyger was convicted of murder on October 1, 2019, which means the board's decision landed almost exactly seven years later. Guyger was the first Dallas police officer convicted of murder since 1973, a case that drew national attention over policing, race and what forgiveness in a courtroom should look like.

The numbers

Guyger was sentenced to 10 years for murder, a first-degree felony in Texas. Because the offense falls under the state's "3G" category of serious violent crimes, she was not eligible for parole consideration until she had served half that term. The board's stated reasoning, per multiple outlets' reporting of its written decision, cited three factors: no documented pattern of violent or assaultive arrests or convictions beyond the case itself, a satisfactory institutional adjustment record, and completion of programs meant to support her finding and keeping employment after release. No release date has been set; Texas typically takes several weeks to finalize a parole plan before an inmate actually walks out.

• September 6, 2018: Off duty after a shift of more than 13 hours, Guyger enters the wrong floor of her apartment building, shoots Jean twice inside his own unit and is arrested three days later
• October 1, 2019: A Dallas County jury convicts her of murder; she is sentenced to 10 years and fired from the police department
• 2021-2022: Texas's Fifth Court of Appeals upholds the conviction twice; the U.S. Supreme Court later declines to hear her case
• September 2024: The parole board denies release at her first review, after more than 6,000 people sign a petition opposing it
• October 1, 2026: The board grants parole at her second review

A separate, far larger number hangs over the case: in November 2024, a federal jury in Dallas ordered Guyger to pay Jean's family $98.65 million in a wrongful-death and civil rights verdict after finding she had used excessive force.

How the case became a national story

Guyger told investigators she had parked on the wrong floor of the shared garage at the South Side Flats complex and walked into what she believed was her own unit, one floor below Jean's, before shooting him when she mistook him for an intruder; Jean, an accountant, was reportedly eating ice cream at the time. Prosecutors argued her mistake was unreasonable for a trained officer; jurors agreed, rejecting a lesser manslaughter charge and convicting her of murder.

The sentencing hearing produced moments that made the case a touchstone well beyond Dallas: Jean's younger brother, Brandt, told Guyger in open court that he forgave her and asked the judge for permission to hug her, and the judge separately embraced Guyger and handed her a Bible. Supporters called both moments a model of grace; others argued they illustrated how differently the system can treat a white officer compared with the Black man she killed. Guyger's conviction was affirmed on appeal, and in 2022 she asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up her case, a petition the justices declined.

Who is affected, and the reaction

Jean's family has opposed Guyger's release since she first became eligible, and asked for privacy after Thursday's announcement; their attorney, Lee Merritt, spoke on their behalf.

"Botham Jean was in his own home, eating ice cream, when his life was taken," Lee Merritt told reporters, adding separately that "a 10-year sentence was already a fraction of what was lost" and that the family was "deeply disappointed."

Community reaction split along familiar lines. Dominique Alexander, head of the Dallas-based Next Generation Action Network, said Guyger's release underscored an unfairness at the center of the case: "Botham Jean will never have that opportunity" to come home. A local pastor, Sammie Berry, asked aloud whether the decision amounted to real justice even as he said he personally forgave Guyger. On the other side, a prison consultant quoted by local media described Guyger as having been "a model inmate" whose time served represented "a fair ratio" for the sentence imposed, and a defense attorney not involved in the case noted that parole at the halfway mark of a 3G sentence is "not very unusual."

Guyger's own attorney, Robert Rodgers, said the board's decision reflected his client's preparation for life outside prison: she "has a specific plan," "has a job" and "has a place to live" waiting for her.

The decision also lands amid unresolved financial litigation tied to the same shift that put Guyger at the scene. Unable to collect the $98.65 million civil judgment from Guyger directly, Jean's family sued the city of Dallas in March, arguing the police department's overtime and staffing practices left officers fatigued on the job — Guyger had worked more than 13 hours before the shooting — and that the city bears some responsibility. That lawsuit is still pending.

What happens next

No firm release date has been announced. Under the process described in the parole board's own published guidelines, panel members weigh both an inmate's criminal history and institutional conduct through a numerical scoring matrix, but retain discretion to grant or deny release regardless of where a case scores — a structure the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles says is meant to individualize each decision rather than apply a fixed formula. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice must still verify Guyger's release plan, including housing and employment, before setting an actual date.

Once released from the O'Daniel Unit in Gatesville, where she has been held, Guyger will serve the remainder of her sentence under parole supervision rather than behind bars, under conditions the board has not yet made public. For Jean's family, the pending suit against the city over the uncollected $98.65 million judgment means the legal fight is unlikely to end when Guyger walks out. Seven years after a courtroom hug became a symbol of forgiveness to some and injustice to others, the case is still being argued on both fronts at once.