By Jamie Landers and Karen Brooks Harper
The Dallas Morning News
(TNS)
DALLAS — Amber Guyger, the former Dallas police officer sentenced to a decade in prison for the 2018 murder of PwC accountant Botham Jean, was granted parole Thursday.
Guyger, 38, has served seven years in the Patrick L. O’Daniel unit in Gatesville, a prison about 37 miles west of Waco. It was not immediately clear when she would be released.
Guyger was previously denied parole in 2024. A spokesperson for the board said her request was granted this week after a review found Guyger’s record showed no documented pattern of violence, that she maintained a “satisfactory institutional adjustment” and that she completed a treatment plan that “should enhance” her chances of obtaining—and keeping—a full-time job.
Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney who represented Jean’s family when the case went to trial, wrote in a statement that he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision.
“Botham’s family and the community strongly opposed this parole,” Merritt said. “They stood up again and again to ask that the full sentence be served. … Releasing Ms. Guyger after seven years makes that loss feel even smaller in the eyes of the system. It is not smaller.”
On the night of Sept. 6, 2018, Guyger mistook Jean’s apartment for her own; Guyger lived on the third floor of the South Side Flats building not far from downtown, while Jean lived on the fourth. At her 2019 trial, Guyger testified she fired her gun twice, believing Jean was a burglar.
Guyger, who was a Dallas police officer at the time of the shooting, was off duty but still in uniform. It was her service weapon that killed 27-year-old Jean.
Jean was Black. Guyger is white.
“The Dallas Police Department understands this decision may bring renewed attention and emotion surrounding the tragic death of Botham Jean,” police officials said in an emailed statement, adding they had no role or authority in the decision to grant Guyger parole. “Our thoughts remain with the Jean family and all those impacted by his loss.”
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She was fired from the Dallas Police Department a few weeks after the killing and jailed on a manslaughter charge, but a grand jury later indicted her for murder. Guyger argued in appeals that her mistaken belief she was in her apartment negated her culpability for murder and that she had the right to use deadly force in self-defense.
Prosecutors, who described Jean as a devout Catholic with a deep interest in social justice, asked the jury to sentence Guyger to no less than 28 years in prison, a symbolic move as Jean would have turned 28 about the time of the trial. She was instead sentenced to 10.
Guyger first became eligible for parole on Sept. 29, 2024, halfway through her sentence and what would have been Jean’s 33rd birthday. She was denied on her first parole review that year after Jean’s family, the Dallas County district attorney’s office and more than 6,300 people who signed an online petition protested.
Later that year, a jury in a federal lawsuit filed by Jean’s family against Guyger and the city awarded Jean’s family a $98.65 million verdict. The city was dismissed from the suit, which alleged Guyger used excessive force and violated Jean’s constitutional rights, and that poor police department policies led to his death.
— Dallas Morning News staff writer Chase Rogers contributed to this report.
Photo caption: Fired Dallas police officer Amber Guyger becomes emotional on the stand as the defense begins their case in her murder trial in the 204th District Court at the Frank Crowley Courts Building in Dallas on Sept. 27, 2019. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News/Pool/TNS)
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©2026 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
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Tags: accountant, Accounting, Amber Guyger, Botham Jean, Dallas, murder, parole, prison sentences, PwC
