Amber Guyger, the former Dallas police officer convicted of murdering Botham Jean in 2018, was granted parole Thursday after serving seven years of a ten-year sentence. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had denied her first request in 2024 but this time cited her completion of prison programs and satisfactory institutional record. Jean’s family and their attorney, Lee Merritt, argued the full sentence should be served.

The details of the case are ones many North Texans remember clearly. Guyger said she entered what she believed was her own apartment, mistaking Jean’s fourth-floor unit for her third-floor home, and shot him as he sat eating ice cream. A jury rejected her self-defense claim and convicted her of murder. A 2024 federal civil jury awarded Jean’s family nearly $100 million. His brother’s embrace of Guyger at sentencing became one of the most talked-about moments of the entire case.

The parole decision lands just up I-35 from Waxahachie, and it echoes here the same way it does across the metroplex: in conversations about policing, race, and what a life is worth in a courtroom. Jean was an accountant from St. Lucia, a man at home on his own couch, and now his family is back in the headlines without ever having asked to be. Where do you land on this one, does seven years fit the crime?