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Amber Guyger is the ex-Dallas cop serving a 10-year prison sentence for killing a neighbor in his own apartment.

On September 6, 2018, Guyger came home after work, in her police uniform but off-duty, and entered the wrong apartment. Thinking its resident was an intruder, she shot and killed him. Because she shot him intentionally, not accidentally, a jury quite properly convicted her of murder.

At her trial, according to CNN (read story here), she “testified that she hated herself and asked for forgiveness every day.” She told the court, “I hate that I have to live with this every single day of my life. I ask God for forgiveness.”

She wants the State of Texas to forgive her, too. Her attorney wants her murder conviction overturned. He argues her belief that she was in her own apartment makes her, at most, guilty of criminal negligence.

At least one of the appeals court judges apparently isn’t having it. He said, “Mr. Mowla, you’re overlooking the fact that Miss Guyger testified that she intentionally shot Mr Jean.” Attorney Mowla replied, “If she had walked into her apartment, and there was an intruder inside her apartment … she would have been entitled to use deadly force in self-defense.”

But she wasn’t in her own apartment, and he wasn’t an intruder. She was the intruder. So Mowla’s hypothetical is irrelevant.

The D.A. argued that “mistaken belief and mistake of fact is not a justifiable defense,” CNN reported. And if that’s the law in Texas, then Mowla’s argument has no legal basis, and he’s whistling in the wind. But it appears that isn’t the law in Texas. This is:

“Sec. 8.02. MISTAKE OF FACT. (a) It is a defense to prosecution that the actor through mistake formed a reasonable belief about a matter of fact if his mistaken belief negated the kind of culpability required for commission of the offense.

(b) Although an actor’s mistake of fact may constitute a defense to the offense charged, he may nevertheless be convicted of any lesser included offense of which he would be guilty if the fact were as he believed.”

Mowla must be pinning his argument on this provision. Superficially, he seems to have a point to make.

But here’s the problem: First, not just any mistake gets you off the hook for a criminal act committed by you. The legislature qualified this by requiring it be a reasonable mistake. Second, what is “reasonable” is a question of fact for the jury to decide, not a legal question for the courts to decide. (In our legal system, juries resolve disputed questions of fact, and judges resolve disputed questions of law.) Third, the jury decided that question against Guyger. And finally, appeals courts don’t disturb jury findings absent juror misconduct, so the jury’s finding that Guyger’s belief wasn’t reasonable is a given, not a debatable issue, on appeal. So it’s hard to see where this gets him and his client. In that he’s effectively asking the judges to throw out the jury’s findings, I’d guess nowhere.

Legal issues aside, from a purely philosophical perspective, there’s a moral responsibility to not make deadly mistakes, and human life is cheap indeed if there are no consequences, or only light ones, for such mistakes.

It’s true the Christian religion promises forgiveness for the worst of sins — in the next life. And we should hope she finds peace through her religion. But this life is governed by less forgiving secular laws. What it boils down to is, you’d damn sure better know what you’re doing before you point a gun at someone and pull the trigger. Because if you screw that up, the law will — and should — hold you accountable.

An unreasonable mistake should not, and in Texas will not, keep you out of jail.

Photo: Killer and victim