The trial was over at last. After days of emotional testimony in a case that gripped and divided the nation, a white former Dallas police officer had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for murdering a black man in his own apartment. The shouts of protest that had filled the courthouse hallways had quieted. Everyone was getting ready to go home.

But the judge was not done .

After speaking with and hugging the victim’s parents, the judge, Tammy Kemp, returned to the courtroom with her personal Bible in hand. She gifted it to the officer, Amber R. Guyger, and pointed to John 3:16, a passage about salvation.

Then, as the woman convicted of murder reached out her arms, the judge, still in her black robe and pearled necklace, wrapped her in an embrace.

Some saw the striking moment between a black female judge and a white former officer as an extraordinary example of humanity; others have criticized it as inappropriate, biased and potentially unconstitutional.