This weekend's verdict in the trial of Michael Dunn, the white Florida man who went to trial after he shot and killed 17 year old black teen Jordan Davis for playing his music too loudly in a nearby car, shows just how far we have to go in America in bending that arc towards moral justice.
After four days of deliberation, the jury in the trial of Michael Dunn, a Florida man who shot a teenager to death in a parking lot during a dispute over loud music, said it could not agree on whether Mr. Dunn had acted in self-defense or was guilty of murder.
The jurors did find Mr. Dunn guilty of three counts of second-degree attempted murder for getting out of his car and firing 10 times at the Dodge Durango sport utility vehicle in which Jordan Davis, 17, was killed. Three other teenagers, the subjects of the attempted murder charges, were in the car but were not struck. Mr. Dunn continued to fire at the car even as it pulled away. On the attempted murder convictions, he could be sentenced to 60 years in prison.
Judge Russell L. Healey declared a mistrial on the count of first-degree murder, which applied only in the death of Mr. Davis. The jury also failed to reach agreement on lesser charges that are automatically included in jury instructions. Those were second- and third-degree murder and manslaughter. Prosecutors are free to move ahead with a new trial on the murder charge, if they wish.
Now let's think about this. At least one juror rejected all charges for Dunn for the killing of Jordan Davis: first, second, third degree murder, and manslaughter. The attempted murder of the other three was apparently something they agreed upon, but the actual murder is what allowed Florida's "Stand your ground" laws to go into effect, and at least one juror agreed that the killing was self-defense because they were black teenagers in that car with loud music.
In other words, Michael Dunn's actual crime was failing to kill all four black boys. If he had actually killed all of them, he would have walked under SYG.
Ta-Nehisi Coates responds:
I insist that the irrelevance of black life has been drilled into this country since its infancy, and shall not be extricated through the latest innovations in Negro Finishing School. I insist that racism is our heritage, that Thomas Jefferson's genius is no more important than his plundering of the body of Sally Hemmings, that George Washington's abdication is no more significant than his wild pursuit of Oney Judge, that the G.I Bill's accolades are somehow inseparable from its racist heritage. I will not respect the lie. I insist that racism must be properly understood as an Intelligence, as a sentience, as a default setting to which, likely until the end of our days, we unerringly return.
And so it goes. You can kill an unarmed black boy in Florida because he's black and then claim you felt your life was in danger. All it takes is one juror of your peers to agree.
The real problem with Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law is that it allows people to use deadly force if they subjectively feel threatened... even if they instigate the situation. The standard isn't "would a reasonable person have felt threatened", it is "did this particular person feel threatened?" That's a very hard standard to prove, even without the "scary young black male" meme that seems to run through these cases.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see what happens when the young black male confronted by an angry white guy shoots first - given that everyone in Florida can be presumed to be armed and dangerous, the young black male could reasonably feel threatened. (Somehow, I expect the jury would find the yoing black male guilty of murder anyway.) I'm not sure whether it isn't perfectly legal to shoot just about anyone in Florida these days, so long as there aren't any witnesses - and the victim can be stereotyped as a scary person.
"Michael Dunn's actual crime was failing to kill all four black boys. If he had actually killed all of them, he would have walked under SYG."
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly the correct assessment of this verdict. Killing one of the kids was NOT a crime, not killing the rest of them was.
Remember, crackers, make sure you kill ALL the non-whites when you go gunning for fun. Juries don't like loose ends.
But...but...NSA!! DRONES!!!
ReplyDeleteIn all seriousness, though....the Dunn trial needs to be a wake-up call. And this:
If you stray from the One True Belief that NSA Spying is the Worst Thing That Has Ever Happened, you surely will be cast into the Fiery Pits of Hell Itself by the Flying Monkeys of the Purity Caucus.
ReplyDeleteKill a poor black boy? Meh. We have campaigns to sabotage and elections to throw to the Republicans. Not a dime's worth of difference, don't you know?