Welcome to the New Jim Crow south:
The jury in the Michael Dunn case — the man in Florida who fired 10 shots at a car full of teenagers because they were black he was “scared” of their loud music, before heading back to his hotel, ordering a pizza, and declining to phone up the police — has come back with guilty verdicts for four charges of shooting a gun and attempted murder (the teenagers he did not succeed in killing), and a hung jury on murder in the first degree (the boy he did).
This means they also deadlocked on lesser included charges, such as manslaughter — meaning at least one person on the jury agreed that Michael Dunn was reasonably scared for his life while shooting 10 bullets at a car speeding away, and with no return fire.
Jordan Davis would have been 19 tomorrow."
[skip]
"Dunn claimed he acted in self defense, under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law.
On the upside, we have only seen one asshole on Twitter save her salty tears for poor Michael Dunn, in the name of “love” and “healing” and “what good does it do for him to rot in prison.”
The obvious answer — that with one less person on the streets who loves shooting at children, maybe a few more children won’t be shot at — did not seem to have occurred to her.
Must be too many love rays swirling around her head. As for Michael Dunn, Jordan Davis’s mother forgives him. She is a better woman than we are. "
********************
In 2012, Marissa Alexander was sentenced to a mandatory 20-year prison sentence for firing what she insisted was a warning shot during a fight with her husband. She tried to invoke Florida's "stand your ground" law but the judge threw out her self-defense claim, noting that she could have run out of the house to escape her husband but instead got the gun and went back inside
\Alexander, who had never been arrested before, has said she fired a bullet at a wall in 2010 to scare off her husband when she felt he was threatening her. No one was hurt, but the judge in the case said he was bound by state law to sentence her to 20 years in prison after she was convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Alexander had rejected a plea deal that would have resulted in a three-year prison sentence and chose to go to trial. A jury deliberated 12 minutes before convicting her."
"And so it goes."
The story (Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut) continually employs the refrain "So it goes" when death, dying, and mortality occur, as a narrative transition to another subject, as a memento mori, as comic relief, and to explain the unexplained.
21 comments:
Can young black men arm themselves and then when they see angry drunk white guys, can they shoot first because these young black guys are in fear of their lives?
Also, imagine if a drunk black guy had shot into a car full of unarmed white teens and killed one. Just imagine him saying he was "in fear" of his life, so he shot into the car, got back into his car and drove off. Then enjoyed a pizza with his girlfriend and never reported what he did.
Just imagine that.
Dunn has testified he described the music to his fiancee as "rap crap."
In the parking lot, as the music blared, "his blood started to boil; he didn't like the music that was coming out of the car next to him; he got angrier and angrier," Wolfson said.
Dunn rolled down his window and asked the youths to turn it down, which they did, but then turned it back up, Wolfson said.
"He got angry at the fact that a 17-year-old kid decided not to listen to him," she said, adding that Dunn then pulled a 9 mm gun out of his glove box and shot "systematically and methodically" at the SUV. "Nobody denied that Jordan was talking back. But this defendant took it upon himself to silence Jordan Davis forever."
I went to a gun show today here in San Antonio. I was surprised and pleased to see some African-Americans in attendance, browsing the displays. I hope this means that they are taking this shit seriously.
Same prosecutor in the Dunn and Zimmerman trials.Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Look for Angela Corey to be running for higher office soon.
Ducky said...
<< Look for Angela Corey to be running for higher office soon.>>
I thought the same thing and said it out loud to my wife.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Stand Your Ground" is nothing more than a blueprint for modern-day, legalised lynching.
Standing your ground with use of force when threatened by violence perpetrated by an intruder into your home, place of business, ect. is reasonable and understandable.
This post example on the other hand? Enough said.
Anonymous@10:30 on Feb. 16,
"...imagine if a drunk black guy had shot into a car full of unarmed white teens and killed one. Just imagine him saying he was "in fear" of his life, so he shot into the car, got back into his car and drove off. Then enjoyed a pizza with his girlfriend and never reported what he did.
Just imagine that."
Yeah. Also imagine a jury not being able to figure out if the black guy should be found guilty of killing the white kid that he said scared him into shooting him dead. Just imagine.
A. Reader,
I've heard of the "Twinkie Defense," but now we have a better one: the "Thug Music Defense." Apparently it's enough to drive grown drunk dudes into shooting and killing unarmed teens.
Dave S., I wonder if the N.R.A. will recruit young black teens all over the country (but especially in Flori-DUH to arm themselves against drunk white dudes?
Ducky and KP, I think she'd have a very good chance in certain districts in FLA. You know, the ones where George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn are local heroes.
31forever,
It seems so.
my perception is...the law is wrong. The Stand Your Ground law is full of wishy-washy phrases that could mean almost anything.
a recent article concerning the law and the jury verdict concludes with.
"It is also possible that jurors may have been divided over whether to convict on a lesser charge, like manslaughter, or to stick to premeditated murder, which requires forethought."
RE_six jurors wanted to convict for 1st degree murder, six wanted a manslaughter or 2nd degree conviction. Until polling is revealed, we do not know.
my guess is that the prosecution overstepped by going for a 1st degree conviction and then failed to unequivocally prove he premeditated shooting at a car of teens playing loud music and irritating him or acting impulsively.
this is not as abysimal as it seems. It was not an aquital, which would have pre-empted a retrial. Sources state there will be a retrial, where-in, if a 2nd degree charge is afixed, could satisfy a jury.
Some also opine that the jury was hesitant to afix a 1st degree charge that would have carried a capital punishment because the did not believe he acted with premeditated aforethought.
the law is a piece of shit..very imprecise. Dunn will face retrial.
the most pressing need, now, is to get rid of, or vastly amend, a piece of legislation written by idiots and passed by arch conservatives. Justice will prevail.
or, if not, unfortunately. 'so it goes'
I forgot to add the link
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/us/florida-self-defense-law-hung-over-jury-in-michael-dunn-trial.html
Our legal system has been broken for decades. Prosecutors are more interested in promoting their name than seeing justice prevail.
It is easier to get out of a murder charge than a traffic ticket or a battery charge. Just ask OJ.
skud, the law eventually caught up with O.J. He's not a free man, and will probably die in prison.
okjimm: "...a piece of legislation written by idiots and passed by arch conservatives."
That should read "...a piece of legislation written by N.R.A. "
okjimm: "Justice will prevail."
You are more of an optomist than I.
But not for murder just for battery. Like I said it is harder to get a conviction for murder than battery.
The severity of the punishment for first degree murder dissuades many jurors from voting guilty. Had the prosecutor have gone second degree, maybe that would have stuck.
I am curious as to why you referred to the democratic inspired Jim Crow when headlining this article.
SYG laws --- brought to every state by ALEC and GOP -- promote the white male mentality that new age lynching by gunfire is not illegal.
What are white males afraid of really? Becoming the minority. Losing the power?
The improbability of being treated as they've treated others all these years?
All while wrapping it up in a paranoia of victimization?
skud:
"I am curious as to why you referred to the democratic inspired Jim Crow when headlining this article."
Skud: The Jim Crow laws were put in place by the CONSERVATIVE southern white Democrats.
And the CONSERVATIVE southern Democrats left the Democratic Party and joined the GOP when the Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts were passed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. Why did the CONSERVATIVE Democrats become a solid voting bloc for the GOP? You guess?
Also, you remember who the Dixiecrats were, don't you? They broke away from the Democratic Party when they saw integration would overturn Jim Crow laws. The "Dixiecrats" later joined the GOP. You should know your southern history better than to try to pretend that all the Democrats were bigots. The ones who left the Democratic Party and became Nixon's "southern strategy" that delivered the southern states' to the GOP in presidential elections were the ones who hated the idea of civil rights and voting rights for southern blacks.
"During the Reconstruction period of 1865–1877, federal law provided civil rights protection in the U.S. South for freedmen – the African Americans who had formerly been slaves. In the 1870s, Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern legislatures, sometimes as a result of elections in which paramilitary groups intimidated opponents, attacking blacks or preventing them from voting. Gubernatorial elections were close and disputed in Louisiana for years, with extreme violence unleashed during the campaigns. In 1877, a national compromise to gain Southern support in the presidential election resulted in the last of the federal troops being withdrawn from the South. White Democrats had regained political power in every Southern state. These conservative, white, Democratic Redeemer governments legislated Jim Crow laws, segregating black people from the white population." --Wikipedia
Also, had I lived in the time of Lincoln, I would have been a liberal Republican abolitionist, as were his Secretary of State and his Secretary of the Treasury, who thought Lincoln wasn't LIBERAL enough on ending slavery.
Too bad you don't know US history. You wouldn't keep repeating your simple-minded blather.
Lincoln was supported by LIBERALS in the new Republican Party and by LIBERALS in the northern Democratic party and some in the south.
More:
"Within each house of Congress Northern Democrats gave the Civil Rights Act of 1964 more support than did Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats more support than Southern Republicans.
Amongst members of the U.S. House of Representatives who represented congressional districts in the South, more Democrats (seven out of 94 or roughly seven percent) than Republicans (none out of 10) voted for the Act.
Of Northern Democrats in the House, 145 (out of 154 or 94 percent) voted for the Act compared with 138 (out of 162 or 85 percent) Northern Republicans.
All (100 percent) of the 10 Southern Republicans in the U.S. Senate voted against the Act as did most (20 or 95 percent of 21) Southern Democrats.
This pattern of greater support for civil rights coming from Democrats than from Republicans also shows among Northerners: 98 percent (45 out of 46) of Northern Democrats but only 84 percent (27 out of 32) of Republicans supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
Careful, Shaw, or you'll make skudrunner cry.
If not for the shots he fired at the car as those who were still alive fled, Dunn may have gotten off (or still get off, seeing as there will likely be a retrial on the murder charge). I heard on the news that Dunn wrote letters to his daughter while in prison awaiting trial that said he thought the case against him was weak and that he wouldn't be convicted. Even though he's going to be in prison for the rest of his life (effectively), I think it is important that he be retried and convicted on the murder charge. If not this will set another bad precedent (like the bad precedent that set George Zimmerman free).
Shaw: You should know... the ones who left the Democratic Party and became Nixon's "southern strategy"... delivered the southern states to the GOP...
And, while the Dems may have been the party of bigotry pre-civil rights legislation, the Repubs are the party of bigotry post "Southern Strategy". But Conservatives still point to the past and ignore the recent past as well as the present. And they try to take credit for the passage of civil rights by lying about LBJ signing the law because he thought it would be a good way to trick African Americans into voting Democratic. Which is racist in itself... suggesting the African American voting block could be "tricked".
Ms shaw,
Thanks for the non-history lesson and the incorrect lecture. You state several times that the democrats passed the law. Regardless of their future intent at the time of passage they were democrats and thank you for confirming what I said.
And here I thought you were partisan, even I can be wrong. You got out of lock step on this one and I applaud you for being open minded.
The idea of CONSERVATIVE and LIBERAL Democrats seems to elude you.
But that's okay. We understand why.
Post a Comment