The jury in the Michael Dunn case -- the man in Florida who fired 10 shots at a car full of teenagers becausethey were blackhe 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.
WND is first among the hate-mongering that probably fan these flames (These are 3 different recent stories):
<i>100 in black mob found destroying property and attacking people These are supposed to be the good kids. The ones supposed to be impressed with the legacy of their high school&rsquo;s namesake: Frederick Douglass. They wear uniforms. They have a strict code of conduct. They prepare for college. They are black.
Black History Month in Baltimore is a busy, busy time. Every aspect of black life in this city is remembered and celebrated: Black schools. Black music. Black movies. Black churches. Black literature. Black clothing. Black politicians. Even black trains. Then Tracey Halvorsen had to go and spoil it all: She wrote an article about crime in Baltimore. How she and her mostly white neighbors live in fear. And no one seems to care.
As black mob violence goes, the recent racial mayhem at the Florida State Fair in Tampa was not that big of a deal. Sure hundreds of black people were fighting. On video. Police were attacked. Property destroyed. Fair-goers beaten. Venders assaulted. Cell phones stolen. An old lady in a wheelchair robbed. People jumping fences and refusing to pay for rides. The fair closed early. And most of the media glossed over most of it. </i>
And something interesting from Think Progress today:<i>
Just prior to the trial, the State Attorney&rsquo;s Office released a set of letters Dunn sent from prison revealing significant animus toward blacks. &ldquo;The more time I am exposed to these people, the more prejudiced against them I become,&rdquo; he said in one. &ldquo;This jail is full of blacks and they all act like thugs,&rdquo; he said in another. The letters did not come into play during trial. But they reveal the sort of racial undertones that have been prominent in many Stand Your Ground cases. One study found that white defendants with black victims are far more likely to have their killings deem &ldquo;justified&rdquo; under the Stand Your Ground law.</i>
<i>Charles Hendrix, Michael Dunn&#039;s former next-door neighbor, describes violent behavior, lies, insurance fraud, cocaine use, bragging about putting a hit out on someone, and a first wife who said he&#039;d held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. He says Dunn bragged that he was smarter than everyone else and could outthink them.</i> <a href="http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch\?feature=player_embedded&amp\;v=itwx2Vb6aNI#t=0<\/i>" target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embed...">http://www.youtube.com/watc...
I&#039;ve served on numerous juries. It&#039;s hard work, and convicting someone is no fun at all.
I&#039;ve served on a hung jury; sometimes you get an immovable juror, which is probably what happened here. But even the immovable ones are not, in my experience, stupid or shallow.
On the other hand, the view that jury duty is a pain in the neck and only morons would get suckered into serving is a fairly good indicator of shallow, self-interested thinking. So I guess the jury pool is somewhat Darwinian in that respect.
IANAL also, but here&#039;s what I understand about the legal concept of &quot;reasonableness.&quot; It&#039;s probably the single favorite term of art in law. Juries must find beyond &quot;reasonable doubt&quot; in criminal trials. A user of copyrighted material must make &quot;reasonable efforts&quot; to find the rights holder. Not <i>all</i> doubt, not <i>all</i> efforts.
Reasonableness is that mooshy undefined concept by which decisions are placed in the collective intelligence of a group of jurors, who are left to thrash out exactly where they draw the line in one specific case. And everything in US law weights the deliberations in favor of the accused - as indeed it should.
So when a law is badly written, sloppy and too broad, the first thing that defense attorneys, prosecutors, juries, and even judges do is apply the reasonableness standard as far as possible to serve their interests. If the law is badly written, the &quot;reasonableness&quot; standard turns out to apply to everyone and everything.
This leaves juries to decide not the facts (which are reduced a grey sludge of feelings and reasonable beliefs) but its own perceptions and its own preconceptions.
A law like Stand Your Ground was (IMO) deliberately badly written. Its subtext is: &quot;We all know who this reasonableness test is supposed to apply to, and who not.&quot; Unsurprisingly, it is being used to acquit white perps at a far greater rate than black perps. That was its intent, and it&#039;s working. Which is why I think there is a federal civil-rights interest that could overturn it. Maybe.
&quot;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.&quot;
<a href="http:\/\/wonkette.com\/542035\/slow-news-day-things-what-you-can-read#IDComment795280967" target="_blank">Exactly as I called it. </a> Not that it was hard to do.
My take is that because he was just blasting away at the car, he didn&#039;t have the specific intent to kill that specific kid. Reckless or negligent homicide - now <i>there&#039;s </i>a no-brainer. Assuming that Floriduh has a statute that criminalizes it; maybe it&#039;s just something that &quot;happens all the time, no big deal.&quot;
The premeditation comes from the fact that he pulled out his gun in the course of an argument, after the kid had refused to obey his demand to lower the music. And also that he seems to have deliberately picked the fight, knowing that he had a gun at hand.
New Orleans votes Dem. Louisiana has a Dem senator, who&#039;s pretty decent. Like Florida, it&#039;s a mixture of awful and unexpectedly progressive. But with much better food and music.
Hopefully they&#039;ll retry him on 2nd degree murder and nail him, because otherwise he&#039;ll be out in 5 years or so. Unlike Zimmerman, this wasn&#039;t even close to acquittal. But I agree that the prosecution has not been stellar in either case.
WND is first among the hate-mongering that probably fan these flames (These are 3 different recent stories):
<i>100 in black mob found destroying property and attacking people These are supposed to be the good kids. The ones supposed to be impressed with the legacy of their high school&rsquo;s namesake: Frederick Douglass. They wear uniforms. They have a strict code of conduct. They prepare for college. They are black.
Black History Month in Baltimore is a busy, busy time. Every aspect of black life in this city is remembered and celebrated: Black schools. Black music. Black movies. Black churches. Black literature. Black clothing. Black politicians. Even black trains. Then Tracey Halvorsen had to go and spoil it all: She wrote an article about crime in Baltimore. How she and her mostly white neighbors live in fear. And no one seems to care.
As black mob violence goes, the recent racial mayhem at the Florida State Fair in Tampa was not that big of a deal. Sure hundreds of black people were fighting. On video. Police were attacked. Property destroyed. Fair-goers beaten. Venders assaulted. Cell phones stolen. An old lady in a wheelchair robbed. People jumping fences and refusing to pay for rides. The fair closed early. And most of the media glossed over most of it. </i>
And something interesting from Think Progress today:<i>
Just prior to the trial, the State Attorney&rsquo;s Office released a set of letters Dunn sent from prison revealing significant animus toward blacks. &ldquo;The more time I am exposed to these people, the more prejudiced against them I become,&rdquo; he said in one. &ldquo;This jail is full of blacks and they all act like thugs,&rdquo; he said in another. The letters did not come into play during trial. But they reveal the sort of racial undertones that have been prominent in many Stand Your Ground cases. One study found that white defendants with black victims are far more likely to have their killings deem &ldquo;justified&rdquo; under the Stand Your Ground law.</i>
<i>Charles Hendrix, Michael Dunn&#039;s former next-door neighbor, describes violent behavior, lies, insurance fraud, cocaine use, bragging about putting a hit out on someone, and a first wife who said he&#039;d held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. He says Dunn bragged that he was smarter than everyone else and could outthink them.</i> <a href="http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch\?feature=player_embedded&amp\;v=itwx2Vb6aNI#t=0<\/i>" target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embed...">http://www.youtube.com/watc...
Very sad but probably true.
Signed and shared. Thanks!
My recollection is that the Black Panthers were murdered in their beds to the general rejoicing of white America.
I&#039;ve served on numerous juries. It&#039;s hard work, and convicting someone is no fun at all.
I&#039;ve served on a hung jury; sometimes you get an immovable juror, which is probably what happened here. But even the immovable ones are not, in my experience, stupid or shallow.
On the other hand, the view that jury duty is a pain in the neck and only morons would get suckered into serving is a fairly good indicator of shallow, self-interested thinking. So I guess the jury pool is somewhat Darwinian in that respect.
IANAL also, but here&#039;s what I understand about the legal concept of &quot;reasonableness.&quot; It&#039;s probably the single favorite term of art in law. Juries must find beyond &quot;reasonable doubt&quot; in criminal trials. A user of copyrighted material must make &quot;reasonable efforts&quot; to find the rights holder. Not <i>all</i> doubt, not <i>all</i> efforts.
Reasonableness is that mooshy undefined concept by which decisions are placed in the collective intelligence of a group of jurors, who are left to thrash out exactly where they draw the line in one specific case. And everything in US law weights the deliberations in favor of the accused - as indeed it should.
So when a law is badly written, sloppy and too broad, the first thing that defense attorneys, prosecutors, juries, and even judges do is apply the reasonableness standard as far as possible to serve their interests. If the law is badly written, the &quot;reasonableness&quot; standard turns out to apply to everyone and everything.
This leaves juries to decide not the facts (which are reduced a grey sludge of feelings and reasonable beliefs) but its own perceptions and its own preconceptions.
A law like Stand Your Ground was (IMO) deliberately badly written. Its subtext is: &quot;We all know who this reasonableness test is supposed to apply to, and who not.&quot; Unsurprisingly, it is being used to acquit white perps at a far greater rate than black perps. That was its intent, and it&#039;s working. Which is why I think there is a federal civil-rights interest that could overturn it. Maybe.
&quot;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.&quot;
<a href="http:\/\/wonkette.com\/542035\/slow-news-day-things-what-you-can-read#IDComment795280967" target="_blank">Exactly as I called it. </a> Not that it was hard to do.
My take is that because he was just blasting away at the car, he didn&#039;t have the specific intent to kill that specific kid. Reckless or negligent homicide - now <i>there&#039;s </i>a no-brainer. Assuming that Floriduh has a statute that criminalizes it; maybe it&#039;s just something that &quot;happens all the time, no big deal.&quot;
Sounds like a polite society to me.
He&#039;s got 60 years to learn to like them.
The premeditation comes from the fact that he pulled out his gun in the course of an argument, after the kid had refused to obey his demand to lower the music. And also that he seems to have deliberately picked the fight, knowing that he had a gun at hand.
New Orleans votes Dem. Louisiana has a Dem senator, who&#039;s pretty decent. Like Florida, it&#039;s a mixture of awful and unexpectedly progressive. But with much better food and music.
Hopefully they&#039;ll retry him on 2nd degree murder and nail him, because otherwise he&#039;ll be out in 5 years or so. Unlike Zimmerman, this wasn&#039;t even close to acquittal. But I agree that the prosecution has not been stellar in either case.
We may have different time horizons for premeditation.
Nevertheless, second-degree (or greater) seems obvious.