Michael Dunn and the Gun That Was Not There

The jury decision in the trial of Michael Dunn, the man who shot and killed Jordan Davis while firing multiple shots into an SUV in which Jordan and three others had been listening to music, doesn't quite add up for me.  It doesn't seem just to me that, while being convicted for the attempted murder of the three boys that he did not kill, he could not be found guilty for the death of the boy that he did.

With respects to the circumstances of this case, it really highlights the problematic nature of a self-defense claim in terms of Stand Your Ground. Michael Dunn basically seems to have left the impression with at least one of his neighbors as having been a beastly person. His behavior subsequent to shooting up the SUV is entirely unhelpful. Witnesses do not seem to have heard or seen quite what Dunn claims had happened. His letters from jail have some racial content. He alone claims to have seen a weapon pointed at him in the SUV, which he did not mention to his girlfriend at all in the period between the incident and his arrest, which does invite the possibility that he "introduced" the idea of the gun after the event. There was no evidence of the gun, but the investigation was compromised because the parking lot was not secure, and after all, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

But the gun that was not there as the instrument from which Michael Dunn felt the need to protect himself is interesting to me simply by virtue of not having been used. If Dunn saw a weapon at the ready--when he opened fire, was it not likely he would have received return fire as self-defense from the persons in the vehicle?

To me, that is enough to cast doubt on the word of an already not-especially trustworthy person that there was no gun there--but that isn't the standard. It was his perception of physical threat to himself I think that got figured into the deliberations based on the questions asked by the jurors. I would tend to question whether that perception was reasonable or even matched up with his actions afterwards, and find his lack of contacting the authorities himself very troubling. But that reliance on the shooters' state of  mind is what complicates the self-defense instructions.

As the failure on the murder charge resulted in a mistrial, he will be retried for the killing of Jordan Davis, but at this point, I think people interested in seeing the case result in a conviction on that slaying are right to be suspicious of Angela Corey, who, having also prosecuted George Zimmerman, is getting Marcia Clark-levels of notoriety, and not in a good way. I think she failed to take the gun out of Davis' hands in the jurors' minds and put it in Dunn's fantasies, where it seems to have originated. And I think murder one is still going to be a sticking point at trial

I understand the family of the dead young man are at least content that Dunn will see prison time for this act, and that Davis' mother is praying for Dunn and his family. They seem like very decent people, and I think a conviction based on the very specific count of the slaying of their son is only appropriate, not just as closure for them--but because the message that so little precipitates in the murder of a young man and that such a killing can even get by our legal system does not show the right reverence for human life