“Shoot First, Then Cry Self-Defense”: Welcome To Florida, Where The NRA Rules And We Proudly Stand Our Ground
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the state legislature to fix Florida’s cockeyed Stand Your Ground law. The National Rifle Association owns too many of the Republican lawmakers who could end the madness.
Nothing will get done in Tallahassee as long as black kids are the ones getting shot by white guys claiming they acted in self-defense. What might eventually pressure politicians to change the law is when white guys start getting shot.
The jaw-dropping verdict in the Michael Dunn case in Jacksonville brought not a peep of outrage from GOP leaders in the House or Senate. The outcome shamefully underscored the lunacy of Stand Your Ground, and once again put Florida in the national spotlight as a gun-nut mecca.
Dunn, who is white, got into an argument over loud music with some black teenagers who were parked beside him at a gas-station convenience store. He pulled a handgun and fired into the teens’ SUV, then crouched and continued shooting as it sped away.
In all, Dunn fired 10 times. Jordan Davis, age 17, was killed.
Oddly, Dunn didn’t call the police. He checked into a motel with his girlfriend and ordered pizza. The next day he was arrested in Brevard County, where he lives.
At the trial, Dunn said he saw a shotgun being pointed at him from the SUV, and that he fired in self-defense. He also said Davis got out of the vehicle and threatened him.
No weapon was found in the SUV. Dunn’s own girlfriend testified that, contrary to his account, he never once mentioned to her that he’d seen a shotgun. Moreover, a medical examiner said Davis’ wounds indicated he’d been seated inside the vehicle, leaning back, when he was fatally struck by Dunn’s bullets.
The jury voted unanimously to convict Dunn on three counts of attempted second-degree murder for continuing to blast away at the SUV as it raced off.
However, the panel deadlocked 10-2 on the first-degree murder charge, the majority favoring conviction. Then it was 9-3.
The sticking point was Florida’s spongy self-defense law that essentially allows the use of lethal force if a person feels threatened.
True or not, practically anybody who shoots another person can say they feared for their lives, whether it’s a barroom fight, a domestic brawl or a traffic altercation. Self-defense claims in homicides have skyrocketed since 2005, when Stand Your Ground was passed.
Gang members, in particular, are big fans of the law.
No verdict was reached on the killing of Jordan Davis, so Michael Dunn is going to prison for attempting to murder the three other occupants of the car. Try to figure that one out, especially if you’re the parents of that dead teenager.
Coming less than a year after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, another unarmed black youth, the Dunn case should have shamed legislators into action.
It hasn’t, although there’s another one looming that should bring more heat. This time the victim was white, a Navy veteran and the father of a young child.
Chad Oulson was shot to death in a Wesley Chapel movie theater by 71-year-old Curtis Reeves Jr., who’d become aggravated because Oulson was texting during previews.
The two men argued. Oulson stood up and turned around. Police said he threw popcorn at Reeves, who pulled a gun and shot Oulson in the chest. The bullet nicked the hand of Oulson’s wife.
Reeves, a retired Tampa cop, has been charged with second-degree murder. He told police was he was scared “s—less” by Oulson, whom Reeves said had struck him with a fist or some other object.
No punches are visible on surveillance video from the movie theater, and even Reeves’ wife said she didn’t see Oulson hit her husband. Reeves’ attorney said the video shows a small shiny object striking Reeves and falling to the floor.
After the popcorn was flung at him, he whipped out a .380 semiautomatic and fired point-blank. Then he sat back in his chair while Oulson died.
Oulson’s wife said Reeves had taunted her husband about using his phone even after he’d put it away. She said Chad had been texting the family babysitter to check on their daughter, who wasn’t feeling well.
This is life in Florida — guns everywhere, and laws that favor the trigger-happy. Shoot first, then cry self-defense.
Kids playing rap music too loud? Lock and load.
Some guy texting at the movies? Teach him some manners.
Don’t walk away from an argument when you can end it with a bullet. Stand your ground and hope you get the right jury.
Welcome to Planet NRA.
By: Carl Hiaasen, The National Memo, February 25, 2014
“Unreasonable Absolutist Death Penalties”: The ‘Stand Your Ground’ Mindset Is Flawed
Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law was not invoked by the defense at either the trial of George Zimmerman or, more recently, Michael Dunn. But the mindset was present in both cases, and raises some troubling questions about what constitutes self-defense.
In the Zimmerman case, the defendant was acquitted of shooting an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, in the chest, arguing that Martin had attacked him. Zimmerman was acquitted.
In the Dunn case, the defendant’s behavior was even more sketchy. He had pulled into a gas station, and – annoyed by what he called the “rap crap” emanating from another car there – asked the four teenagers inside to turn it down. Dunn said 17-year-old Jordan Davis then threatened him and had a shotgun, and Dunn then shot into the car. Prosecutors said there was no threat (there was, in fact, no gun in the boys’ SUV) and merely shot 10 bullets into the car because he didn’t like the loud music.
Davis was killed, and Dunn was convicted of attempted murder of the three surviving teens. The jury deadlocked over whether Dunn was guilty of fist-degree murder of Davis. From a practical standpoint, it may not matter as much – Zimmerman is free, and has spent the time doing such bizarrely inappropriate activities as posing for a photo with a gun manufacturer and getting into a fight with his girlfriend, while Dunn already faces up to 60 years in prison for the attempted murder convictions. But the mindset, that “threat” is in the eye of the shooter, endures.
Florida law says someone does not have an obligation to retreat if he or she “reasonably” believes his or her life is at stake, even if there is no actual threat. (The “Stand Your Ground” law was not specifically invoked at either trial, but the Florida self-defense statute, complete with that language, was read to the jury.) How far does one take that? State of mind is indeed a reasonable factor to consider. But putting the onus on the prosecution to prove that the defendant was not reasonably in fear for his or her life merely enables racism, xenophobia and any other kind of fear-based in bias.
Would a middle-aged white man be more “reasonable” in believing that four black teenagers were a threat, than if the ages and races were reversed? That’s not stated in the law, of course, but juries, which insert their own experiences and fears into their judgments, might think so. A woman has a far greater chance of being raped than any man of any race has of being murdered. Would that make it OK for a woman walking alone to attack or shoot a man walking past her – especially if the man were of the same race, since most rapes are intra-racial?
The problem with the standard of “reasonable” is that it isn’t reasonable at all. It puts law behind emotion and human bias.
In Virginia, current law allows farmers to shoot dogs which run after their chickens, and officers are actually required to kill a dog caught going after someone’s poultry. The state legislature recently cleared a bill that would soften that law, giving urban areas (where more people, it seems, are raising chickens) the right to ease such absolutist death penalties. If Virginia can do more to protect dogs, perhaps Florida could do more to protect people.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, February 19, 2014
“Repeal Stand-Your-Ground Laws”: We Shouldn’t Have To Wait For Another Death And Controversial Trial
The law is supposed to solve problems, not create them. Laws should provide as much clarity as possible, not expand the realms of ambiguity and subjectivity. Laws ought to bring about the practical results their promoters claim they’ll achieve. And at its best, the law can help us to live together more harmoniously.
By all these measures, “stand your ground” laws are a failure. These statutes make the already difficult task of jurors even harder. They aggravate mistrust across racial lines. They appear to increase, rather than decrease, crime.
We should not have had to go through another racially charged trial in Florida to learn all this. Writing online for The Post, Mark Berman offered a succinct account of the facts of the Michael Dunn case that has aroused so much legitimate passion.
“In November 2012, Michael Dunn shot 17-year-old Jordan Davis in a Jacksonville, Fla., gas station parking lot. Dunn had approached a Dodge Durango holding Davis and three other teenagers and asked them to turn down their music. . . . An argument developed, and Dunn fired 10 times at the vehicle, including multiple shots fired as it pulled away.
“Davis died almost immediately after he was hit. . . . Dunn, who was in town for a wedding, returned to his hotel and drove back home to Brevard County the following morning; he was arrested later that day.” Dunn said he saw a shotgun in the Durango, but there was no evidence of one.
Dunn was convicted on three counts of attempted second-degree murder, but the jury hung on the first-degree murder charge brought in connection with Davis’s death.
The verdict came seven months after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the Sanford, Fla., killing of Trayvon Martin in another case where the stand-your-ground law was at issue. Both Martin and Davis were black teenagers. Should it surprise anyone that many African Americans fear that the law does not protect young males of color when they find themselves in confrontations with whites?
We shouldn’t fault the Dunn jury, which seemed to struggle to reach a just outcome. Unlike Zimmerman, the 47-year-old Dunn was not acquitted and could spend the rest of his life in prison. The jury clearly saw no justification for his firing at a fleeing car. But the stand-your-ground law undoubtedly sowed confusion on the murder count.
Supporters of the law say it was technically not at issue in the case, but this overlooks the obvious role it played in the trial. Cory Strolla, Dunn’s lawyer, mentioned it in his closing argument: “His honor will further tell you,” Strolla said, “that if Michael Dunn was in a public place where he had a legal right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force.” The judge, Russell L. Healey, was required to read the relevant stand-your-ground provisions to the jury.
Florida’s statute allows someone to use force if he or she “reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force.” The “reasonable belief” standard is not unique to stand-your-ground laws, but it opens a vast loophole for extreme subjectivity when it is applied in conjunction with them. This has created problems that even the law’s supporters should acknowledge.
A comprehensive 2012 examination of the law by the Tampa Bay Times concluded: “Seven years since it was passed, Florida’s ‘stand your ground’ law is being invoked with unexpected frequency, in ways no one imagined, to free killers and violent attackers whose self-defense claims seem questionable at best.” The law, the Times reporters wrote, has “confused judges” and has “allowed drug dealers to avoid murder charges and gang members to walk free.”
A study by two Texas A&M economists found that such laws “do not deter burglary, robbery, or aggravated assault” but do “lead to a statistically significant 8 percent net increase in the number of reported murders and non-negligent manslaughters.”
Stand-your-ground laws shift the balance of power on the streets to those who carry weapons. They thus provide an incentive for everyone to be armed, which is why the National Rifle Association has pressured legislatures in some two dozen states to enact them. We shouldn’t have to wait for another death and controversial trial to recognize that this is a poor reason for laws that cause such palpable harm. It’s time to repeal them.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 20, 2014
“Guns And The Thug Life”: There Was Only One Thug In That Convenience Store Parking Lot, And It Wasn’t Jordan Davis
On Saturday night, the jury in the case of Michael Dunn rendered a strange verdict, convicting Dunn of attempting to murder the three teens who survived the hail of fire he sent at their car, but deadlocking on the charge of murdering the one he succeeded in killing. We may never know what went on in the jury room, but if nothing else, Dunn will not be driving into any more parking lots and getting into any more arguments that end in death, at least not for some time.
This case is, of course about race, which we’ll get to in a moment. But it’s also about—to use a word that crops up repeatedly in Michael Dunn’s written comments—a culture. It’s a culture where manhood must continually be proven, where every disagreement is a test of strength, and where in the end, your fellow human beings are only waiting to kill you, so you’d better draw first.
This was the culture of violence that Michael Dunn carried with him to the convenience store, the one that ended the life of 17-year-old Jordan Davis. It was Dunn’s manic hyper-vigilance, his fear, and the .45 he carried with him that brought death to the parking lot.
Dunn’s defense was built on his belief that he saw something that looked like the barrel of a shotgun (or maybe a pipe) emerge from the window of the car holding the teenagers with whom he was arguing about their music, though no shots came from their car and the police never found any gun. Unlike many people, I have no trouble believing that, for an instant at least, Dunn really did think he saw a gun. I also suspect that he realized afterward that there was no gun, which would explain why he never mentioned it to his fiancée.
What we do know is that when he encountered those black teens, Michael Dunn was sure he was facing down a group of dangerous criminals who might well try to kill him at any moment. We don’t have to wonder whether Dunn is a racist, because his own words make it pretty clear. The letters he wrote to family and friends while awaiting trial are full of statements describing black people as violent criminals who hate whites. “I’m not really prejudiced against race, but I have no use for certain cultures,” he wrote. “This gangster rap, ghetto-talking thug ‘culture’ that certain segments of society flock to is intolerable.” He wrote to a family member, “I just got off the phone with you and we were talking about how racist the blacks are up here. The more time I am exposed to these people the more prejudiced against them I become. I suppose the white folks who live here are pretty much anti-black, at least the ones who have been exposed to them.” And from another letter: “Remember when your mom was robbed? At gunpoint? Black thug.”
So when Dunn arrived at the store and heard that loud rap music, what it meant to him was clear: These are dangerous thugs. After all, they’re young and black, and they’ve got that awful rap music playing, right? And once he began to argue with them, you can bet that he was on high alert, ready to draw his weapon. Think about the last time you got into an argument. Your heart rate accelerated, the adrenaline started pumping, you entered into a state of heightened agitation and awareness. This physiological reaction was bred into us by millions of years of evolution, the fight-or-flight response to danger that ensured the survival of our ancestors.
The 7-11 is not the savanna, but Michael Dunn plainly believed he was a water buffalo surrounded by hyenas. So this time, he would be the predator. He grabbed his gun, exited his car, got down on one knee, and began to fire. And then he kept on firing, ten shots in all, even as the car drove away to escape him.
Just like the case of Curtis Reeves, the Florida man who shot and killed a man who irritated him by texting in a movie theater during the previews, the argument began over the most mundane thing, but ended in death. Michael Dunn couldn’t abide that loud rap music. Curtis Reeves got popcorn thrown at him, and threw back a bullet.
In a reasonable world—or in most countries other than ours—arguments like those would end with someone muttering “Jerk!” under his breath, then getting back to what he meant to be doing beforehand. An hour later, he’d think of the perfect retort that would have put that guy in his place. But in the world gun advocates have made, the result isn’t frustration or resentment, but death.
In his letters, Michael Dunn refers to black men, again and again, as “thugs.” But there was only one thug in that convenience store parking lot, one person who was ready to unleash violence at a moment’s notice, one man whose regard for human life had departed him somewhere along the course of his days. That thug wasn’t the 17-yead-old black kid. It was the 47-year-old white guy holding the gun.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 17, 2014
“A Few More Thoughts On Thug”: The Words We Use Are Often Encoded With Racial Presumptions And Expectations
“I hate that thug music.”
This, according to Rhonda Rouer’s testimony last week, is what her fiancé, Michael Dunn, said when they pulled into a Jacksonville, FL gas station next to an SUV full of black kids who had the stereo up high, pumping some obnoxious, bass-heavy rap.
Rouer was inside the convenience store when she heard the shots. Dunn, who is white, had gotten into an argument with the young men about their music, had gone into his glove box for his pistol, and started shooting. As the SUV tried to get away, he fired still more rounds. At least one of those rounds fatally struck 17-year-old Jordan Davis.
Dunn drove to his hotel. He did not call police. He ordered pizza. The next morning, he drove home to Satellite Beach, 175 miles south, where police arrested him. Dunn claimed he shot at the SUV because Davis threatened him with a gun. Davis was unarmed.
Dunn is now on trial for murder. He’s claiming self-defense in the November 2012 shooting, saying he felt threatened, though his victim wielded nothing more dangerous than the aforementioned “thug” music.
And we need to talk about that word a moment. But first, let’s try a thought experiment: Close your eyes and picture a California girl. Close your eyes and picture a chess prodigy.
Chances are, you saw the former as a sun-kissed blonde in a bikini running along a beach in slow motion and the latter as a studious-looking boy in owlish glasses. Chances are you saw both of them as white.
Now, close your eyes and picture a thug.
It is exceedingly likely the person you pictured was black, like Jordan Davis.
The point is, the words we use are often encoded with racial presumptions and expectations. Thus, your image of a California girl is more likely to resemble Farrah Fawcett (born in Corpus Christi) than Tyra Banks (born in Los Angeles) and your idea of a prodigy will not include Phiona Mutesi, a teenage chess champion from Uganda.
And thus “thug” becomes the more politically correct substitute for a certain racial slur. This is why Stanford-educated black football player Richard Sherman was called a thug for speaking loudly in an interview, but singer Justin Bieber was just a “bad boy” while facing charges of vandalism, assault and DUI.
And it is why, in jailhouse letters released to the media, Dunn uses that word to describe the boy he shot. But he doesn’t stop there. “The jail is full of blacks,” he writes, “and they all act like thugs. This may sound a bit radical but if more people would arm themselves and kill these (expletive) idiots, when they’re threatening you, eventually they may take the hint and change their behavior.”
In other letters he decries the lack of sympathy from the “liberal b—–ds” in the media, and takes heart that the counties surrounding Jacksonville are dominated by white Republican gun owners. He writes, “The jail here is almost all black prisoners. You’d think Jacksonville was 90-95 percent black judging by the makeup of the folks in jail here!”
What he describes, of course, is the great Catch-22 of African-American life. They decide you’re a thug from the moment you’re born, so they lock you up in disproportionate numbers. Then they point to the fact that you are locked up in disproportionate numbers to prove that you’re a thug.
Michael Dunn is a hateful man, condemned as a racist by his own words and deeds. But that’s his problem. Ours is that this sickness is not confined to him. And that it causes blindness, rendering sufferers unable to see what is right in front of them.
So one can only wonder with dread how many of us gaze upon this man who shot up an SUV full of unarmed kids, then fled the scene, and see a victim.
And how many will see a “thug” in a teenager just trying to dodge the bullets.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., The National Memo, February 12, 2014
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