Michael Dunn Headed to Prison for the Shots that Failed to Kill
This is a great commentary. A major problem with Florida’s self-defense law is that it does not require the person in fear to retreat. Dunn testified that his question, “Are you talking about me?” was intended to de-escalate when actual de-escalation was for him to simply move his car.
PoliticusUSA
Michael Dunn will likely receive a lengthy prison sentence after a jury found him guilty on three counts of attempted murder and one count of firing into a vehicle. The jury however was unable to reach agreement on the charge of first degree murder for killing Jordan Davis. On that charge, a mistrial was declared, but the four felony counts that Dunn was found guilty of could still send him to prison for up to 75 years. Dunn’s sentencing is scheduled for March 24th.
Dunn was remanded to custody after being convicted, and if the judge gives him anything close to the maximum sentence on each charge, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Yet, the verdict was disconcerting for one simple reason. Dunn was not convicted for murdering Jordan Davis. Had he confined his shooting to firing one or two fatal shots, he conceivably could…
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Posted on 02/17/2014, in Jordan Davis and tagged Jordan Davis, Michael Dunn, self defense, Stand Your Ground, trial, verdict. Bookmark the permalink. 46 Comments.
We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident 
It’s actually a minimum of 75 years and a maximum of 105. I wish they’d get it right, just like AOL Huff Poop blathering he was set free on the murder of Jordan Davis.
Duhhh of the year to them.
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Racerrodig,
I know. (sigh) I’ve also heard that people are saying Dunn was “set free” of murder. They either don’t understand what mistrial means or are intentionally misrepresenting it. Some have also said that Dunn is free until he is retried. That’s not true either. Dunn is in jail and will remain there until he is sentenced and shipped off to a Florida State prison.
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I’ve read all of that as well. Let me remind the ignorant race baiting hate mongers the 13 key words….
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Remanded
Game – Set – Match.
I’ll take I’ll take “Ignorant Lying Racist Bastards in Prison Forever” for 5,000.00″ Alex
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Yes, the judge clearly said he was remanded back to custody to await sentencing.
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That all depends if the sentences run concurrent or consecutive. He could end up with as little as 20 yrs.
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Racer, if the judge orders the sentences run concurrent, it could be as little as 20 years.. not even counting time off for ‘good behavior’. I have the feeling it was only one person on that jury who refused to find him guilty for Jordan’s murder. I’m sure it took some convincing for that one person to find him guilty of attempted murder for the 3 surviving teenagers. I hope he is re-tried for Jordan’s murder. Jordan deserves that.
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I’m pretty certain he’ll be sentenced to terms to run consecutive. Throughout the trial Judge Healey asked Duuhhnn if he was satisfied with this, that or the other thing. When he was reading the verdict forms he had an “..all rightee…” look on his face.
After he read them he made a hand motion to the Sheriffs Officers who then got into a square around him very slyly because he knew the score.
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Tim Wise has written an outstanding article with a Twitter feed.
http://www.timwise.org/2014/02/dangerousblackkids-a-twitter-meme-to-challenge-the-dehumanization-of-black-youth/
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These are great!!
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mindyme62,
Yes, they are!!
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I was following all of those tweets yesterday and also copy/pasting them so that I can create a notebook of them.
As Tim Wise describes them they were
At this time after the Dunn verdict, Tim Wise observes that
/large
Granny added:
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Also from SG2:
/large
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https://twitter.com/PlushGawd/status/435091594828861440
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Well Marissa Alexander was told you should’ve left the room. While this is a compromise verdict, at least Dunn will do serious prison time. Angela Corey stated she will try him again. However, Don Lemon whom all the racists loved when he agreed with Bill O’Reilly, is being attacked . Mr. Lemon expressed dissatisfaction with Dunn not being found guilty of Jordan Davis killing. Gregg Jarrett insulted Don. Something Gregg never did to a white anchor,expressing disgust over a verdict. Let’s remember Gregg and his disgust over OJ Simpson murder acquittal.
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m1,
Have you read where I’ve commented that we are a “body” with each part doing something different but all for the life of the body? Well, I’m so happy that you’re part of the body because where I lack in knowing things, such as specific media personnel, you are informed.
I had not heard about Don Lemon’s statements about Trayvon until after he spoke about the verdicts in Dunn’s case.
Since 2009, I’ve only watched CNN when there is breaking news. The news network that I watch the most is MSNBC. The ONLY time I’ve watched FOX since 2008 is when Hannity had GZ on his program.
Because of you, I shall keep my ears open for Gregg Jarrett. Thank you.
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Profound discussion with Tom Joyner, Roland Martin and Benjamin Crump including the Dunn verdicts; stand your ground, gun control, and GZ’s sympathy tour.
Attorney Crump addressed why prosecutors failed to effectively prosecute and he stated along the lines of saying that it’s important for attorneys to relate to who they advocate for. Prosecutors are so accustomed to prosecuting Blacks that they are like fish out of water when victims are Black.
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Excellent discussion!
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Rambling On!
The partially convictions of the animal Dunn are better than the free card
gave to animal penco fogen pig.
Animal Dunn is caged without the love of his life ,no more Rum and Coke,in
contrast animal penco fogen pig is in his TV tour trying to gain Hispanics sympathizers.
How stupid someone could be exposing themselves in front of the world while
a grand jury is deciding to indicting him.
Animal fogen pig is desperate and scare babbling about PTSD,homeless and penniless.
NO One Care!
Animal Dunn convictions let impaired law of self and others child killers fans
gloating about self defense,by now anyone of them will think twice before become a 0
for the wrong reasons.
Lastly ,animal Dunn desperation looking to his father in disbelief besides Strolla a
priceless moment,Dunn remanded in jail by court order shattering all his dreams to going
to Colorado with the love of his life and his 5 years plans against the state and Angela Corey.
The love of his life sooner than later will find a master to mold her to his desire and there is nothing than animal Dunn could do to stop her submissiveness,animal Dunn can not
prepare anymore Vodka and Sweet lime to the love of his life.
Rambling on!
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Yesterday I wrote a post noting that the majority of victims whose assailants/killers go free due to SYG are most certainly White. Yahtzee replied:
“My focus remains upon the fact that Black Americans do not receive equal justice. SYG allows vigilantism by White racists to be directed at Blacks with no consequences if the killers simply say they were in fear for their lives.”
Forget the bigotry and immorality in the subtext of this “I don’t give a shit about White victims” attitude, and just focus on the pragmatic politics. Framing SYG as a White-vs-Black issue is a pathetically poor strategy for a movement to roll back these laws. We’re all acutely aware of the level of racism that persists in the states that have these Castle Doctrine laws, right? Portray SYG as a free pass for aggrieved Whites to pursue vigilantism against uppity Blacks, and a hell of a lot of voters are going to think, down inside the dark corners of their sub-consciousness, “well, I don’t have a problem with that.”
If you actually want things to change, you have to form coalitions, and you build coaltitons not by establishing what the issue means to YOU, but why it matters to the people you hope to enlist. In the case of SYG, the actual facts support a broad cross-racial appeal. SYG allows a delusional vigilante to kill YOUR KID with no consequences if the killer can concoct even the flimsiest story about being in fear for his life… NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE!!
Of course, this is going to break much worse when the defendant is White and the victim is Black. But EVERYONE is a potential victim of armed crazies like Zimmerman and Dunn, and making THAT point will be the most effective way of getting these bat-shit crazy laws rolled back.
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Ooooh.
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Okay, whonoze, I am a White grandmother, age 64, who still will reiterate the feelings I happen to be experiencing at the presence moment which are, as I said in my comment you took an excerpt from:
I never said ANYTHING about not working together with Blacks and other minorities to repeal SYG. We do have to work together.
(But, I would like also to hear you pushing for equal justice for Blacks in our society.)
I wrote this the night of the GZ verdict:
250. You all have thoughtful comments says:
July 14, 2013 at 12:12 am
http://frederickleatherman.com/2013/07/13/jury-finds-george-zimmerman-not-guilty/#comment-202932
We all need to work together as a team.
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Now to your rude error, Whonoze. You were rude as you presumed INCORRECTLY that there was a subtext to my words.
You obviously do not read here very often or you would know what I advocate for.
Perhaps what I posted at this link will begin to give you a clue about what I advocate for:
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For those of you who do not know Whonoze, he did outstanding work proving with the surveillance cameras (partnering with tchoupi and others) to prove that GZ lied about his vehicle location. Whonoze did this with great dedication and poured hundreds of hours into this tedious work.
For this I highly commend Whonoze!
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Here is the result of Whonoze’s outstanding work:
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Whonoze created this video in a very professional manner.
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Thank you, Yahtzee, for your kind words about the video.
For the record, in suggesting that your earlier comment had a subtext, I did not mean to assert that you INTENDED it to have that meaning.
I absolutely take you at your word that you meant no such thing.
I am a retired professor of media studies, trained in the disciplines of semiotics and critical theory. Within these methods, the critic rarely if ever has any concern with the author’s intent. What is at issue it the ‘text’ itself, and what it means at the point of reception within the culture at hand. Not to assert an equivalency to your remarks, but, for example, many if not most racist comments issue forth from people who claim they have no racist intent. In the end, what they intended or didn’t intend may matter between individuals who have a personal relationship, but outside of that interpersonal sphere, it really doesn’t matter at all, does it? I mean, if someone without an evil cell in their body spreads the discourse of “thug music,” no matter how innocent their motives may be, the damage is still done. (Just for clarity, I’m not implying ANY utterance of certain words or phrases is necessarily problematic — satire/irony/critique etc. are other matters altogether. Lenny Bruce is still cool.)
Obviously, this principle of intent-doesn’t-matter applies to my words as well. I did not intend to disparage your person, only to critique the logical consequences of a sentence you posted on a blog. Yet you read it as a personal attack. That doesn’t go away just because I say ‘well, that’s not what I meant.”
You asserted definitively that _I_ was rude because you interpreted my comment as rude. That IS an error, though not a particularly significant one. (I might say you could have inquired about my intent if you felt I was dissing you personally, but nobody does that on the Internet…) You can’t read my mind, but you don’t have to in order to take exception to SOMETHING I SAID. You can just object to the thing itself, without making any inference about what I may or may not have intended.
My comment was not about you, it was about a specific thing you wrote in a specific post, and therefore whatever you have advocated in the past does not enter into this particular equation. (Of course, in other equations, it matters quite a lot.)
I stand by my original critique. To formulate SYG as a black-vs-white issue, as something that is only significant because it adds to the subjugation of African-Americans, IS both wrong on the facts AND bad strategy for anyone seeking reform. Period.
Lest there be any doubt, I shall state that I’m absolutely “down” with what you wrote on the night of the Zimmerman verdict.
“I would like also to hear you pushing for equal justice for Blacks in our society.”
I guess I’m disappointed you didn’t see that I was trying to do that in my OP…
++Quoting myself from the post that drew your initial reply, in response to Rachel’s question of whether the Dunn convictions were “enough”:++
“In order to begin to approach ‘enough’ we would need to see some changes in at least one of the various big-picture issues in play here: a. Persistent wide-spread racist stereotyping of all young Black men as ‘thugs’…”
And I do have a blog, that AFAIK no one has ever mistaken for the CTH… 🙂
Peace (and Justice)
w.
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Your comments are well considered.
Have a nice evening.
Peace and Equal Justice
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I apologize for not making it clear in my first post about your comment that I was making no inference about your intent. Like I said, personal relationships do matter, even ones that have only occurred in the blogosphere. Had my brain been working better I would have realized that ‘Yahtzee’ = ‘YAHTC’, and recognized you as a person of good will. I would have made the same critique of the comments, but I would have been nicer about it. But that’s no excuse. I should have been nicer even to someone with whom I was completely unfamiliar. Mea culpa.
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I appreciate your kindness in coming back here with your message to me, Whonoze.
And, I do understand your doctoral discipline that you practice. If I am correct, you are like an archeologist interpreting words.
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I ask you to see this article: http://www.tampabay.com/stand-your-ground-law/fatal-cases
this is a break down of about 200 cases of SYG in Florida and you can break it down by the race of the shooter and victim, you can also get a short break down of the case–you need to read them to decide for yourself if you think they were justified for not bringing charges. But I think you’ll find that there is equal treatment with the law. Yes, we have had a few high profile cases but that doesn’t mean the law isn’t equally applied. One change that hadn’t been updated is that of Gabriel Mobley who was recently granted immunity in a double murder case by an appellate court.
But is there a dangerous precedent in using a “I was in fear” defense, yes. There should be more that just fear, there should be proof.
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towerflower, I was not happy with the opening the jury instructions offered what would allow anyone that had even the slightest racial prejudice to effectively prevent a conviction on murder 1! Among the things that are not real are unicorns, common sense, and (a) reasonable man… I would suggest if you took twelve people and did a poll you would get twelve different opinions of what the term reasonable truly means… We need a standard established that eliminates the confusion…
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whonoze,
Or lover when the husband comes downstairs and discovers his wife having sex on the living room floor.
Or husband, whose killer was upset that he was texting in a movie. That case is pending, but if the law is presented to the jury that the killer had “reasonable” fear and no duty to retreat, the killer might just walk.
On this matter, I agree with attorney John Phillips that SYG immunity is unconstitutional but I tend to lean more to saying that SYG in whole is unconstitutional.
In Oct., I wrote http://wp.me/p2EUdR-oU:
What I’d like is for someone who is knowledgeable of history to write about how laws against conceal and open carry came into effect in the States. I mean, we did once have the wild, wild, west. There was a reason for that to stop. Why would the states introduce SYG to turn back the clock? If we get to the roots, we might find the right argument.
Along with this, I would like records going back to 2005 when Florida became the first state to legislate SYG that set forth how many people in the nation have needed to exercise self-defense in a public place, and when they did not know the person they killed?
Then, that data needs to be formerly articulated and brought before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Politicians are not going to listen to constituents. The Illinois Governor fought a good fight to prevent conceal carry in Illinois — even vetoed — and the issue went before the federal court forcing him to sign the Bill into law. It was argued on gun rights issues rather than conceal carry that goes hand-in-hand with using guns in public places. So, we come back full circle for why the wild, wild, west ended.
Those are my thoughts. Who is up to the challenge? What organization is already formed to pick up the baton to go beyond emotions and address this issue from a standpoint of SYG being a violation of constitutional rights to those who do not conceal carry?
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Benjamin Crump, Esq. @attorneycrump
15th February 2014 from TwitLonger
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https://twitter.com/NatJackEsq
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Natalie Jackson @NatJackEsq
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Excellent discussion…hope we can find a video of it.
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Juror #4
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Byron Pitts @byronpitts 6h
Byron Pitts @byronpitts 8h
Byron Pitts @byronpitts 9h
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John M. Phillips @JohnPhillips 6h
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John M. Phillips @JohnPhillips 6h
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/olivia-cole/elegy-for-fairness_b_4804687.html
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Father of Jordan Davis Wants Michael Dunn Sentenced:
Ronald Davis said he and family members are displeased that the man who shot their son has not yet been placed in prison.”
By Jonathan P. Hicks
Posted: 05/09/2014 05:01 PM EDT
http://www.bet.com/news/national/2014/05/09/father-of-jordan-davis-wants-michael-dunn-sentenced.html
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