Jul 17 2013
Mother Jones: Here’s Florida’s Next Trayvon Martin Case: Jordan Davis
A white man named Michael Dunn shot and killed an unarmed black teenager named Jordan Davis in Florida last year after a brief dispute. The prosecutor overseeing the case is Florida state attorney Angela Corey. Dunn, who will be tried for murder, claims the shooting was in self-defense. Sound familiar?
Now that the state’s nationally televised and notorious self-defense case has ended with the acquittal of defendant George Zimmerman, a next potentially high-profile test of the state’s criminal-justice system may come when Dunn goes on trial for first-degree murder this September. And while Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground gun law didn’t in the end figure into the Zimmerman decision, it may be tested in the Dunn case.
The killing took place in November 2012, while Dunn was parked at a gas station convenience store, waiting for his girlfriend to emerge from inside. Four teenagers, including 17-year-old Davis, pulled up and parked next to Dunn’s car in an SUV. After an argument over the teens’ loud music, Dunn fired on the boys from his car, killing Davis. Dunn claims he opened fire only after one of the teens threatened his life, brandished a gun, and started to exit the SUV. Later he told police that he had “never been so scared” in his life.
The Davis family attorney, John Phillips, told HLN recently that Davis’ parents are “freaking out about justice” after the Zimmerman verdict. But in another HLN interview, he cautioned that the two cases aren’t identical, saying “the justice process is different for both. You gotta keep them separate.”
He’s right—there are some crucial distinctions. No one but Zimmerman and Martin himself bore witness to Zimmerman pulling the trigger. But there were several eyewitnesses to the Davis killing, including his three friends who survived. Despite Dunn’s claim that one of the victims had a gun, police recovered no weapon, and witnesses say no one involved got out of a vehicle except for Dunn, who allegedly did so as he fired his final shots. Instead of calling 911 or waiting for police to arrive, Dunn then fled the scene with his girlfriend, went back to his hotel and ate pizza, and later returned to his home without calling police. Whereas Zimmerman walked free for nearly six weeks and was only arrested and charged after a national outcry, police arrested Dunn the day after he killed Davis.
Click here for the full story.
2 Responses to “Mother Jones: Here’s Florida’s Next Trayvon Martin Case: Jordan Davis”
There are extreme differences between the two cases. Whereas the Martin case had plenty of ambiguity as to the degree of culpability each had in the events that led up to the shooting, this one seems pretty clear-cut.
Let’s first agree we don’t know all the details from a 5 paragraph story, so we are making a lot of assumptions here.
I think this one will probably NOT turn out like the Zimmerman-Martin affair. Besides the eye witness accounts, it is a fairly common assumption that the first person who calls 911 is going to be considered the victim during the investigation, so this guy is already starting in the hole.
That being said, the law says there doesn’t necessarily actually NEED to be a gun, if the person could convince a ‘reasonable’ person he had reason to fear for his life. But that isn’t probably going to work here either.
The incident is bad enough, but the thing I find most disturbing is the fact that this article made a point to showcase the race of the parties involved. There is no hint yet that there was anything racial motivated about the incident, so what does it matter? Or is this just a chance to jump on the bandwagon and attract attention and notoriety?