Worse than Zimmerman SYG trial starts

[mellenORL]

Here we go again. This time, the incident has multiple witnesses, and looks like an undeniable intended murder...but it happened in, and will be tried in, Jacksonville, a very conservative city in northern Florida.

TL;DR - So, a middle aged white dude can't stand loud music, even for just a few minutes while in a convenience store parking lot. He drove up and parked next to the "offending" vehicle, did a "Get Off My Lawn"-style old man rant, then shot an unarmed kid dead during the argument.

http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/echoes-of-zimmerman-expected-in-fla-trial?ocid=msnnws

http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/trial-opens-for-man-who-killed-teen-over-loud-music

I have depressingly little hope for a decent verdict.

[ironbite]

He's saying there was a weapon though.  Hence the SYG defense.

Ironbite-might not fly in the face of actual eye witnesses.

[Damen]

I'd actually heard about this and despite my lack of hope when it comes to a conviction (see: conservative and Jacksonville, FL) I am still holding out hope that he'll get the book thrown at him, especially considering there's eyewitnesses to this one.

[ironbite]

Yeah but they're black so who knows what'll happen.

[Ultimate Paragon]

There really needs to be some reform of Stand Your Ground laws.  I support the basic principle, but the way they're written, they're far too open to incidents like this.

[mellenORL]

If his attorney does indeed use SYG, and the jury does convict, it will have a huge positive impact against these horribly misused laws.

This part of one article really made me cringe;

Dunn's attorney, Cory Strolla of West Palm Beach, said in an email to The Associated Press on Friday that his client "feels that he was the victim of a political system pressured to appease a certain body of constituents."

"It has been a very long and tenuous year for my client, spent in isolation in the Duval County jail. Mr. Dunn has been continually threatened, harassed and tormented by inmates for over a year now, and has received almost no mental health counseling by staff," Strolla wrote.

Davis' mother, Lucia McBath, said that before her son's death, she never thought much about guns or Florida's "stand your ground" self-defense law that Dunn has hinted he will use at trial.

"I couldn't understand what or who he was defending himself against," she said. "In this regard, there was no credible threat to him whatsoever."

The church-going Davis was a good student, had never been arrested or in trouble and was thinking about going into the military, his parents said.

Cory Strolla is doing his job as defense attorney, I know, but he just landed at the top of my shit list.

[kefkaownsall]

It is so hard to be judged for what you are seeing people thinking that you look like a criminal.  Maybe he should wear a hoodie

[Witchyjoshy]

Let's hope the prosecution doesn't intentionally throw the case like they did with Zimmerman's trial.

[Captain Jack Harkness]

Dang.  That's quite a case.

You know, even if we "give this guy the benefit of the doubt" and assume that he thought he saw a shotgun barrel, SYG laws are flawed on a very basic level.  It gives people permission to shoot based solely on their perception of a situation.  It doesn't matter if the danger is imagined or not.  Even if you strip the possibility of a racial motive (which I'm not saying you should do), there's the very basic problem of allowing people to shoot based solely on paranoia.

[JohnE]

Can we call this the "it's coming right for us!" defense?

[Cerim Treascair]

Can we call this the "it's coming right for us!" defense?

Yes.  Yes we can.

[Askold]

Well if the SYG works the way I got the impression, this would count as a Stand your ground scenario. No seriously, if all you need is to "feel that your life is in danger" then all he has to do is say that he was scared of those teenagers.

Does it matter if he put himself in that situation on purpose? It didn't for Zimmerman.

Does it matter if the "gun" he saw was a stick or just a finger? As long as he THOUGHT he saw a gun he was still afraid.

I mean if the law says that all you need for SYG is to be in fear of your life, then all he needs is his own word that he felt afraid of those teenagers that he specifically went to pester and he therefore had the right to shoot them.

So unless I'm mistaken about the law (and lets face it, both the people for and against SYG love to misrepresent it to suit their own agenda) this is a standard SYG situation and an good example of why that law is so horrible.

As a side note, apparently 22 states in USA have some variation of it and 46 in total have either SYG or Castle doctrine. So I guess I won't be going to USA anytime soon.

[kefkaownsall]

Essentially the law is if you are scared IE Black people

[mellenORL]

http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/opening-statements-in-fla-loud-music-death-trial

There were several witnesses besides the kids in the victim car.

A witness said he pulled up to the convenience store and went inside where the music was loud enough to be noticeable in the store. When Steven Smith went outside, he said he noticed the music had stopped.

Smith said he heard someone from a Volkswagen Jetta say, "Nope, you're not going to talk to me that way." Smith testified that he then saw a man reach into the glove compartment through the passenger window, pull out a pistol and fire into the SUV.

The SUV started driving off and Smith said he noticed bullet holes in the side of the car.

Smith said he never saw anyone with a weapon in the SUV.

Here's a YouTube account upload list of the raw video as recorded by the Duval County courthouse cameras, not a slick, produced feed with news caster commentary, so feel free to scroll through the boring bits.

http://www.youtube.com/user/NextLevelSportsVideo/videos?sort=dd&view=0&flow=grid

[Lt. Fred]

Is it illegal to kill black people, or not? That is what is being decided.