Let's take a second and go over this again. Michael Dunn fires 10 shots into a vehicle of unarmed teenagers, some of those shots coming as the teens were driving off, trying to escape. One teen, Jordan Davis, gets fatally shot. Micheal Dunn claims that he was threatened by Davis and that he saw a what he thought was the barrel of a shotgun. Police never found a gun or evidence that the teens ever had one in the vehicle. The case goes to trail and Dunn is found guilty on 3 counts of second degree attempted murder in regards to the three other teens that were in the SUV. As for the murder of Jordan Davis, the jury couldn't come to a decision. So once again, the credibility and reputation of a murdered Black teen is tarnished and the parents of Jordan Davis are left wondering why their son's death has become another footnote to the story of race in this country.
Let's be clear on this. Micheal Dunn is a murderer. He's facing up to 60 years in prison on three attempted murder charges but not for the murder of Jordan Davis. Some say that justice has been served, that Dunn is going to jail for what equates to a life sentence. I'm not one of those people. Justice hasn't been served, not for Jordan Davis and his family. Justice hasn't been served for Black people in this country. The lives of our Black youths have once again been shown to have little to no meaning to those who are appointed to serve as jurors and judges. The jury couldn't convict on a murder charge, even though Jordan Davis was murdered. What it basically boiled down to is that some jurors felt that Dunn should be held responsible for his actions and some didn't. How a group of people can agree that he tried to kill the other teens but couldn't agree on the fact that he did succeed in killing one baffles me. This was another no-brainer case where intent was obscured by a self defense claim. Even though the 'Stand Your Ground' law wasn't put into play here, it was implied. Dunn said Davis threatened him. The jury said, essentially, that the other teens were unfortunately stuck in between a dispute between Davis and Dunn and they were collateral damage. Davis was the perpetrator, and Dunn reacted to the threat.
But let's take a look at Dunn and his actions that night. Dunn says he felt like his life was in danger. So his reaction was to 1) reach into his glove box 2) unholster his gun, dropping the holster onto the floor of the car 3) chamber a round 4) fire off 10 shots into the vehicle, some as the vehicle is fleeing the scene and 5) leave the gas station. Next, Dunn goes to his hotel room, walks his dog, orders pizza and has a drink. He doesn't contact the police. In fact, Dunn had to be apprehended at his home in Satellite Beach. These are facts, not speculation. Another fact is that, according to Dunn's fiance, he never mentioned that he had seen a gun to her. I just cannot see how anyone could look at these facts and not see that Dunn intended to hurt everyone inside that vehicle and should have been held accountable for Jordan Davis' death. So Michael Dunn will serve jail time for attempting to kill three young Black men, as he should. But once again, as we saw in the Trayvon Martin trail, the murder of Jordan Davis, as it stands right now, will go on unresolved.
What also needs to be evaluated here is, what if Jordan Davis and his friends were white? What if Michael Dunn, upon hear the 'crap rap music' as he described it, had approached those teens and saw that they were white. Everything changes! I'm sure the so called 'threat' level that Dunn said he felt never comes into play. But even within the reality of what did happen, I find it hard to believe that Dunn ever felt threatened. A person who feels threatened reacts differently than Dunn did. Every living creature on this earth has an instinctively inherent response system that kicks in when they are threatened. Some species react aggressively when cornered, others flee. Humans have a bit of an advantage over animals because we have the ability to reason. Dunn reasoned that, since he had a gun, he was going to turn the tables on those with whom he had a disagreement with. I truly believe, if Dunn felt threatened, if Dunn had actually saw a gun, his first reaction would not have been to reach over in his glove box, grab his gun, chamber a round and fire 10 shots into the SUV that Davis and his friends were in. If there was an actual threat, Dunn most likely would have tried to flee first. But he decided that he was going to kill, according to his actions, and he did. There is nothing that I've seen that could make me think otherwise. But a jury couldn't agree on it so there is no murder conviction and Jordan Davis is painted as an aggressive young Black man who threatened a white man who just asked them to turn their music down.
Speaking of the music that was being played, the media had billed this as the "loud music trail" and I think that diminishes the issues that this trail was centered on. I can't help to think that this was an attempt by the media to try its best and downplay the racial tension that we saw in the George Zimmerman/ Trayvon Martin case. I also can't help but feel like there was pressure put on the media to do this by the powers that be. This case did not get the same national attention that Zimmerman's trail received and feel like that was by design, to quell the amount of public outcry that would have occurred had it received the proper attention. This to me is irresponsible on the part of the media but irresponsibility and the media go hand and hand. It also misleads passing viewers that may not have known much about the trail. Therefore, a person flipping through the channels may see the headline "loud music trail" and keep flipping through, having no idea or no interest in that topic. A great way to keep people misinformed.
It is my opinion that the value of human life itself is not what it was 20 years ago. During the time period from the 1980's through the early 2000's many Black young men, such as myself, felt like reaching 25 years old in this world was an accomplishment. Nowadays, after the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, the fear of not reaching 19 or 20 years old is something that needs to be considered. And these are just the incidents that get reported. I googled "man shoots Black child" and saw a few other instances where young Black children were shot by white men that were very scarcely reported on. In at least two of those cases, the shooters were convicted, but in one of them, the conviction is being appealed on the basis of mental disease. But that is a discussion for another post. It's sad to say that as the value of all human life slowly decreases, the value of the lives of our young Black men have absolutely no chance at ever being deemed worthwhile. I'm not being cynical, I'm just being honest.
