Fear of a black planet
By I have a piece in Salon on the Dunn verdict.
Unlike the George Zimmerman trial, the Dunn case featured a straightforward application of Florida’s stand your ground law. That law works like this: if Dunn had a reasonable fear that he was about to suffer “great bodily harm,” then he had a legal right to shoot Davis to death, rather than, for example, choosing to protect himself by driving away, even if Dunn knew that driving away would have protected him from harm.
If you think that sounds crazy, you haven’t heard the half of it. Because the stand your ground law creates an affirmative defense for criminal defendants, the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dunn’s claim that he had a reasonable fear he was about to suffer great bodily harm was false. Such laws, in effect, put the victim rather than the killer on trial, which is exactly what happened in this case.