Thug To Spend Life In Prison Despite Creative “Imaginary Shotgun” Defense
By How implausible does a white man’s self-defense claim have to be before he can be convicted of killing a black teenager by a mostly white jury in Florida? Michael Dunn found out:
Mr. Dunn had said that Mr. Davis, who sat in a Dodge Durango parked next to Mr. Dunn’s car, pointed a shotgun in his direction and tried to get out of the car with it. The police never found a firearm and witnesses never saw one.
[…]
This time, prosecutors homed in more forcefully on Mr. Dunn’s actions after the shooting, behavior that they said cloaked him in guilt. Mr. Dunn fled the scene and never called the police, not even after he learned that someone had died. Instead, he and the woman who was then his fiancée drove to their hotel, where he walked the dog, poured himself a rum and Coke and ordered a pizza. The next day he drove two and a half hours back to his house in Satellite Beach, where the police, who by then had his license plate number, arrested him.
[…]
Prosecutors damaged his credibility by putting Rhonda Rouer, Mr. Dunn’s former fiancée, on the stand. In tearful testimony, Ms. Rouer, who was inside the store when the shooting took place, said Mr. Dunn complained about “thug” music. And in the night and day after the shooting, he never once mentioned that a teenager had pulled out a firearm.
What’s amazing is that this risible story was enough for a mistrial the first time. Glad to see there was a jury whose credulity had limits this time.