The Loud Music Trial, Justice Largely Served

There's now handwringing from civil rights activists because he wasn't convicted in the death of Jordan Davis. There seems further confusion as to how a jury could convict him of attempted murder of three men but not the actual murder of the fourth. (It was a mistrial on this count.) Really it's not that confusing.

 

The difference is that the white guy will be going to jail for a very long time, and the number of rightwingers hailing this Negro slayer as a hero are substantially smaller. There is wide concession that this guy is a dumbass who should be in jail. The difference was that Zimmerman was involved in a physical altercation while this was name-calling and perhaps idle threats between the parties. The difference is that this white man was shooting and multiple unarmed men while they were trying to escape the hostile situation. (Oh, and the black men turned down their rape music upon the white man's request. Even in comparison to Zimmerman, this white man wanted the situation to escalate.) After shooting at a bunch of black guys, he did not wait for the police to arrive--rather he went to a hotel and ordered out for pizza. Local place.

 

If the races were reversed, and just the races, the Negro Dunn would be having his armed swabbed for a needle for murdering that unarmed white boy--and attempting to murder three other white guys, whose fun night out was violently disturbed by a black man's madness.

 

That said, it is within the realm of possibility that Dunn did see a gun--and that was why no conviction was reached in that case. (In another rare case, the prosecution over-prosecuted a white person in connection to the murder of a black man. A manslaughter conviction was more achievable.) He had been in a verbal confrontation with four young guys, and he lived in a state where any idiot or escaped mental patient can buy and carry a gun--including himself. It might've been a gun--or a cellphone or a finger. There is nothing in Dunn's history that would suggest he fantasized about shooting a black man. He had no previous connection to Davis. He was not trying to rob Davis--nor did he take anything from Davis.

 

This young man's parents family want their son's name cleared. They want an acknowledgement that he was murdered, and he'd done nothing to provoke the shooting. This is not necessarily possible in a liberal democracy, where we are suppose to give the accused the benefit of the doubt. The solution, perhaps, is to give more young black men the benefit of the doubt, not remove that benefit from schlubby white guys.

 

Whatever darkness inhabiting Dunn's heart that led him to want to try to kill those men, the rest of us will never know.