Breaking: Dunn guilty on the four lesser counts, mistrial on the murder count

[countrygirl_914]

Michael Dunn Trial: Mistrial Declared on Murder Charge in Loud Music Killing Case

A Florida jury found Michael Dunn guilty on four of the five charges in a case in which he was accused of shooting a teenager to death over loud music, but they could not come to a decision on the murder charge and a mistrial was declared on that count.Dunn, 47, had

Comments

[girly123]

I'm incredibly pissed off that Angela Corey will still be in charge of handling the mistrail. I wish she'd just fall into the marianas trench and never be heard from again.

[danceprincess20]

Thank God the minimum is 60 years but it's amazing how confused the jury seemed to be. 11 questions and over 30 hours?! In Angela Corey's press conference, she said they do plan to re-try him on the murder charge.

I hope this makes people around here realize that every single election is important.

[redstar826]

apparently each of the attempted murder convictions comes with a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years, so dude is going to die in jail. And I'm seeing stuff saying that the prosecution is going to push for a new trial for the murder charge.

He said the state has the burden to prove that Davis didn't brandish a gun at Dunn, as Dunn has claimed.

I havent been following this all that closely...Was a gun found in the car? Was there any evidence to back up Dunn's claim? Or it is pretty clear that his story was bullshit?

[danceprincess20]

No gun was ever found. The Gate station parking lot is connected to another parking lot with, like, a small strip mall. The car Jordan Davis was in left the parking lot (into the other parking lot basically) then came back. Dunn says he thought he saw a gun in the car (he also said "it could have been a stick"). The defense tried to say the boys hid it during that 3 minutes from when they left the parking lot to when they came back (they also tried to harp on the fact that the area where the Durango drove wasn't closed off that night). I'm relatively familiar with the area where this happened and we're not talking about some wooded area you could easily hide a gun (esp a shotgun which is what Dunn says he saw).

For the defense's story to make sense, they would have had to drive away from the shooting (with their dying friend in the back seat) and hide the gun (in a parking lot, basically) in 3 minutes then send someone else there to get rid of the gun. And then lie about it (repeatedly).

[redstar826]

ahhh, ok. thanks for explaining this.

[lied_ohne_worte]

That sounds like an extremely likely story, and of course hiding a gun in a place where no one finds it and making plans for its removal is just what a group of teenagers in that situation would think about first, and would be able to organise in three minutes.

At least the defense doesn't seem to have been believed - sad to say I'm surprised they weren't.

[danceprincess20]

Also, a commentator pointed out that it is possible that the issue with the murder charge was not that some one (or some group) on the jury thought he was not guilty but that there was a disagreement over 1st vs 2nd degree murder. I figure we will probably hear something from a jury member by next week so hopefully we'll get some more insight into what the issue was.

[meadowphoenix]

Ehh, the problem with 1st degree v 2nd degree has less to do with the facts and more to do with "premeditation" never being defined well enough to overcome people's erroneous assumptions of it.

[lied_ohne_worte]

Well, from the little I've read, this case does seem to have been handled somewhat differently - the protests in Trayvon's case originally stemmed from the fact that Zimmermann hadn't been arrested or charged with anything after the deed, and later from the way the trial was handled and ultimately the verdict. This one seems at least to have needed less public pressure in order to even bring it to trial.

[moonshaz]

This.

Trayvon's case would have been completely swept under the rug if it hadn't been for the protests and resulting media attention. This case seems to have been handled much more appropriately from the get-go.