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Florida man found guilty of first-degree murder in 'loud music' retrial Florida man found guilty of first-degree murder in 'loud music' retrial
(about 1 hour later)
A jury has found a Florida man guilty of first-degree murder for fatally shooting a teenager after an argument over loud music outside a Jacksonville convenience store. The mother of a black teenager shot dead in a dispute over loud rap music has spoken of her family’s “joy and sorrow” after a Florida jury on Wednesday convicted his killer, Michael Dunn, of first-degree murder.
The jury reached its verdict on Wednesday after more than five hours of deliberations. Dunn, 47, claimed during his week-long trial that he shot Jordan Davis, 17, in self-defence during an altercation at a Jacksonville gas station in November 2012 sparked by the youth’s refusal to turn down the thumping music blaring from his vehicle.
Prosecutors say Michael Dunn shot with intent to kill when he fired 10 times into an SUV carrying 17-year-old Jordan Davis and three of his friends in November 2012. But the jury of eight men and four women accepted the prosecution’s version that Dunn snapped after he felt disrespected by a group of teenagers, and was consumed by fury when he took his 9mm pistol from his glovebox and fired 10 rounds at the SUV in which Davis and three friends were sitting. The final volley of shots came as the vehicle sped away to safety with Davis lying dead or dying across the back seat, having been struck three times.
Dunn testified that he thought his life was in danger. Davis was from Marietta, Georgia. “Words cannot express our joy but also our great sorrow,” Davis’s mother, Lucia McBath, said in a press conference after the verdict.
Dunn was convicted previously of three counts of attempted second-degree murder in February and already faces at least 60 years in prison. “Because with the verdicts of all counts being guilty for Michael Dunn we know Jordan has received his justice. We know that Jordan’s life and legacy will live on for others but at the same time we’re also saddened by the life that Michael Dunn will continue to live, saddened for his family and friends who will continue to suffer for his actions.”
The jury in the first trial deadlocked on the first-degree murder count, which led prosecutors to retry him in this case. Dunn will likely spend the rest of his life in jail. Later this month Judge Russell Healy will impose a mandatory sentence of life without parole for murder. He will add up to another 75 years for his convictions from his original trial in February of three counts of the attempted murder of Davis’s friends plus one charge of firing into an occupied vehicle.
More details soon … The judge said he would set a date for sentencing next week. “It’s an emotional time for many. It’s not about winning or losing. Lives have been affected and that will never change,” he said.
The jury, which deliberated for four and a half hours on Wednesday, was not told about the earlier trial, Dunn’s convictions for attempted murder, which will each bring a minimum 20-year sentence, or that a mistrial was declared in February on the murder charge.
Dunn, dressed in a dark grey suit, expressed no emotion as a clerk read the guilty verdict. Judge Healey then polled the jury members to ensure the verdict was unanimous.
The case had striking similarities to that of George Zimmerman, who shot an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, and then claimed in court that the killing was justified under the state’s controversial stand-your-ground law.
But unlike Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch leader acquitted of murder last year, Dunn fled the scene immediately after the shooting, then spent the night eating pizza, drinking wine and watching movies with his fiancée in their hotel room.
Prosecutors seized on Dunn’s decision the following morning to make the two-and-a-half hour drive to his home in Satellite Beach, Florida, without contacting authorities, and accused him of lying for insisting in court that he saw Davis brandishing a shotgun during their encounter.
Investigators found no evidence of a weapon in the youths’ car or at the crime scene, and Dunn’s fiancee Rhonda Rouer testified that he never said to her that he had seen the teenager with a gun during several conversations they had about the incident.
“It’s very gratifying to come to this day and see closure for our victims. We felt strongly that it was first-degree murder, it seemed clear cut to us,” said state attorney Angela Corey, the lead prosecutor.
“We felt Michael Dunn’s flight to avoid prosecution would be the most striking thing about this case. If you are defending your life you don’t then run from the scene. His was, quite frankly a ridiculous story.”
McBath, who became an advocate for tighter gun controls after her son’s death, added that she thought the verdict was “not only justice for Jordan, but justice for Trayvon and justice all the nameless faces and children and people that will never have a voice.”