I cannot deny breathing a deep, cleansing sigh of relief when Michael Dunn was convicted of four of five counts in the trial that has reminded so many of George Zimmerman’s.
Unlike the latter case, we know that the perpetrator who took a young Black man’s life will serve prison time.
If he is given consecutive sentences, Dunn — who wrote bigoted, alarmist letters about Black men from his jail cell— would essentially spend the rest of his miserable life in jail.
But I also cannot deny feeling sick that the one charge that left a jury deadlocked was the one related to cutting down Jordan Davis, by numerous accounts a friendly, intelligent and promising young man whom we memorialized in this JET cover.
Dunn will be retried on that charge, according to the prosecution. And for the sake of his family, we do hope he is found guilty. He needs to answer for his crimes. He needs to pay for the trigger happy behavior that took Davis from his family. He needs to be held responsible so that Davis will not be remembered as a loud-music playing thug who caused this stranger to fear for his life.
Let’s be real. Dunn was no more afraid for his life than he was torn apart by the destruction he wrought on that fateful evening. But what he, and his defense team did, was play upon the irrational fear of young Black men. It’s a fear our community has been fighting since Emmett Till.
Jordan Davis’s death was not caused by his actions, it was caused by his Blackness.
Michael Dunn needs to be retried and found guilty so we can make that crystal clear.
