Reaction to the Michael Dunn Verdict

GP: The following is a roundup of tweets and commentary following the split-verdict in the Michael Dunn “loud music” trial. 

First up, here’s CNN’s Don Lemon linking to Mediaite and video clips of his pre- and post-verdict commentary.  I was watching Lemon live, and the problem with Lemon’s anger and emotion was it prevented a full analysis of the verdict:

For example, I posted this in response to one of Lemon’s panelists questioning the diversity of the jury. Lemon didn’t push-back on the comment and took it as fact. . .

. . .If that’s not diverse enough, I’d like to hear what a proper jury should have looked like.

Marc Lamont Hill, another panelist on Lemon’s coverage, found fault with the jury as well:

and. . .

For starters, a verdict in a trial only relates to that particular trial. But even if that’s not the case, Hill omits that the jury did find Dunn guilty of second-degree attempted murder of the three unarmed black children that were in the car with Jordan Davis. For the record, Davis’s parents thanked the jury for their work:

Davis’ parents each left the courtroom in tears. Afterward his mother, Lucia McBath, expressed gratitude for the verdict. Sunday would have been the teen’s 19th birthday.

“We are so grateful for the truth,” McBath said. “We are so grateful that the jurors were able to understand the common sense of it all.”

One thing that stands out in the Dunn case is that conservatives see a miscarriage of justice in the case as well, but we’re looking at the competence of the prosecutorial team. Here’s former NROer Robert VerBruggen with a good piece up on Angela Corey’s prosecution and if she over-charged:

Finally, here’s Ta-Nehisi Coates from “The Atlantic” on the verdict. He doesn’t blame the jury because America, itself, is racist and this is to be expected:

Spare us the invocations of “black-on-black crime.” I will not respect the lie. I would rather be thought insane. The most mendacious phrase in the American language is “black-on-black crime,” which is uttered as though the same hands that drew red lines around the ghettoes of Chicago are not the same hands that drew red lines around the life of Jordan Davis, as though black people authored North Lawndale and policy does not exist. That which mandates the murder of our Hadiya Pendletons necessarily mandates the murder of Jordan Davis. I will not respect any difference. I will not respect the lie. I would rather be thought crazy.

I insist that the irrelevance of black life has been drilled into this country since its infancy, and shall not be extricated through the latest innovations in Negro Finishing School. I insist that racism is our heritage, that Thomas Jefferson’s genius is no more important than his plundering of the body of Sally Hemmings, that George Washington’s abdication is no more significant than his wild pursuit of Oney Judge, that the G.I Bill’s accolades are somehow inseparable from its racist heritage. I will not respect the lie. I insist that racism must be properly understood as an Intelligence, as a sentience, as a default setting to which, likely until the end of our days, we unerringly return. 

Updates to follow. . .