Jury verdict in Florida killing case stirs racial bias debate

Michael Dunn, a 47-year-old software developer, pulled into a petrol station in Jacksonville, Florida, on November 23rd, 2012, after leaving his son's wedding. He parked beside a red SUV while his fiancée went to buy wine and snacks. Four teenagers were playing rap music in the SUV, which Dunn didn't like. He asked them to turn it down.

A confrontation followed and Dunn fired three volleys of shots, about 10 bullets, at the other vehicle, shooting even as it drove away. Three of the bullets struck one teenager in the SUV, 17-year-old Jordan Davis, killing him. Dunn drove out of the garage back to his hotel where he walked his dog, ordered a pizza and drank rum and cola. He had no contact with police until apprehended.

Last Sunday, a jury found Dunn guilty of attempted murder for shooting at the car but could not agree on the most serious charge against him – first- degree murder.

The fact that Dunn is white and Davis was black has meant this case has reopened the old wounds of self-defence and racial profiling most recently picked at with the acquittal of volunteer neighbourhood watchman George Zimmerman on the murder of teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida last year. One of the state attorneys worked on the prosecution teams in both cases.

Prosecutors argued Dunn flew into a rage after Davis refused to lower the music and "mouthed off" at him. Dunn maintained he acted in self- defence, saying he thought he saw the barrel of a shotgun sticking out of the SUV. Police found no gun in the SUV, and Dunn's fiancée, Rhonda Rouer, even testified Dunn had never mentioned any weapon used to threaten him. She said he had remarked "I hate that thug music" before she left the car.

Jury make-up
In the end, some jurors believed Dunn's account, creating a split in the jury room. This led to a mistrial being declared on the first-degree murder charge. On Tuesday night one juror, identified only as Valerie, told ABC's Nightline that after almost 30 hours of deliberations all but three jurors wanted to convict Dunn of first- degree murder. The make-up of the jury was four white men, four white women, one Hispanic man, two black women and an Asian-American woman.

Even without a retrial, a move the prosecution is considering, Dunn faces 60 years in prison for the second-degree attempted murder of the three other teenagers in the SUV. This is not enough for some, including the parents of Trayvon Martin, who believe racial stereotyping has created fear and an illegitimate basis for killing young teenagers.

Letters sent by Dunn from prison showed his deep-rooted racial prejudices. “This jail is full of blacks and they all act like thugs,” he wrote. “This may sound a bit radical, but if more people would arm themselves and kill these f***ing idiots when they’re threatening you, eventually they may take the hint and change their behaviour.”

Tamara Rice Lave, an associate professor of law at the University of Miami, told the New York Times this week it was difficult to believe the jury would not have found Dunn guilty of first-degree murder had Davis and his friends been white: "I don't think this would have come out the same way if this had been white preppy kids in a Volvo or some other stereotypical preppy car blasting the Rolling Stones or One Direction."

Charles M Blow, a columnist in the same newspaper, pointed to a deeper problem highlighted by the Dunn case. It is an example of the violence – psychological and physical, interracial and intraracial – against "the black body" across the US, he wrote. He pointed to statistics on domestic and corporal punishment of children and adolescents, school suspensions, traffic stops by police and crime in general showing racial disparities and a structural bias against African-Americans.

Subliminal prejudice
One piece of research dug up by Blow was a 2001 study in the journal Psychology, Public Policy and Law which found white jurors showed bias more often when race was not a prominent feature than when it was, showing prejudice could exist without it even appearing obvious.

A second juror who went public after the Dunn verdict, Creshuna Miles, a black woman, told CNN race was not a factor in the jury’s deliberations. “I never once thought about, ‘Oh, this was a black kid, this is a white guy,’” she said.

Dunn’s defence lawyer said the case was “not a black-and- white issue” but about “a subculture-thug issue”, as he tried to portray the four teenagers as ruffians.

A debate on racial bias may not have gone on within the confines of the Dunn case but outside it has stirred the cauldron of public discourse following yet another killing of an unarmed black teenager.