Article: Justice for Jordan Davis
Source: NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/us/weapon-in-slaying-of-florida-teenager-figures-again-in-court.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140213&_r=0
Weapon in Slaying of Florida Teenager Figures Again in Court
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — As Michael Dunn, the man accused of shooting a teenager to death during a dispute over loud music, sat stone-faced, a prosecutor hammered away on Wednesday at his self-defense claim, arguing that the teenager never pointed a weapon at Mr. Dunn.
“There was no gun in that Durango,” the prosecutor, Erin Wolfson, said during her closing statement. “It didn’t exist.”
That is why Mr. Dunn never called the police and why he fled the parking lot of the gas station convenience store after killing the teenager, Jordan Davis, prosecutors said. That is why no one in the Durango ever shot back at Mr. Dunn and why no weapon was found, they said. And that is why, after Mr. Dunn’s traumatized fiancée returned to the car from the store, he never mentioned to her that one of the four teenagers had a firearm, the prosecutors said.
“How did he forget to say, ‘Oh, by the way I saw the barrel of a shotgun’?” she asked, referring to the fiancée’s dramatic testimony on Tuesday.
The firearm, prosecutors said, was a figment of his imagination, fabricated to make his self-defense story more believable. Prosecutors said Mr. Dunn shot Mr. Davis, a high school student, because he had been insulted and disrespected.
It is “common sense,” John Guy, another prosecutor, told the jury in his closing words. “Jordan Davis didn’t have a weapon; he had a big mouth, and that defendant wasn’t going to stand for it.”
Mr. Dunn, 47, a software developer, is charged with the Nov. 23, 2012, premeditated murder of Mr. Davis, 17, and three counts of attempted murder, one for each of the surviving teenagers who were in the Durango. Mr. Davis was black, as are the three other teenagers. Mr. Dunn is white.
The crux of Mr. Dunn’s self-defense case is that he shot and killed Mr. Davis only after the teenager aimed a shotgun at him from the car window, threatened to kill him and then began to get out of the parked car. At that point, Mr. Dunn said he reached into his glove box for his pistol and shot repeatedly at the Durango. In all, he fired 10 times; three of those bullets hit Mr. Davis.
Mr. Dunn told the jury on Tuesday from the witness stand, “It was life or death.”
To bolster that claim, Cory Strolla, Mr. Dunn’s lawyer, told the jury in his closing statement that the teenagers could have easily hidden the shotgun after pulling out of the gas station and driving to a neighboring lot to escape the gunfire. Once the teenagers saw Mr. Davis was seriously wounded, they returned to the gas station and sought help.
The reason no weapon was found was simple, he said: The police failed to thoroughly search the car or the area around the scene of the crime .
“They messed up,” Mr. Strolla said. “They did a walk-through that lasted 15 minutes.”
He also told jurors that the prosecution’s witnesses, including the three surviving teenagers, provided inconsistent testimony, changing their minds often about the details of the case.
As Mr. Strolla reminded jurors, if they have a reasonable doubt about whether Mr. Dunn shot in self-defense, the verdict must be not guilty under the law.
Mr. Strolla has a strong ally in Florida law, which gives people who claim self-defense wide latitude in their responses. Mr. Dunn need only have had a reasonable belief that his life was in danger to respond with justifiable force. And no actual crime needs to have been committed. It is enough for his fear to have been triggered by an attempt at a crime.
The encounter at the gas station began with a request. Mr. Dunn, annoyed by the “thug music,” as his fiancée said he called it, that thumped out of the Durango parked alongside him, asked the teenagers inside to turn it down. They did, but then Mr. Davis, angry at the request, asked his friends to turn the volume up again.
A witness at the gas station said he overheard Mr. Dunn say, “You’re not going to talk to me that way.”
Mr. Dunn, who said Mr. Davis was by then stepping out of the car, reached into his glove box for his pistol.
But prosecutors said the cars were too close for Mr. Davis to have easily stepped out of the car, and they pointed to the medical examiner’s conclusion that Mr. Davis was shot while he was sitting down.
His gun gripped tightly, Mr. Dunn said he shot repeatedly at the car. As the Durango pulled away, Mr. Dunn, who said he feared the teenagers would shoot him and others from afar, stepped out of his car and shot at the Durango several more times.
But nobody ever shot back, prosecutors said.
His distraught fiancée, Rhonda Rouer, hearing the gunshots from the convenience store, returned to the car. “Get in,” Mr. Dunn said he told her.
Then Mr. Dunn, who was visiting Jacksonville for his son’s wedding, drove back to their hotel room, walked his dog, ordered pizza for Ms. Rouer, had a drink and went to sleep at 5 a.m. Mr. Dunn said he was still afraid the “gangsters” would come after him.
“Wouldn’t he have called the police if he was really afraid?” Mr. Guy said.
Even after Mr. Dunn read a news report at 1 a.m. that someone had died at the gas station, he chose not to call the police, prosecutors said.
Instead, he and Ms. Rouer drove two and a half hours home to Brevard County. Mr. Dunn told the jury he called a federal agent, a friend, to say he had something important to tell him when he got home.
But on the stand, Ms. Rouer, shaking and weeping, denied the conversation had taken place, delivering another blow to Mr. Dunn’s credibility. Mr. Dunn was arrested outside his house. A witness had written down his tag number.
“It was not self-defense,” Ms. Wolfson, the prosecutor, said. “Let me be very clear again there was no gun in that Durango.”
Jury deliberations began after both sides concluded their arguments.
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