By Odeisel

So we got a verdict in the Michael Dunn case. Four white men, four white women, 2 Black women, an Asian female and a Hispanic male took four days to deliberate and came back with guilty verdicts on four out of five charges. All except the one we were all curious to see: the first-degree murder charge that would have exacted a price for the taking of Black life.

Dunn, a 47-year-old man will probably spend the rest of his natural life in prison from the three attempted murder convictions. The jury deadlocked on the first-degree murder charge, leading to a mistrial on that count. There are tons of things we could get into regarding legal manipulation and the Stand Your Ground self-defense laws of Florida. Mr. Dunn declined Stand Your Ground immunity anyway. What I’d like to address is the growing propensity of municipal prosecutors in cases regarding the deaths of black people in homicides that involve discrimination to levy the first-degree murder charge.

The Florida statute on first-degree murder reads as follows

782.04 Murder.—

(1)(a) The unlawful killing of a human being:

1. When perpetrated from a premeditated design to effect the death of the person killed or any human being;

The first-degree murder statute is fairly ambiguous and as we have seen in dozens of police brutality cases and the Trayvon travesty, notoriously hard to prove, even with the resources of the state. Most of these crimes don’t involve plots or previous introductions or any knowledge between parties.

Without those things or a preceding incident, I can see someone concerned with the law deciding that these incidents don’t meet the standard for conviction. Ambiguity is all you need to combat the “reasonable doubt” evidence level. Knowing this, why do prosecutors continue to levy the first –degree charge?

With racial cases, there is always a level of community outrage and political/social pressure to go full-bore at the defendant and to overcharge, so as to not look like they are showing any preferential treatment. People, including and especially the media fan the flames and toss around the word murder with no regard for its definition within the confines of the law. Perhaps this pressure and the media attention drives the state to push for it. The converse is much more insidious and speaks to the exact reason why these cases exacerbate feelings of racial injustice.

What if these charges, especially in the case of the police are leveled purposely? What if they know how difficult it is to prove first-degree murder on an officer of the court? Despite the idea that law and order are separate entities, they are still cousins of the court system. Those checks still come from the same source and any attached civil case, is weakened to a certain degree by a criminal case victory in favor of a policeman.

I’m not an attorney, nor do I play one on television. But in a world increasingly driven by numbers, data and percentages, it would seem that any DA worth his salt would know the statistics related to these high-profile cases and the odds of getting a conviction on a first-degree murder charge.

Maybe I’m more sensitive to this imbalance since I’m a little tired of Sean Bell becoming Oscar Grant becoming Trayvon Martin becoming Jordan Davis. Perhaps I’m a little tired of young innocent Black men still be subject to the fear of white people. I’m sure someone can find some stat that would contradict my premise or support it depending ontheir intent. But the alchemy of adding lead and Black children and creating dead niggers drains all ideas of harmony and reconciliation slowly but surely.

People are really beginning to embrace the idea that being judged by 12 is a better option than  getting bodied by the police or some gun-toting hero who thinks anyone with a hoodie or rap music on the stereo is some kind of super thug that has to be put down. Sooner or later it will be shoot first and deal with it the other way. What will we have when we get to that point?