commentary by Patrick H. Moore
It’s strange how many people who are accused of capital crimes appear constitutionally unable to tell the same story twice, which could, of course, mean they are lying. We saw that in the case of George Zimmerman and the same thing has happened in the case of Michael Dunn. Although some commentators have suggested that Mr. Dunn was fairly convincing during his testimony on Tuesday in the Jacksonville, Fla. courtroom, his credibility may be undermined not only by the fact that his fiancée Rhonda Rouer’s testimony on Tuesday contradicted his own in key places, but also by the fact that the prosecutors have stated that the version of events Mr. Dunn gave jurors was different from what he initially told the police and from what he wrote in a series of jailhouse letters to relatives.
Mr. Dunn, 47, is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of 17-year-old Jordan Davis of Marietta, Georgia and three counts of attempted murder, one for each of the other three teenagers who were in the SUV Durango that Dunn fired at.
Like the George Zimmerman case, this matter has drawn attention to Florida’s expansive self-defense laws that has historically allowed people who say they feel threatened substantial leeway to use lethal force to protect themselves.
Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times writes:
At times teary, his feet shackled, Michael Dunn, the man accused of fatally shooting a black teenager in November 2012 during an argument over loud music, took the witness stand on Tuesday and told the jury he pulled the trigger repeatedly only to save his own life.
“It was Jordan Davis who kept escalating this to the point where I had no choice but to defend myself,” Mr. Dunn said, naming the 17-year-old student he shot dead in the parking lot of a gas station convenience store. “It was life or death.”
The trial has moved along fairly quickly and is expected to be turned over to the 12-person jury on Wednesday after closing statements.
According to most legal experts, Mr. Dunn, a software engineer from Brevard County, Fla., had little choice but to take the witness stand on his own behalf. Displaying a range of emotions ranging from mild-mannered to insistent to weepy, Mr. Dunn explained why he extracted his 9-millimeter pistol from his glove compartment, de-holstered it and fired 10 bullets at the four teenagers in the SUV, who according to the prosecutors, were unarmed. Jordan Davis, who had apparently spent the afternoon at a Jacksonville mall, will not be going back there anytime soon.
In his testimony, Mr. Dunn told the jurors, the shooting had nothing to do with the “obnoxious” bass music — or “rap crap” as he called it Tuesday — that apparently was thundering out of the teenagers’ Durango, which he had parked alongside. (We’ve all, of course, pulled up alongside vehicles churning forth the propulsive music of the youth culture. Most of us manage to refrain from telling the youngsters to turn their freakin’ music down. Mr. Dunn, however, felt 
compelled to try and control the situation and as a result, Jordan Davis lies dead.) Mr. Dunn also claimed on Tuesday that his shooting of the teenage boy had nothing to do with the fact that, according to Dunn, the boy responded to his “common courtesy” request to lower the volume of the music with a profanity-laced tirade. (It is curious that Mr. Dunn apparently could not abide the invasion of the boys’ thunderous bass for the few minutes his fiancée was in the gas station convenience store buying a bottle of white wine.)
Mr. Dunn said his shooting at the vehicle and its occupants was triggered purely by an escalating sense of menace he felt after Davis allegedly pointed a shotgun at him, got out of the vehicle and made an explicit threat to kill him.
Dunn specifically stated:
“As his head clears the window frame, he says, ‘This (expetive) is going down. His threats and actions left no doubt in my mind that it was firearm. It looked like a firearm and he treated it like a firearm.”
After Dunn fired a few rounds at the Durango and its occupants, the vehicle backed up quickly trying to avoid more gunfire. At this point, according to Dunn, he stepped out of his own car, dropped to one knee and fired more volleys to thwart any random shooting out the window of the Durango.
(I don’t understand how Jordan Davis could have been outside of the vehicle threatening Dunn while simultaneously sticking his head out the window while brandishing the shotgun.)
Dunn explained that his purpose in firing the extra rounds was to protect his fiancée who was apparently about to walk out of the convenience store, purchase accomplished. Dunn stated:
“I did it in my panicked state. I was worried about the blind firing situation, where they would shoot over their heads, whatever, and hit me, or hit me and Rhonda.”
Dunn testified that after his shaken fiancée got back in his car, he pulled out of the gas station and the two of them drove to the hotel where they spent the night as planned. They reportedly grabbed a pizza and possibly drank another rum-and-coke to calm down. It is unclear what happened to the bottle of white wine.
Dunn informed the jury that he told his fiancée several times that the teenager had threatened him with a gun or some kind of weapon. The next morning Dunn and his fiancée learned that someone had died at the gas station. Dunn stated that he then called a neighbor, reportedly a federal law enforcement official, and told him he had something he had to discuss when he got back to Brevard which is where he resides. He was arrested shortly after he arrived back in Brevard.
In an attempt to explain why he left the crime scene and did not report it until the next day, Dunn explained that he had no “rational” reason to flee except that he was afraid of the teenagers. He also stated that he did not call the police immediately because Ms. Rouer was very upset and wanted to go home sooner rather than later.
When Ms. Rouer was brought back for further cross after Dunn finished his testimony, she was scared to death, distraught and quivering. Perhaps it was her fear of lying on the witness stand, or perhaps she is simply an honest person, but Ms. Rouer said that Mr. Dunn never told her that night or the next day that one of the teenagers was armed. She also said that Mr. Dunn never called their neighbor to say he wanted to discuss something important.
Ouch!
Earlier, while cross-examining Dunn, the prosecutor, John Guy (the same manwho dropped the F-bombs during his opening statement at George Zimmerman’s trial), expressed his incredulity, raising the key question: If the teenagers had a shotgun and were being fired upon, why didn’t they use it?
It is noted that the police never found the alleged firearm. The three surviving teenagers testified last week that they did not hide a weapon and were not carrying one in the Durango. Jordan Davis and two of the teenagers had no criminal record, while the fourth teenager, the driver, has a third-degree felony conviction.
“Nobody did fire back, did they?” Guy asked Dunn.
“No,” said Dunn.
It is also noted that the former medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Mr. Davis, testified on Monday that it was “unlikely” that the deceased teenager was standing outside the vehicle when he was shot. This of course contradicts Dunn’s claim that Mr. Davis got out of the Durango. According to the former M.E., the wounds Davis sustained suggest he was sitting inside the vehicle and leaning away from the gunfire.
Naturally Dunn and his lawyer claimed that the teenagers dispensed with the shotgun during the very brief period when they pulled out of the gas station. They also insisted that the police had failed to thoroughly search the surrounding area, including trash bins close to the parking lot. Although I obviously have no knowledge as to whether the boys had a gun at any time, it seems pretty clear that if they did have a shotgun and dumped it, the gun would – at least in theory – have been fairly easy to find.
Has the Prosecution Once Again Over-Charged?
Based on the clear and glaring contradictions in testimony, it appears that there is a very good chance that Dunn is not being truthful. However, to make a first-degree-murder charge stick, there has to be pre-meditation. Without having more comprehensive knowledge of what happened there in the gas station parking lot, it would seem to me that for this homicide to rise to the level of first-degree murder, Dunn would probably have had to have walked over to the Durango and shot Jordan Davis through the window. And this, of course, would be supported by the M.E.’s testimony that Jordan Davis was leaning away from the gunfire.
However, given the circumstances, it would seem to me that the prosecution has a stronger case for a second-degree-murder conviction. One would think that things happened pretty fast which would not have given Dunn much time for pre-meditation. This may not make a whole lot of difference, however, if, based on their interpretation of the evidence, the jury feels that Dunn was not acting in self-defense, given that even if he is not convicted of first-degree-murder, the jury could still find him guilty of the attempted murder of the three other teenage boys.
In the George Zimmerman case, I was confident throughout the proceedings that Zimmerman would be acquitted, even though I suspected that he had killed Trayvon Martin for no good reason. In Dunn’s case, however, I’m not at all certain the shooter will be acquitted. And given the quick pace of the trial, we should know the answer before too long.