When Michael Dunn decided that Jordan Davis and his friends were not free enough to play music in their own car, he made a conscious decision to do something about it. After all, he had everything on his side – a gun that made him bigger and badder than everyone else, a law that gave him the authority to shoot to kill if he thought his life was in danger – whether that feeling was real or not – and he is was white.
Those three factors, along with the fact that Jordan and his friends were black, created the perfect scenario for Dunn to exercise his will and authority over these young black teenagers. What freedom? They were in the presence of a white man with a gun and they were disrespecting him by playing that black rap music! Someone had to teach these people a lesson, let them know that freedom under the constitution only applied to a select few and they were not part of the few. Michael Dunn apparently felt that he was the man for the job.
And he would have gotten away with it too. He shot 10 rounds into the car obviously hoping to kill everyone inside. But some survived and their testimony helped draw a picture of a man with a gun hunting for a kill. His kill on that fateful day, was 17-year-old Jordan Davis.
On Friday, a judge and jury agreed, and sentenced Michael Dunn to life in prison. The life sentence imposed by Circuit Judge Russell Healey was mandatory for 47-year-old Michael Dunn after prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty.
“Mr. Dunn, your life is effectively over,” Healey said. “What is sad . is that this case exemplifies that our society seems to have lost its way.”
