Open thread.
I am busy with work. But yesterday's diaries have scrolled off the list already. So here is one for today's closing arguments. Someone is liveblogging it and so I will linkto it here.
http://frederickleatherman.com/...
Are these the best prosecutors FL has to offer? Making an open and shut case more complicated than needed. Not enough passion by the prosecution. Who the hell cares if Davis was in or outside the vehicle. Well, it does to some extent, but it should not be a major factor in determining guilt. The prosecution should focus on the fact that you just can't gun down a person for merely responding to a confrontation by getting out of his vehicle. The prosecution's debunking of story that Jordan was out of the car should be emphasized as mere gravy on the case and not the substance. Fact is no gun was found. There is nothing in the history that shows Jordan having threatened anyone with a gun. And we have three witnesses in the car(well, why should they be held to be less credible than the white shooter) who say Jordan had no gun. And we have his own fiancée who contradicts him.
AND WE HAVE THE FACT THAT HE DOES NOT CALL THE COPS EVEN THOUGH HE SAYS HE FELT SCARED HE WOULD BE ATTACKED AT THE HOTEL . How can he explain ordering pizza to calm his fiancée's nerves but not calling 911 at the hotel to make sure she and he were not scared that they would be attacked by "gangstas" even if one has to suspend a lot of disbelief already in allowing for the fact a person may forget to call 911 on the way back to the hotel. Wouldn't his fiancée's nerves be calmer with the cops coming over compared to pizza if that was the reason to order pizza? You know why they wouldn't be? Because the woman knew her fiancé was in trouble for murdering someone. So why would they call the cops?
Let's not forget that the prosecutor needs to illustrate how a juror would feel if someone had an argument with one of their loved ones and then decided to shoot them out of the blue and then claim that he thought in his mind that their loved one had a gun even though there was no gun on the scene. Is that good enough of an assumption if your loved one was involved? With a dense jury like the ones you get in FL, you need to make it known that this could happen to them and their killers could get away by just lying about seeing a gun.
UPDATE at NOON: The state prosecutor is getting to the point finally and doing a much better job now. Still, she needs to emphasize that no matter what else is discussed here to stack an easy case against Dunn, we can't lose sight of the fact that a defendant saying he was in fear of his life is not good enough reason to think he really wasin fear of his life. And that is why they need to consider his behavior later on too since there is nothing on the scene that bolsters his story. Not a single witness agrees with him on what he claims to have perceived. An that is another distinction the prosecutors need to make . What he perceived is not the same as what he claims to have perceived.