I think racism is a lot more covert than I used to.

[Maraya1969]

I just listened to the 2 jurors in the Dunn case and one was white and one was black and they both said very seriously that race did not play a part when they were deliberating.

And I think they think that is true.

It is only when we look at trends; of who gets found guilty more, of who gets the death penalty more, of who gets stopped more, that we see the racism.

Is it possible that there were a couple outright racists on the jury and they happened to have a lot of sway? Yea I think so. But that doesn't happen in all cases. We can't blame it on that.

It is the same thing that happened to a lot of people in this country when President Obama was elected. They did not find it comfortable. They were OK with black people but not black presidents.

I think we all need to watch our thoughts and feelings to make sure we are not jumping to conclusions based on something in the back of our heads. All of us.

[elleng]

1. They were following the law and the instructions provided by the court.

If the law and the instructions were a product of racism (might have been; stand your ground might have been a basis) the jury would have done their job innocent of those factors.

Dunn likely did what he did because the kids were African American, imo, but determining that was not part of the case against him.

[Gravitycollapse]

2. Pawning off responsibility on technicalities is intellectual laziness.

[elleng]

3. Applying the law has nothing to do with technicalities or laziness.

[Gravitycollapse]

5. It very often times has a lot to do with both.

[elleng]

6. For those who are too lazy to bother to understand, maybe.

[Gravitycollapse]

11. I understand the argument for legal incrementality. I don't agree with it in its entirety.

As I've said, it is often the case that technicalities are used as an excuse to abandon critical thinking.

[cheapdate]

9. Fuck the "law". Dunn is murderer.

[kwassa]

8. but still may have been subject to their personal biases

This is an unresolvable issue in all court rulings, right up and through the Supreme Court. I think this is the point of the OP. We must examine our own biases.

World views are irreconcilable. Most will never examine how their own world views have been arrived at.

[elleng]

12. 'May' have been, of course,

anything is possible, and we all must be aware. Yes, the OP's point is well taken.

[JJChambers]

4. There was such an outcry

Many posters here jumped at the opportunity to label the jury as racist. That appears to have been irresponsible and premature. Clearly the various jurors who have spoken publicly indicate that race was NOT a factor during the deliberations. The jurors followed the law, the instructions, and convicted Dunn on the strongest counts. They were hung on the one count that Dunn really put up a defense against.

Fixing the disparity between conviction rates for whites vs blacks doesn't mean we need to make it easier to convict whites, we need to ensure that blacks are given the same level of reasonable doubt. Out criminal justice system is designed to make convictions difficult. We shouldn't make it easier to convict ANYONE.

[Gravitycollapse]

7. Or, conversely, we need to make it more difficult to get away with murdering black men.

[elleng]

10. Thank you.

[Maraya1969]

13. If those were white kids in that car would the verdict be different?

I would expect a guilty verdict for murder 1 if the boys were white and the victim was white.

It really is a perplexing issue. I wonder what would happen if our courts tried people in absentia and all the jury heard was their spoken words, (not by them but by a computer), and the evidence was set so that the juror did not even know if the defendant were a man or a woman or what race they were.

That would be an interesting experiment.

[pothos]

18. if those kids were white

they wouldn't even be dead.

[JI7]

14. i agree, there was a black hispanic woman in the zimmerman trial and i believe she was pressured

into going along with the others. not only do they make sure to get racists. but if they do get others who may not be racist they try to make sure they are the type that will easily go along with the majority.

[shaayecanaan]

15. Certainly true

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aversive_racism

Dovidio and Gaertner showed evidence of aversive racism in the 1970s and 1980s with their field research. People from a list of conservative and liberal political parties in Brooklyn, New York were called by a "wrong number" caller, a confederate to the researcher, attempting to get hold of a mechanic to come help them with their broken down car. The confederate called from a pay phone and was out of change to make another call and asked the participant to make the call for them. The independent variable, or the variable the experimenter changed, was the dialect of the confederate to convince the participant that the "wrong number" caller was either White or Black. It was also noted how many people just hung-up the phone when they found it was a wrong number.

Conservatives were significantly less helpful to Blacks than Whites, helping Whites out 92% of the time and helping Blacks out 65% of the time (Dovidio & Gaertner, p. 69).[1] The liberals helped Whites 85% of the time and Blacks 75% of the time (Dovidio & Gaertner, p. 69).[1] However, people from the liberal party hung up prematurely on Blacks 19% versus 3% of the time on Whites, while the conservatives prematurely hung up on 8% of the Blacks and 5% of the Whites (Dovidio & Gaertner, p. 69). Such a big percentage gap with the liberals show that they may have a high affinity for an egalitarian society, but they still foster racial prejudices.

There was some other field work done which involved people of colour trying to ask for directions in the street. Most white people presumed that they were asking for money and attempted to avoid them.

Interestingly, many young whites specify no racial preferences on their online dating profile, yet are overwhelmingly inclined to only date other whites. It appears that when whites say that "race doesnt matter to me" they don't actually mean that; rather, they are seeking out other whites that are also inclined to say that "race doesnt matter to me" - ie cosmopolitan urban hipsters like themselves.

http://www.futurity.org/whites-prefer-whites-when-dating-online/

To me — although, in retrospect, it probably shouldn't have been so surprising — it was the degree to which people's stated preferences about race differed so much from their actual preferences. In the profiles they wrote, roughly half of the white women and eighty percent of the white men said that race didn't matter to them. But the response data told a different story. The white men who said that race didn't matter sent ninety percent of their email queries to white women. The white women who said race didn't matter sent about ninety-seven percent of their email queries to white men. It's possible, of course, that race really didn't matter for these white women and men, and that they simply never happened to browse a non-white date that interested them. Or, more likely, they said that race didn't matter because they wanted to come across — especially to potential mates of their own race — as open-minded.

http://www.nerve.com/screeningroom/books/freakonomics

[kcr]

16. The jury members who have spoken out had voted for conviction

They weren't the holdouts. I think it's a little too soon to be admonishing anyone for jumping to conclusions. Although I'm sure the the holdouts who thought Dunn was justified in shooting Davis aren't going to come right out and say, "Yep! I'm a racist!"

[1000words]

17. Paralysis by analysis

Think long and hard enough, you will find whatever it is you were looking for.