JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Florida man was convicted Wednesday in the 2012 fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager amid a dispute over loud rap music blaring from a car.Jurors in the racially tinged retrial deliberated for about five hours before finding Michael Dunn guilty of first-degree murder.It was the second time that Mr. Dunn, 47, a software developer who claimed self-defense in the death of Jordan Davis, 17, faced a jury.
In February, a jury convicted Mr. Dunn of three counts of second-degree attempted murder – one for each of the surviving teenagers in the Dodge Durango — a crime for which he could receive a 60-year prison sentence.But that jury could not unanimously agree whether Mr. Dunn killed
Mr. Davis in self-defense or in a fit of rage on Nov. 23, 2012. The mistrial prompted the county’s top prosecutor to retry Mr. Dunn for first-degree murder.From the start, the case was infused with racial overtones and stirred the nation’s debate about racial profiling and its possible consequences.
Mr. Dunn is white and the teenagers black.With Mr. Davis’s death coming months after the killing of another unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, the shooting brought renewed focus to Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” laws, which in 2005 made it easier for people to claim self-defense if they had a reasonable belief their lives where threatened, whether the threat proved real or not.George Zimmerman was ultimately acquitted of Mr. Martin’s murder.
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