Michael Dunn guilty on three counts. Jury hung on first.

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The jury has just convicted Michael Dunn on three counts of attempted murder and related charges in his trial for shooting and killing a black teenager Jordon Davis while shooting into the vehicle Davis and his friends were riding in ten times.
What is agreed on is that while at a gas station, Dunn yelled at a group of teens in an SUV for playing their rap music - or what he termed "thug music" - too loud. Dunn claimed the driver then had produced a shotgun (which had never been found by the investigating police), and stepped out of the driver's side door upon being urged by his friends to "kill him." Now Dunn claimed to have heard this when the SUV's window was rolled up, and the music was blaring. Dunn then opened fire ten times into the door of the vehicle, then sped away. Displaying consciousness of guilt, Dunn had hid out with his fiancee at a bed and breakfast, and callously ordered a pizza and wine, rather than calling the police till the next morning. The kids in the SUV, on the overhand, had immediately called the police. Say what you will about George Zimmerman (and no, I do not want to rehash that never ending argument), at least Zimmerman had called the police immediately - very different from Dunn.
Incredibly enough, the jury was hung on the actual murder charge! Regardless, Dunn can face up to sixty years for his convictions. At age 47, he'll be carried out in a box before his sentence is up if given the maximum penalty. So far, till the jury explains their decision, it has been surmised they believed Dunn honestly believed his life was in danger . Something never revealed to the jury was how Dunn, while serving time in prison earlier, had expressed genuine racial hate for blacks, saying that they would only behave better if people would shoot them.
Dunn's argument was that he had been threatened by an armed thug. His defense played up on the racial angle, of young black men being potentially dangerous. Yes, there was an armed thug there at that gas station that day - his name was Michael Dunn, and now he's going to pay for taking that young man's life.

This is the first I've heard about this incident (I'm not a big news follower).

I remember hearing about this when it happened; it sounded like a bad shoot to me, and it appears that the jury in the case agreed.

To say Dunn really messed up is an absolute understatement. And it is nice to see him get jail time for something involved, for the most part.

I am struck by the fact that the jury were able to agree on convictions for the three attempted murders, but not on the charge of murder.

I don't have the benefit of having heard the evidence, and I don't know what was going through jurors minds, but it strikes me as a perverse result (in the legal sense) where a person can be convicted of a crime involving having an intention to kill and taking steps towards that intention in the cases of the three who survived, but not be convicted even of manslaughter in the case of the one who was actually killed.

The fact that they did not go for manslaughter appears to me to demonstrate that they concluded that he had intent. The actus reus appears to speak for itself. So all that is left is that there was an impediment to conviction offered by some statutory defence.

So, the lesson this teaches us is that if you're going to pull your weapon and fire upon someone, make sure you kill them.

Here are examples of Florida law.All the victims were unarmed.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/82545 ... our-ground
Some kids were TPing and egging a car in Little Rock when the owner came out and shot and killed one of them.They were just kids doing a silly prank.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/17/a ... s-a-prank/

If the jury believes that the shootings at the others in the vehicle served as attempted murder, therefore the actual killing must be considered to be murder, and that the mistrial is a matter of not being able to decide what type...

It sticks more than it should.
http://www.tampabay.com/stand-your-grou ... atal-cases

Serial killing can be made into an art form. Step 1; go to Florida. Step 2; use the following technique. Stalk your victim. Deliberately bump into him obviously to provoke an angry reaction. Then gun the person down. Step 3: Claim "stand your ground" and the DA agrees,. Step 4: repeat for victim 2. through victim 200 and more...

SYG really depends on a SUBJECTIVE feeling of fear, and far too often it means any douche with a gun gets a free shot at young men, and black teens.

The attempted murder charges were second-degree, while the murder charge was first-degree. It should have been a open-and-shut case if second-degree murder was charged instead.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/15/justice/florida-loud-music-trial/