Nearly seven months after a jury acquitted George Zimmerman, whose shooting of an unarmed black teenager made him synonymous with Florida’s so-called Stand Your Ground law, the state’s latest drama involving a fatal burst of gunfire and a claim of self-defense began to play out Thursday in a Florida courtroom, reports the N.Y. Times.
And while race is woven into the background of the first-degree murder trial of Michael D. Dunn, 47, a white software developer who said he killed Jordan Davis, a black teenager, in a November 2012 confrontation about loud music, the trial appears likely to focus less on race and more on the mechanics of Florida’s self-defense laws and how juries apply them.
