Loud Music Murder Trial: Michael Dunn Uses Stand Your Ground Law?

In the so-called loud music murder trial, it’s being claimed that defendant Michael Dunn shot unarmed teens after an argument at a Florida gas station. But this case has also thrust the infamous Stand Your Ground law back into the limelight.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, Trayvon Martin’s legacy is being trashed by some in the media, while George Zimmerman has been defending himself in his paintings and plans on a celebrity boxing match with DMX.

The Michael Dunn trial is currently focused on the conflicting testimony between the shooter and surviving friends of teen Jordan Davis, who were in the vehicle with him. As Mr. Dunn tells it, he had just left his son’s wedding with his girlfriend on Black Friday 2012. They were on their way to a bed and breakfast in St. Augustine, Florida when they stopped at a Jacksonville gas station.

This is where the loud music murder trial earns its name. While Dunn waited in his vehicle he became annoyed by the heavy bass booming from a nearby SUV and asked the four teens to turn it down. While they did comply, the situation escalated quickly into an argument in which Dunn says he was verbally harassed with death threats. When Dunn felt threatened by what he thought was a single barreled shotgun, he pulled a 9mm gun from his glove compartment and fired four times into the SUV:

“I was still scared and so I shot four more times… trying to keep their heads down to not catch any return fire. And that was it. I went over this a million times, and what I should’ve done is put the car in reverse. It was fight or flight. I don’t think there was any time for flight at that moment. I was going to get shot.”

Dunn then picked up his girlfriend, fled the scene to their hotel room, and ordered pizza… all without notifying police about the shooting. Dunn claims he was waiting until he reached his home in Brevard County, which was another 130 miles south. He said he wanted to have friends around him and was afraid of bringing a “s**tstorm” down on them in Jacksonville.

The picture painted by the prosecutor John Guy is quite different, telling of four innocent teens whose only “crime” was disrespecting Dunn by saying, “F*** that n****r.” The verbal insult is supposedly what triggered the shooting, nothing more. Guy also claim Davis and Dunn “exchanged f-bombs back and forth” while Dunn claims he never cursed at all.

Defense lawyers say Dunn saw Davis produce a weapon of some type, possibly a pipe, but police say the vehicle didn’t contain any weapon at all other than a four-inch tactical knife. Dunn previously asked, “Is it possible when they drove off they dumped it?” Police say the teens “drove off, circled right back around and came right back to that spot.” The defense claims the teens had “ample time to get rid of a firearm or pipe” since police did not search the grounds for several days. Two witnesses also initially told police the teens appeared to be “stashing” something.

The other major conflict is whether or not Davis was attempting to leave the SUV as described by Mr. Dunn. One of the teens, Leland Brunson, allegedly told police Jordan was getting out of the car when the gunfire started. But four days later this claim changed, with driver Tommie Stornes supposedly preventing Jordan from getting out by activating the child locks.

Michael Dunn’s trial has the Florida man being charged with first degree murder in the death of Jordan Davis and three counts of attempted first-degree murder. But while the Stand Your Ground law made the media, Dunn’s lawyers say they haven’t filed a motion in relation to Stand Your Ground and instead are relying on “Justifiable Use of Deadly Force as an affirmative defense.”