Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, in Press TV graphic on story related to the conviction of a white man in the shooting death of African American youth Jordan Davis. Azikiwe is frequent guest on the network., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:13PM GMT
To listen to this Press TV interview with Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, just click on the website below:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/02/17/351122/michael-dunn-trial-racial-profiling/
As a befuddled US jury is deciding whether to convict a man who shot dead an unarmed black teenager back in 2012, a political commentator calls such murders as “a product of racial profiling.”
A north Florida jury failed to reach a verdict on the first-degree murder charge brought against Michael Dunn, a 47-year-old white man, who shot dead Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old African American, in a dispute over loud music.
The judge in Jacksonville declared a mistrial on the first-degree murder charge Saturday night. The jury, however, convicted Dunn on four lesser charges including three counts of second-degree murder. He was also found guilty on a fifth count of firing into an occupied vehicle.
Dunn fired 10 rounds at an SUV carrying four teens in a Jacksonville gas station parking lot in November 2012, killing Davis. During the trial, Dunn claimed he thought Davis was armed and was going to exit the car to kill him.
The issue “reveals the degree of racism that is still very pervasive inside the Untied States that many African Americans, particularly young people, are viewed as threats by the police as well as large segments of white society in the US,” Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of Pan-African News Wire told Press TV in a phone interview on Monday.
The case has reignited the debate over Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law, seven months after neighborhood watch leader George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing another unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, in a fight at a Sanford housing estate.
Both cases have had racial overtones and claims of self-defense by white men who thought their lives were in danger by unarmed black teenagers.
Azikiwe said the recent case is “quite similar” to the Martin murder that was carried out by Zimmerman. But the difference, he said, is that this case is more sensitive as a result of the pressure of the furious protests held across the United States following Zimmerman’s acquittal. “This of course set a precedent for how the prosecution of Michael Dunn is carried out in Florida.”
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