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You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Racial Justice / This Week In Blackness / #JusticeForRenisha

#JusticeForRenisha

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Finally, some justice.  Theodore Wafer has been found guilty on all counts of killing Renisha McBride, a young black Detroit woman who knocked on his door at 4:30 in the morning after surviving a car crash. Instead of calling police when he thought there was an intruder, Wafer opened the door and shot McBride in the face, killing her instantly.

“She was a young girl looking for help,” prosecutor Patrick Muscat told jurors. “What he did had to be immediately necessary and it wasn’t. It was reckless. It was negligent. I don’t know how to describe it. It was horrific. How about shutting the door? … How about calling 911?” Muscat said. “No, what he does is he engages. He creates the confrontation.”

Shooting someone should never be your first defense; that’s why Stand Your Ground continues to be so problematic.

Team Blackness also discussed Chicago children asking white kids to play in their park, users taking Twitter harassment into their own hands, and more police brutality.

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Reader Interactions

47Comments

  3. 3.

    boatboy_srq

    No, what he does is he engages. He creates the confrontation.

    Isn’t that the NRA playbook?

    @Cacti: Add any place where jurists offering considered, rational opinions and calling wingnuts on their b#llsh!t “activist judges” are the target of Teahadist ouster.

  9. 9.

    Mnemosyne

    I am very, very relieved by this verdict. If the jury had come back with any other decision, it really would have been open season for assholes to shoot anyone they wanted and claim they “felt” threatened.

  10. 10.

    Mnemosyne

    @Punchy:

    Nope. The only requirement for a SYG defense in Florida is that the killer claim that s/he felt threatened. The other facts of the case wouldn’t matter.

  15. 15.

    C.V. Danes

    @Mnemosyne:

    If the jury had come back with any other decision, it really would have been open season for assholes to shoot anyone they wanted and claim they “felt” threatened.

    The season is still open in many places in this country..

  16. 16.

    Mnemosyne

    @Calouste:

    Pretty much. When all of this SYG stuff started blowing up, I was looking at what the laws are here in my adopted home state of California, and it turns out that we’ve had “no duty to retreat” and “castle doctrine” laws in place for 100 years, which is supposedly what SYG laws were supposed to create. The differences in California are that (a) you are not immunized from prosecution, but can claim self-defense in court and (b) if you started the fight, you can’t claim self-defense.

  17. 17.

    Cassidy

    Pretty sad state of affairs when a white person found guilty or murdering someone not white is news.

  19. 19.

    Citizen_X

    @Nicole: Holy crap!

    she and Lake were walking near his aunt’s house on Tuesday night, when her father pulled up in his car. “There was no argument. I walked away, and Jeremey tried to introduce himself, and my dad shot him,”

    He and his wife are charged with first-degree murder. Sounds about right.

  20. 20.

    boatboy_srq

    @OzarkHillbilly: @Nicole: IYAM proof positive that the 2nd Amendment (according to ammosexuals) only applies to the folks who had one whole vote per person when the amendment was ratified, and not those who got their remaining 2/5 vote 13 amendments later (or a whole vote all their own 17 amendments later).

    /snark

  21. 21.

    Roger Moore

    @Nicole:

    Tulsa police officer shoots estranged daughter’s boyfriend, whom he had never met.

    I had seen some earlier reporting on the murder, but that article was the first one that said the “estrangement” between the daughter and parents was over the boyfriend.

  22. 22.

    Citizen_X

    The only non-depressing thing in this thread is the fact that, according to the picture up top, Elon is now apparently about 14 stories tall. Help, Giant Elon! Fight for justice!

  23. 23.

    Paul in KY

    @Roger Moore: I read she was kicked out of house before she ever met the murdered young man. She met him at the homeless shelter she went to (after being kicked out).

    Makes me want to cry, when I read about the young man. he sounded like a good soul.

  24. 24.

    Mnemosyne

    @Roger Moore:

    This did seem to be a new boyfriend, which makes it look even more like the problem her parents had with her (and the reason they kicked her out of the house) was that she’s attracted to the wrong kind of boy, ifyouknowwhatImean.

    ETA: The NBC News article is a little confusing because of the layout, but it says that she met him at the homeless shelter her parents dropped her off at, so the estrangement pre-dated her meeting him.

  26. 26.

    Face

    Jeremey tried to introduce himself, and my dad shot him

    I heard he may have been armed….with Skittles and/or Iced Tea.

  27. 27.

    drkrick

    @Roger Moore: They kicked her out and dropped her at the homeless shelter for so far unspecified “bad lifestyle choices.” That could cover a lot of ground. The shooting victim met her there and offered to put her up at his aunt’s house to get her out of there. Having that turn into a relationship in a matter of days sounds a little odd, but so it goes.

    I’m sure the race of the boyfriend/rescuer didn’t help, but daddy dearest may not have appreciated the interference with his scared straight agenda either.

  28. 28.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @drkrick:
    Well, you have to be more than JUST a racist to shoot the daughter you evicted’s boyfriend without knowing him first. The question of ‘Would you have done it if he was white?’ remains deeply relevant, especially in the societal violence context we’re dealing with now.

  30. 30.

    Tone In DC

    If the jury had come back with any other decision, it really would have been open season for assholes to shoot anyone they wanted and claim they “felt” threatened.

    The season is still open in many places in this country…

    To me, it’s been open season since at least 1991. One of the most jaw dropping things I heard during the trial of the cops that beat Rodney King was this utterance, from a juror after the initial acquittals in Simi Valley (cuz, according to the defense lawyers, the accused cops couldn’t get a fair trial in LA): King was “orchestrating the beating”.

    /end rant

  35. 35.

    SatanicPanic

    I know this isn’t the most important detail, but seriously, the dad drops her off at a homeless shelter and then is surprised that she met someone he (by his terrible standards, obviously) wouldn’t like? I mean, that’s fucking dumb.

  37. 37.

    Belafon

    @drkrick: I’ve seen major commitments occur faster than that – they’re teenagers – without the stress that comes with being in a homeless shelter.

    ETA: By “major” I mean what people that age think they are committing to.

  39. 39.

    gvg

    I would be assuming the parents-both of them were abusive in the cop shot boyfriend story. That family supposedly sounded great to the neighbors, but there is something wrong there. Boyfriend was not a cause. Very bad luck for him. I’m not even sure racism was a part of the family problem as the whole story screams to me hidden abusive family.
    Dropping a daughter off at the homeless shelter does not say loving family.
    And getting into a relationship in just a few days says desperate for affection.
    He probably had no idea what kind of disfunctional family he was wandering too near to and even if he heard enough from her, probably didn’t realize the family would involve him to that degree.
    Police department should be reviewing the cops former cases/arrests to see if there was any other wrong doing.
    Who now has custody of the other 2 kids mentioned?

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    @drkrick:

    Having that turn into a relationship in a matter of days sounds a little odd, but so it goes.

    Eh, she’s 18 and he was 19. I remember being that age, and True Love generally did come on very fast.

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    @Tone In DC:

    In the other police shooting thread we had a few days ago (Jaysus, how many do we have to have?), someone related something that their former NYPD neighbor had said that I really think is the root of the problem: current police training is that you have to get the person you’re dealing with to comply with your orders and obey, and if they don’t, you should respond with violence.

    This is why you hear over and over again about cops shooting mentally ill people, cops shooting people in diabetic shock, cops shooting people who have just been in a car accident and probably have a head injury. They are expecting obedience and compliance from people who are unable to obey, and the cops respond with violence, just as they’ve been trained to do.

  42. 42.

    Kylroy

    @Mnemosyne: Castle doctrine is essentially SYG for homes. If she’d smashed through the window and he’d shot her, this would have been self-defense under the Castle doctrine. Opening the door to unload on someone on your doorstep, however unpleasant they are, isn’t self-defense.

  43. 43.

    HumboldtBlue

    There’s no justice here. The woman is still dead. This is punishment not justice.

  46. 46.

    mclaren

    No, the jury didn’t get it exactly right, this creep shot an unarmed young woman in the face just because she knocked on his door.

    The jury should’ve voted to indict the prosecutor for negligence and should’ve demanded to convict that asshole on first degree premeditated murder.

  47. 47.

    ruemara

    @Roger Moore: Not really over the boyfriend. It seems like she met him when she was homeless due to being kicked out and the kid and she became close.

    Edited to reflect that when you are not really loved or even feel tolerated in your parents’ home, and someone takes a genuine interest in your well being and cares for you, it becomes easy to fill that hunger to love and be loved in turn. It’s even worse than standard desires of teenagers for connection. I feel for her. It’s a punishment that will scar her terribly if she doesn’t get help.

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