Late Friday night, a jury delivered the guilty verdict that Markeis McGlockton’s family never thought would come.
They had many reasons not to get their hopes up, family attorney Michele Rayner told The Washington Post. First, there were the 25 days it took to arrest the man who fatally shot 28-year-old McGlockton in a dispute over a handicap parking spot. There was the county sheriff who backed the shooter’s invocation of Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law. There were parallels to the case of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teen whose shooter was acquitted in the same state after he claimed self-defense.
But on Friday there were sobs, sighs and hugs in the courtroom as Michael Drejka, 49, was convicted of manslaughter in a case that’s captured national attention. McGlockton’s girlfriend clapped her hands, the Tampa Bay Times reported, while others squeezed the shoulder of the slain man’s father.
Drejka’s lawyers argued the Florida man acted reasonably in self-defense last year after McGlockton pushed him to the ground in the parking lot outside a Clearwater, Fla., convenience store. Prosecutors, however, pointed to video footage showing McGlockton backing away before Drejka shot him. He would collapse before his 5-year-old son.
Jurors rejected Drejka’s defense.
Drejka “took the life of another human being without any legal justification,” Pinellas-Pasco Assistant State Attorney Fred Schaub said at the trial.
Schaub delivered passionate closing arguments, the Tampa Bay Times reported, walking the courtroom and at times throwing up his hands. “He was a human being in our world,” he said of McGlockton. “What have we come to in this country?”
Drejka’s lawyers, who plan to appeal the verdict after an Oct. 10 sentencing, maintain that their client thought he was at risk, saying he didn’t see McGlockton’s backing away as removing the threat in the three seconds between pulling his gun and firing.
“He had really no time to assess the danger,” defense attorney Bryant Camareno told The Post.
Camareno said he and Drejka’s other lawyers ultimately used a self-defense argument rather than Florida’s stand-your-ground law specifically, not wanting their client to have to testify at a pretrial hearing. But Drejka’s initial stand-your-ground claim and Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri’s reference to the statute when he declined to arrest Drejka last year renewed scrutiny of a law that lets people react with deadly force before trying to back away if they have a reasonable belief their lives are at risk……..
Some people in this day and age still don't realize that it's completely illegal to defend yourself against black people. You have to learn UFC moves, guns aren't allowed. You are at a disadvantage if you're white, but you can practice hitting yourself in the head so your IQ decreases and you gradually shrink your brain and build up a layer of fluid to insulate it from the impacts. Then you may be able to successfully (and legally) fight back against black people. It's only fair.
