and not only that, when it was discussed, i was told, well, someone could have gotten hurt. could have. we re talking about cases where people got killed. and the person who did it walked. it s something wrong with that process. congresswoman i mean, no one can understand it. and we must change the law. well, we re going to stay on this, and we re going to keep fighting. thank you so much, congresswoman corrine brown for your time tonight. thank you. ahead, did the prosecutor mishandle the case against michael dunn? new questions tonight about whether angela corey repeated her mistakes from the zimmerman trial. also, what happened to those racially charged letters that dunn wrote from jail? why weren t they used at trial? the answer might surprise you. plus, marching for justice in peace. what young men of color are
Thank you both for being here. thank you, rev. thanks, reverend. kendall, the judge ruled on these dunn letters just before the trial. he said, quote, the comments are not admissible and irrelevant because they came after the shooting. why did he make that ruling? and how did that affect the prosecution s case? well, the judge certainly wasn t trying to sanitize michael dunn. he was trying to minimize the risk that an appeals court, after everything that would happen during one or maybe two trials might reverse it, because there are some appellate decisions which seem to indicate that comments, even racist comments made in some separation of time after the fact can t be brought in. so the judge is trying to get it right and have an error-free trial. i think without the judge intending to do so, to some extent, he pulled the rug out from under the prosecution on that issue because the prosecution had valuable extremely on-point evidence that they couldn t use.
Hand. these are not admissions. they re verbal tirades. certainly they would be prejudicial and they would have been help to the prosecution. but the judge already ruled after the fact they would not come in. the only way they would come into evidence is during a cross-examination of mr. dunn he makes some statement that opens the door. and that s what the prosecution should have been trying to examine him for purposes of opening the door to some comment that he makes and suggests that he has this great mind, that he is not prejudiced, he doesn t have any ill will toward anyone and the other statements could have come into evidence. short of, that the prosecution was kind of hamstrung in many ways from preventing that from coming in. now, you know, kendall, prosecutors did try to bring up inconsistencies of dunn referring to thug music. let s watch the testimony starting with his fiancee. did the defendant say anything about the music when he parked the car next to the red car? yes. and what did the defendant say? i hate that thug music. and what was your response to
And i m not criticizing the judge. he may have been correctly following florida cases. but then it made it that much more difficult for the prosecution to do what they needed to do, which is thoroughly discredit michael dunn s motive. because when dunn took the stand from the perspective of some jurors, this became a one-witness trial. if they believed dunn, if he came across okay, that could be enough to create a reasonable doubt, at least in the minds of some jurors. i think on retrial the prosecution is going to focus heavily on the cross-examination of michael dunn. they have to do more damage to him than they did in the first trial. beside the letter, dunn s phone calls were also considered irrelevant. here is what he said on one phone call to his fiancee. so being in a room by myself kind of sucks, but i guess it d would be better than being in a room with them animals. well, you know, they probably wouldn t think too highly about what is going on.
People are asking if corey mishandled the case. and some are also asking why letters that dunn wrote from jail weren t talked about in court. in one letter he wrote, quote, i m not really prejudiced against race, but i have no use for certain cultures. this gangster rap, ghetto-talking thug culture that certain segments of society flock to is intolerable. dunn also wrote, quote, i just got off the phone with you, and we were talking about how racist the blacks are up here. the more time i am exposed to these people, the more prejudiced against them i become. these comments are explosive. they generated a lot of passionate debate. but the jurors never got to see those letters. joining me now, a former u.s. attorney kendall coffey and criminal defense attorney john buroughs.