Today the jury in the Damon Darling trial found him guilty of manslaughter in the death of nine-year-old Sherdavia Jenkins. Prosecutors claimed a victory. The defense claimed defeat and vowed to appeal the judge’s ruling concerning the “stand your ground” defense (based on the vague phrase “unlawful purpose” in the statute).

The defense attitude made perfect sense to me: Darling’s attorney wanted a not guilty verdict, because he believed the prosecution did not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

The prosecutors, while they were clearly sincere, felt that the verdict of guilt on a “lesser and included charge” was probably the result of “compromise” in deliberations or that the jury might have thought “he didn’t mean to kill the girl.”

I suppose this could be the reason for the lesser verdict (which, BTW, will not keep Darling from a very long sentence), but I think it is unlikely. The verdict reflects several other issues. Most importantly I am convinced that the State charged Darling with the wrong crimes. By charging him with second-degree murder, they permitted him to fall back on “stand your ground” self-defense. This did nothing but confuse the real issues here. They also made a huge mistake in not charging Leroy Larose with exactly the same crimes as Darling—both should have been charged with first-degree murder in the commission of a felony.

What felony? How about drug dealing, or aggravated assault (if each other), or just plain general mayhem (there must be a Florida law against inciting violence and riot). Or how about federal RICO charges?

Consider this: the prosecution seemed to think that Larose would not testify against Darling unless they made a deal with him. But eyewitnesses identified them both as being involved in the shootout. Why wasn’t that sufficient? (Is it legal to engage in a shootout in Florida as long as no one dies?)

If I were a juror, I probably would have come to the same conclusion the Miami jury did in this case. There is no way a juror could convict of Darling more-serious crimes than his chief accuser, Larose.

Once again I’m amazed at the way lawyers parse verdicts. I really don’t think juries ever reach “a compromise.” Reaching consensus is not compromising. Certainly, no juror wanted to find Darling innocent. That is what a compromise would have been—someone being willing to give up their belief in his innocence.

A verdict in under four hours indicates that all the jurors wanted to throw Darling into prison as quickly as possible.