In the three-and-a-half months since Trayvon Martin was killed, Houston courts have heard two cases involving the shooting of unarmed civilians and decided them very differently.
Last night, a Harris County jury found Raul Rodriguez guilty of murder for shooting his neighbor in 2010 over a noisy party. Kelly Danaher, a 36-year-old elementary school teacher, was having a birthday party for his wife and young daughter. Angry about the noise, Rodriguez armed himself with a handgun and video camera and recorded himself telling a police dispatcher, “my life is in danger now,” “these people are going to try and kill me,” and “I’m standing my ground here.” Rodriguez fatally shot Danaher in the street after someone tried to grab his video camera.
Dateline Houston wishes this were a depressing postmodern play about the dangerous, aggrandizing fantasies engendered by constant self-documentation in the social media age—but it’s not. It’s a real news story about a retired firefighter with a concealed carry permit and the Stand Your Ground law that made him think that saying aloud that he believed his life was in danger would protect him from all consequences.
The problem is, Rodriguez wasn’t a cop.
In April, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against two Houston-area cops who shot an unarmed black man, Robbie Tolan, in his driveway in 2008.
Here’s what happened—and please note, these events are not disputed; the issue at stake in the lawsuit was whether these events violated Tolan’s constitutional rights.
Tolan and his cousin were driving home in the wee hours of December 31. Officer John C. Edwards (who is white) was on patrol in the Bellaire neighborhood and ran Cooper’s plates—you know, just because. The plates came back as stolen—because Edwards had entered the plate number wrong.
Cotton was charged with first-degree aggravated assault by a public servant and found not guilty at trial in 2010. Naturally. Then the Toban family sued. They lost.