Crime & Justice

Man Who Claimed Stand Your Ground Defense in Killing of White Teen Convicted of Manslaughter

A biracial man who says he was fending off a racist attack on a Georgia highway when he fired a gun into a pickup truck was convicted Wednesday of involuntary manslaughter for fatally shooting a 17-year-old girl in the truck’s back seat.

Published

2 years ago

September 10, 2022

Unheard Voices Staff

Marc Wilson

Marc Wilson has been fighting for his freedom for several years under Georgia’s Stand Your Ground law.

The 23-year-old Georgia man is accused of shooting and killing 17-year-old Haley Hutcheson after he fired at a truck full of teens in Statesboro, Georgia, in June 2020.

Wilson’s defense claims he shot at the truck in self defense after the teens yelled racial slurs and tried to run him and his white girlfriend off the road. One of his bullets struck and killed Hutcheson, who was sitting in the back seat of the pickup.

After one day of deliberations, a grand jury determined Wilson was not justified in firing the shots in self-defense.

Wilson was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He was found not guilty on the more serious murder and aggravated assault charges.

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Stand Your Ground

The case had been closely watched by experts and activists to see whether a Black man could successfully use the stand your ground defense when using deadly force. Similar self-defense argument led to successful acquittal for George Zimmerman, who killed Trayvon Martin.

Wilson’s lawyers maintain that if Wilson were white, the state’s response might have been starkly different.

“We believe that if Marc Wilson was a white gentlemen that night, accosted by a truckload of angry, belligerent, possibly drunk Black men, and he used a legally possessed firearm to defend himself and his passenger, that he would have been given a medal and not given a prosecution,” Wilson’s attorney Francys Johnson previously told reporters.

Despite having no criminal record prior to the shooting, Wilson spent a year and a half in jail awaiting trial after the original judge overseeing the case, Michael Muldrew, denied him bail for posing a “significant threat to the persons in the community” based on the charges against him. Muldrew was recused in February after he met with two of the prosecuting attorneys in private. Only after the new judge, Judge Ronnie Thompson, replaced Muldrew was Wilson granted release on $100,000 bail.

Regardless of Wilson’s lack of criminal history, prosecutors contended Wilson acted criminally the night of the incident because nothing the teens did that night warranted his use of deadly force.

“As we proceed through that evidence… one thing is going to ring true through this whole trial,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Barclay Black said in court last week, according to the Statesboro Herald. “That is no matter what gets thrown around this courtroom, no matter what fingers get pointed at anybody, Haley Hutcheson didn’t do a doggone thing to anybody, except get a bullet in the back of her head.”

Statistics

From 2005 to 2010, the first five years after stand your ground laws were introduced, only 11 percent of cases involving a Black shooter using stand your ground and a white victim were deemed justified, according to a 2020 study by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, compared to 45 percent of cases involving a Black victim and a white shooter.

One of the most infamous cases of stand your ground being used successfully was in 2013, when George Zimmerman, who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a Black 17-year-old who was walking home through Zimmerman’s neighborhood in Sanford, Florida, was acquitted. Zimmerman claimed he felt threatened by Martin, despite initiating the interaction by following him through the neighborhood even though he was told not to by dispatchers.

But a year prior, in May 2012, 31-year-old Black woman Marissa Alexander was prosecuted for aggravated assault with a lethal weapon. She too, used the stand your ground defense, claiming that she fired a warning shot after her husband attacked her and threatened to kill her on August 1, 2010, in Jacksonville, Florida.

But Alexander’s stand your ground defense was denied. She was convicted and received a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison.

In 2013, Ms. Alexander’s conviction was overturned on appeal and she was released after spending three years in jail.

Marc Wilson’s Sentence

Wilson now faces up to 10 years behind bars for the involuntary manslaughter conviction.

He is scheduled for sentencing on Sept. 20.

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Related Topics:Georgia gun violence homicide stand your ground

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Unheard Voices Staff

Unheard Voices is an award-winning news magazine that started in 2004 as a local Black newsletter in the Asbury Park, Neptune, and Long Branch, NJ areas to now broaden into a recognized Black online media outlet. They are the recipient of the NAACP Unsung Hero Award and CV Magazine's Innovator Award for Best Social Justice Communications Company.

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Crime & Justice

Arrests made for fatal shooting at Delaware State University

Camay Mitchell De Silva was shot and killed on April 21 while visiting her best friend at Delaware State University.

Published

5 days ago

May 13, 2024

Unheard Voices Staff

Camay Mitchell De Silva (Photo Source: GoFundMe)

Authorities have announced arrests have been made for the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Camay Mitchell De Silva last month at Delaware State University.

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Arrests made in Delaware State shooting of Camay Mitchell De Silva

De Silva was shot and killed by a stray bullet on April 21 while visiting her best friend who attended Delaware State University.

Police announced in a press release that 20-year-old Destry Jones and 18-year-old Damien Hinson, both from Dover, are being charged with the murder of Camay Mitchell De Silva.

The pair are also charged with the attempted murder of two other young men in connection with the April 21 shooting.

Jones was arrested in Brooklyn, New York and Hinson was arrested later that day in Dover, police said.

According to authorities, neither of the suspects in this case are enrolled at or affiliated with Delaware State University.

Police claimed Jones and Hinson were involved in a fight with two other men before shots were fired. Investigators do not believe De Silva was the intended target or involved in the altercation.

Beloved taken too soon

De Silva was a 2023 graduate of Concord High School who graduated with a 3.0. She spent her first semester of college at Morgan State University in Baltimore but decided she wanted to come home to Delaware.

She then attended Delaware Technical Community College and planned to attend DSU in the fall to pursue a degree in Computer Science, with the goal of working in cybersecurity.

Crime & Justice

Paramedic involved in Elijah McClain’s death sentenced to probation, work release and community service

Jeremy Cooper, a former paramedic who injected Elijah McClain with a fatal dose of ketamine, has been sentenced to probation and community service.

Published

3 weeks ago

April 28, 2024

Unheard Voices Staff

Elijah McClain's family to receive $15 million from the city of Aurora

Elijah McClain and Jeremy Cooper (CBS News)

Jeremy Cooper, a former paramedic who injected Elijah McClain with a fatal dose of ketamine, has been sentenced to probation and community service.

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Paramedic Jeremy Cooper sentenced

He had faced up to three years in prison but was sentenced to four years probation, 14 months of work release and 100 hours of community service.

Cooper and another paramedic, Peter Cichuniec, were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in December in the death of McClain, 23, who was subdued by police and injected with ketamine on August 24, 2019.

Both paramedics had pleaded not guilty to the felony charges. Cichuniec was sentenced in March to five years in prison, the minimum.

Police stop turns fatal

McClain was walking home in August 2019 when the 23-year-old Black man was confronted by police officers who forcibly restrained him. When Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec arrived, they injected him with ketamine.

He went into cardiac arrest in an ambulance a few minutes later and died three days after that.

The McClain family sued the city of Aurora for Elijah’s wrongful death and received a $15 million settlement.

Crime & Justice

Honor student killed by stray bullet while visiting Delaware State University

A shooting at Delaware State University has claimed the life of 18-year-old honor student Camay Mitchell De Silva.

Published

3 weeks ago

April 26, 2024

Unheard Voices Staff

Camay Mitchell De Silva

Camay Mitchell De Silva, of Wilmington, Delaware, was shot and killed Sunday, on the Delaware State University campus.

The 18-year-old was visiting her best friend, a Delaware State student, when the tragic shooting occurred.

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She was an honor student

She then attended Delaware Technical Community College and planned to attend DSU in the fall to pursue a degree in Computer Science, with the goal of working in cybersecurity.

De Silva often hung out on campus with her best friend to get comfortable before attending DSU.

Delaware State shooting

The family said De Silva was visiting that friend at DSU on Saturday, April 20, and attended a party on campus that night. Around 1:40 a.m. on April 21, DSU Police received a report of shots fired on campus. The responding officers found De Silva in a residence hall suffering from a gunshot wound to her upper body. The officers administered aid and then took her to a nearby hospital where she later succumbed to her injuries.

Police say De Silva was not the intended target. Dover Police Department Chief Thomas Johnson Jr. told NBC10 there was a dispute that she was not involved in and she was hit by a stray bullet.

The suspects were seen fleeing the area and no arrests have been made, said authorities.

Dover Police released a statement from De Silva’s family requesting time to grieve and to plan for her celebration of life.