Something That Looks a Little Bit Like Justice

[Content Note: Murder; guns; misogynoir. Video may begin playing automatically at link.]

Theodore Wafer, the 55-year-old white man who shot and killed Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old black woman, when she knocked on his door seeking help following a car accident, has been found guilty on all counts: Second-degree murder, manslaughter, and felony firearm. He now faces life in prison, with the possibility of parole.

McBride's mother, Monica McBride, shook back and forth after the verdict was read, while some of her other family members wept. "She was a beautiful young lady. She had things going for her," McBride's father, Walter Simmons, said. The prosecutors "had the facts, they had the evidence, they did their job, and they did it well. And we appreciate it."

The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for less than ten hours over two days after closing arguments were heard Wednesday.

I am just so relieved. I am relieved for Renisha's family and friends. It's not that guilty verdicts in cases like these ease the pain of loss, so much as they do simply not exacerbate that pain. And this was the just verdict. The jury did a good job.

Comprehensive justice for Renisha McBride and the people who love her would include this: Meaningful reconsideration of Stand Your Ground laws and a serious public conversation about how being afraid, for a moment, doesn't give you the right to kill someone; about how reflexively wanting to kill someone who makes you afraid is a terrible, harmful, destructive instinct; about how feeling unsafe doesn't necessarily mean you are unsafe; about how to sit with fear and be okay with that long enough not to kill someone "by accident."