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Juror number eight, Creshuna Miles from the Michael Dunn trial broke her silence this week to CNN exclusively and claimed that race had nothing to do with Dunn’s attempted murder conviction after firing 10 shots into an SUV of young Black kids after a dispute over loud rap music. Even though juror number eight thinks that Dunn is indeed guilty, she doesn’t think the case was Black or White. “Everybody is making this a White or Black thing, and it’s not. In our decision-making process, nobody brought up not one race. I never once thought about, ‘Oh, this was a black kid, this was a white guy.’ Because that was – that wasn’t the case. It was about justice,” Miles, aged 21, told CNN reporter Alina Machado.

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Miles took her statement a step farther, claiming that she thinks Dunn is a “good guy. I don’t think he hates everybody. I don’t think he walks around wanting to shoot everybody.” But when asked if she thought Dunn was guilty of murder, Miles said, “Yes. I really think he’s guilty of murder, but not the guilty as charged. I think he’s guilty of the second degree. I honestly think he was in self-defense until he chased the car down and started shooting the car.”

Miles described the deliberation room as, “wild” and said they started out Saturday morning with a prayer that everyone had a piece of mind. “We were confident and cool with it, but when he sent us back, we got nervous,” Miles said after the jury couldn’t come to agreement on one verdict. She doesn’t feel that the jury “messed up” and said they did what they were supposed to do. “We just could not agree. It was one way or the other. Nobody was willing to move. Hopefully the next group agrees,” Miles saying referring to the retrial’s jury.

What does that feel like for Jordan Davis’s parents? Lucia McBath and Ron Davis told Anderson Cooper that they are not giving up on winning justice for their son. When asked about Miles’ opinion that their son’s murder trial wasn’t about race, Ron Davis’ said, “I don’t think she is being genuine. For her, as an African-American female, to go into this case with this type of evidence, with this type of rage, with him saying ‘thug music,’ how could you, as a juror, not think this was about race?”

Davis’ mother, Lucia McBath said, “I think she didn’t want it to be about race. I think she really hoped that that was not an element of it. It’s always been an element.” It was surprising for McBath to hear that Miles thought Dunn was a good guy. “Nice guys don’t shoot unarmed teenagers,” McBath concluded.

And Miles had a messaged for Davis’ parents, “From my end, I tried. Everyone that felt he was guilty, we fought and we fought.”

I find it very hard to believe that Miles didn’t think this case was about race. I understand that as a jury member, she didn’t want to have race cloud her judgment, but Dunn is a man who hated “thug music” so much he just had to shoot up a car of unarmed teens.

Watch Jordan Davis’ parents response here.

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