A Question of When

This week, the trial in the death of Renisha McBride began.  It's a story that we've heard before; African-American shot and killed by a person claiming "self-defense".  We heard it with Trayvon Martin and with Jordan Davis in Florida.  This case in Michigan will likely work along the same lines, the shooter will claim they felt threatened, the same "Thug Defense" that George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn used to avoid murder charges will be invoked in some form.  

The McBride case though, represents a case that I could see happening in Pennsylvania.  This case involved an incident at the shooters house, not a street or a gas station.  This could fall more under the "Castle Doctrine" than the "Stand Your Ground" that Dunn and Zimmerman invoked.  This defense, coming from an alliance between the American Legislative Exchange Council and the National Rifle Association, gives a homeowner the right to use deadly force against what they perceive as a threat, no opportunity to retreat or flee needs to be presented. 

A situation like the McBride case could easily happen in Pennsylvania.  An African-American or Hispanic, travelling through a rural community, gets lost, has car trouble, or even gets in an accident.  They go to a house to ask to make a phone call, etc.  The owner, seeing a person of color, without asking any questions, fires a shot. 

What would such a case mean to Pennsylvania?  I'd like to think it would be watched by folks like Al Sharpton, Melissa Harris-Perry, etc as another example of how the lynching tree may now be the barrel of a gun.  The case being in that locality would likely mean a lilly-white jury that would probably accept the "Thug Defense" that the shooter might make.  

When, or if, the shooter were acquitted, there would probably be calls for a boycott of Pennsylvania, and James Carville's classic description of Pennsylvania of "Pittsburgh in the West, Philly in the East and Alabama in between" would be demonstrated once again.