‘Stand your ground’ figure found guilty of manslaughter

Defendant had shot man in a parking spot dispute

Late Friday night, a jury delivered the guilty verdict that Markeis McGlockton’s family never thought would come.

They had many reasons not to get their hopes up, family attorney Michele Rayner told The Washington Post. First, there were the 25 days it took last year to arrest the man who fatally shot 28-year-old McGlockton, who collapsed before his 5-year-old son, in a dispute over a handicapped parking spot. There was the county sheriff who backed the shooter’s invocation of Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law, and the were parallels to the case of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teen whose white shooter was acquitted in the same state after he claimed self-defense.

But on Friday there were sobs, sighs and hugs in the courtroom as Michael Drejka, 49, was convicted of manslaughter in a case that’s captured national attention. McGlockton’s girlfriend clapped her hands, the Tampa Bay Times reported, while others squeezed the shoulder of the slain man’s father.

Drejka’s lawyers argued the Florida man acted reasonably in self-defense after McGlockton pushed him to the ground in the parking lot outside a Clearwater, Fla., convenience store. Prosecutors, however, pointed to video footage showing McGlockton backing away before Drejka shot him. Jurors rejected Drejka’s defense. Drejka “took the life of another human being without any legal justification,” Pinellas-Pasco Assistant State Attorney Fred Schaub said at the trial.

Schaub delivered passionate closing arguments, the Tampa Bay Times reported, walking the courtroom and at times throwing up his hands. “He was a human being in our world,” he said of McGlockton. “What have we come to in this country?”

Drejka’s lawyers, who plan to appeal the verdict after the sentencing set for Oct. 10, maintain that their client thought he was at risk, saying he didn’t see McGlockton’s backing away as removing the threat in the 3 seconds between pulling his gun and firing.