Hurling the word Nigger around might just get you killed, and a judge might say that it’s your own damn fault that you’re dead. (and he might be right)

Judge Rules Victim Provoked Death With Racial Slur
Victim, Neighbor Fought Over Noise

HONOLULU — A judge ruled on Tuesday that a man who was killed in a fight with a neighbor had provoked his own death.

Kendall Edmonds apparently killed his neighbor, Michael Gillum, 46, with a single punch. The confrontation started over noise from Edmonds’ Pearl City apartment that was keeping Gillum and his daughter awake.

“All Michael wanted was for his daughter to get some sleep so she could get up and go to school,” the victim’s sister, Patrice Collins, said.

Gillum’s 15-year-old daughter talked about how scary it was the night that her father died and how she would never forget how good a dad he was.

“No matter what happens in this court today, by my faith, I know that God will judge you,” Gillum’s friend, Roy Anoba, said.

Prosecutors wanted Edmonds sentenced to 20 years for manslaughter, but his lawyer pointed out that Gillum was drunk, demanded a fight and even used a racial slur to provoke it.

“For a young, African American man from Alabama, those words are very serious,” defense attorney William Bento said.

“I tried my best and I wasn’t the bigger man to walk away, and I regret that deeply,” Edmonds said.

Judge Karl Sakamoto agreed with the defense that Edmonds didn’t mean to kill Gillum. Sakamoto also inferred that Gillum, in a way, caused his own death.

“He used incendiary racial epithets and it had the very result that he intended,” Sakamoto said.

Sakamoto gave Edmonds 10 years of probation and 100 days in prison.

Source via Blackfolk