Did George Zimmerman get away with murder?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, a lot of us think so, and so does one of the jurors:

The only minority on the all-female jury that voted to acquit George Zimmerman said today that Zimmerman "got away with murder" for killing Trayvon Martin and feels she owes an apology Martin's parents.

"You can't put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty," said the woman who was identified only as Juror B29 during the trial. "But we had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence."

She said the jury was following Florida law and the evidence, she said, did not prove murder. 

After the loathsome comments of that juror who came out in defense of Zimmerman, and who was probably going to vote to acquit no matter what, it is refreshing to see such a sense of responsibility given the gravity of the situation:

"I was the juror that was going to give them the hung jury. I fought to the end," she said.

However, on the second day of deliberations, after spending nine hours discussing the evidence, Maddy said she realized there wasn't enough proof to convict Zimmerman of murder or manslaughter under Florida law. 

I said it afterwards, and I'll say it again: The verdict, sadly, made sense. The jury did what it had to do and ended up reaching a verdict that was probably the right one given the circumstances.

The problem wasn't the judge or the jurors or the system, even though there is racial discrimination in how such incidents are treated by police and prosecutors. In this case, the problem was the law, which allowed Zimmerman to carry a gun while acting as a self-appointed vigilante and then to shoot an unarmed black teenager, whom he was clearly targeting, supposedly in self-defense.

That's how he got away with murder.

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Too much monkey business

By Capt. Fogg

No need for me complainin' - my objection's overruled, ahh!

Too much monkey business. Too much monkey business.

Too much monkey business for me to be involved in! 

                                                                                                    -Chuck Berry-

As though to deliberately illustrate what I've been saying, a horde of "impassioned" zealots in liberal clothing rallied in Miami Saturday to hear Bishop Victor Curry, a Baptist church official and South Florida president of the National Action Network tell them that the Zimmerman verdict was a "wake up call" which of course it was not, at least not any more than any case in which the accused was given the benefit of the doubt. The argument that Zimmerman was a murderous racist looking to hunt black people is as disgusting as any of Al Sharpton's accusations, including his portrayal of Bernhard Goetz as a racist for shooting armed robbers. The argument that the verdict was pursuant to the 'stand your ground' law is so earth shakingly false it would show up on a seismometer, so what is this all about? The NAN is the creation of Al Sharpton who makes and has made his living by imaginatively accusing people of racism so egregiously, I'm sure Dr. king would be making speeches against him and his business were he alive today.

Bishop Curry has also staged protests in New York, Washington, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, and more than 90 other cities around the United States. This Zimmerman business is a business and a business that needs to foment race tension as much as the Mason Family did.

Dragging Trayvon Martin's head around the country on a pike is about politics, not justice and I sure as hell don't remember Nicole Simpson or Ron Goldman being used similarly. It was far more a travesty of justice that OJ was described as the victim of racism and that science and fact and evidence were laughed at. It's a business, and as much as I loathe racism, I loathe the business of using it to sell product, to make money, to build careers on it, to accuse people of it to further a political purpose far more because it cheapens the real cause, detracts from the real cause and furnishes the real racists a defense they don't deserve.

The death of Trayvon Martin was not about racism, not about a new birth of Jim Crow. Zimmerman wouldn't be allowed into the Klan, nor does he represent some resurgence, some recrudescence of an early 20th century southern white mentality. The verdict was not the result of racism and most of all, neither the verdict, the defense, nor for that matter the facts had anything to do with the law that some people oppose so hysterically that they dishonor the memory of an unlucky kid and a grieving family as well as they dishonor truth, decency and the liberal causes of justice and freedom for all.

Zimmerman got off because the prosecution could not prove that Martin was not holding him down so that he couldn't run away. That is an argument based on the older law requiring the duty to retreat, not the Stand your Ground law which did not permit Zimmerman to pursue or confront Martin nor to threaten him. Such actions would, as I read the law, nullify his claim to self defense and his right to draw a weapon.

Are we willing to dispense with the presumption of innocence because of the presumption of racism?

That Zimmerman was wont to call 911 when seeing suspicious characters in his neighborhood shows only that he was doing what a neighborhood watch participant is supposed to do, and when a preponderance of unidentified people and a preponderance of those engaging in vandalism are black those calls are evidence of racism only to racists.

I'm all for practical gun control. I passionately hate racism and racists and bigots of all kinds, and I hate it when bigotry, stereotyping, racism and outright lies are used by people getting rich pretending to fight it.

(Cross-posted at Human Voices.)

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Making sense of the Zimmerman verdict

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Like many others, I tweeted a lot last night in response to the Zimmerman verdict. Like many others, I wanted -- and still want -- #JusticeForTrayvon. Here are a couple of them:

It's the justice system imperfect? Yes. Is there racism in America? Yes. Are Florida laws appalling? Yes. Strive for change. #ZimmermanTrial

— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) July 14, 2013

Ultimately, the problem is much deeper than a verdict in a single case, however sad. Fight for change, fight for justice. #ZimmermanTrial
— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) July 14, 2013

And yet, while I understood, and still do, the enormous outpouring of outrage, and while I abhorred, and always will, the gloating coming from the pro-Zimmerman types on the right, I must say I found much of the reaction to the verdict, from those outraged, unnecessarily weighed down with grotesque hyperbole at a time when what is needed is perspective and a sober sense of what to do now now that the trial is over.

For example, there were those attacking the jurors for supposedly being right-wing morons, as if we can possibly know what was going through their minds, consciously or not, as they reached a verdict in one of the most controversial trials in recent memory.

And there were those attacking the defense attorneys. Yes, there was some ugly gloating on their part, but they were also just doing their jobs.

And those attacking the system without really understanding how criminal justice works.

And today I saw some insanely calling for a boycott of the State of Florida, as if that somehow would solve the problem.

And so on.

This is not to say that I'm happy with the verdict or that I think justice was done. Please. This isn't an either/or thing.

I think we know pretty clearly what happened, or at least we think we do, and I think we know pretty clearly that racism was involved in what happened, and perhaps also in some rather less clear way in the trial/verdict, and I think it's understandable to be angry, disappointed, frustrated.

But while wanting justice for Trayvon Martin, and finding the whole damn thing abhorrent, let's not make the mistake of mistaking this one case for more than it was.

Even if it was a reflection of the deeper and broader problem of racism in America, as well as of the country's gun-crazed culture of violence, even if we're certain, absolutely certain, that things would have gone differently had a black man been the killer, this was one case with one set of evidence, one judge, and one jury. And unfortunately, in that context, the verdict, however disappointing, however disturbing, made some sense.

Yes, sense. I'm sorry, but it did. And if saying that loses me some twitter followers, as it appears to have done, or if some of you take that to mean I'm pro-Zimmerman, no different from the gloaters, because you can't see the nuance here, well, what can I say?

One of the best tweets I've seen came from ex-NFLer Scott Fujita:

Who really failed here? The prosecution? The jury? No. The laws in the state of FL failed. Be constructive in response. Focus on change.
— Scott Fujita (@sfujita55) July 14, 2013

And the smartest thing I've read on the verdict came from Slate's Emily Bazelon, in a must-read piece that includes the following:

It feels wrong, this verdict of not guilty for George Zimmerman. It feels wrong to say that Zimmerman is guilty of no crime. If he hadn't approached 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, if he hadn't pulled his gun, Martin would be alive.

But that doesn't mean Zimmerman was guilty of murder, not in the state of Florida. It doesn't even mean he was guilty of manslaughter, though that was the middle ground I hoped the jury would find its way toward... Here's the problem: To convict Zimmerman of murder, the six women of the jury had to find that he killed Martin out of ill will, hatred, or spite, or with a depraved mind. The law didn't account Zimmerman's fear or feeling of being physically threatened.

But the physical evidence suggested that in the heat of the moment, Zimmerman could have felt both of those things.

In other words, the verdict may not have been racist, and, given the laws in Florida and the high bar of "beyond a reasonable doubt" (a bar that must remain high at all times if the legal system is to be in any way just), maybe the verdict actually made... sense.

Here's The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates, also not a right-wing pro-Zimmerman apologist, making the same case:

I think the jury basically got it right. The only real eyewitness to the death of Trayvon Martin was the man who killed him. At no point did I think that the state proved second degree murder. I also never thought they proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted recklessly. They had no ability to counter his basic narrative, because there were no other eye-witnesses.

And on this I am in full agreement:

[T]rials don't work as strict "moral surrogates." Everything that is immoral is not illegal -- nor should it be. I want to live in a society that presumes innocence. I want to live in that society even when I feel that a person should be punished.

Did the system work? Well, yes, in its flawed way.

It's an imperfect system, after all, that when it works as it should presumes innocence even for those who seem the most guilty and places the burden of proof on the government.

I'm not saying that racism played no part here, or that the system isn't deeply corrupt, but I think we should take a step back before hurling accusations in all directions.

And while there is undeniably a sense of gross injustice here -- Trayvon is dead, Zimmerman walks -- the point for us all should be to rally together to fight for change as the pathway to justice.

Fight to end racism, particularly as it manifests itself in institutions like the justice system. Fight for meaningful gun control legislation. Fight to put an end to America's gun-crazed culture of violence.

Fight for Trayvon, yes, but do so in the right way, and without turning on the system for doing what, at the end of the day, it was supposed to do in this case.

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A bitter pill

By Carl

I fell asleep last night just as the jury in the George Zimmerman trial reached a verdict. I knew it would take another hour or so for all parties to gather and to announce the actual verdict, and I was pretty tired already. I'm glad I did. As it was, I only read about it this morning when I looked at my phone to see what time it was around 4 AM, and got so angry that I couldn't fall back to sleep.

A few thoughts:

1) Finding someone guilty on a charge of manslaughter entails two conditions: first, someone has to be dead and second, that death has to occur because of the deliberate actions of the accused. Unless you buy the ludicrous self-defense charge, that's clearly what happened here.

2) To buy the ludicrous self-defense charge means willfully ignoring the entire incident up to the point where the struggle between two men begins. It also means that the prosecution failed miserably to put the jurors in the scenario. A young boy is walking home, minding his own business, when a creep starts stalking him, first in his car, then on foot. He's terrified, not knowing who or what this is about. As he is still just a teen, he acts first and questions his actions later (sadly, he never gets that chance.) He turns and confronts his assailant, and demands to know what his problem is. Things escalate.

3) The trouble with the jury system is jurors. When your jury pool is the state of Florida, you are going to be hard pressed to find even six modestly intelligent people. That they asked to have the charge of manslaughter read back to them and then didn't respond to an admittedly stupid request of the judge, that told me the prosecution was in trouble.

4) My suspicion is the jury, unable to find sufficient cause to convict on murder (I might give them this. It's hard to know for sure that Zimmerman set out to kill this particular kid.) and completely confused about what constitutes manslaughter, threw up their hands because they wanted the trial over and to go home.

5) Zimmerman is far from off the hook. For one thing, the parents have recourse to a civil suit -- you may recall this was the trial that actually did find O. J. Simpson guilty -- which only needs a preponderance of evidence that Zimmerman caused the death of Trayvon Martin. For another, the Federal government could pursue a hate crimes case against Zimmerman, although that's a little unlikely given the paucity of evidence, some garbled phone transcripts.

6) Speaking of OJ, it's a bit ironic that just about twenty years after that verdict shocked America, here comes the Zimmerman verdict. I think the parallels will not end there. You may recall that OJ never really "got away with it," and although he gained his freedom, it didn't last. He's currently serving a prison sentence for another crime he committed and was convicted of and the judge in that case was none too kind in sentencing. Given the Zimmerman family propensity for criminal behavior, this is probably not the last time we'll see him in court. He'll try to get a book deal out of this, and in a worst case scenario, a movie, but in the end, he'll crash harder believing he got away with murder.

So a piece of advice, George: Not guilty is not the same thing as innocent. You killed a boy. You're going to have to square yourself with that.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

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