Zimmerman found not guilty
A white man stood accused of the unlawful killing of a black man. The world watched the trial, hanging on every detail. Weeks later the jury brought back a verdict. Not guilty on all charges.
Rioting broke out. More than a dozen people were killed in that rioting. Dozens and dozens were injured. Property damage ran into the millions of dollars.
No, not Rodney King. No, not Trayvon Martin, at least not yet. The innocent black man who was unlawfully killed was an insurance salesman named Arthur MacDuffie. He'd been riding his motorcycle when Dade County police officers attempted to stop him. He had a number of accumulated traffic violations and was riding with a suspended license. He refused to stop. When he was finally stopped, the six cops who were chasing him beat him to death.
They were tried. A state's attorney in Florida named Janet Reno did a horrible job prosecuting the case. Even in light of the fact that the officers had tried to cover up what happened by running the motorcycle over with a police car so as to make it look like MacDuffie had died in an accident, the four officers charged were acquitted.
A large protest turned into a riot. The rest is now forgotten history, except by those who lived in that part of Miami at the time.
How is the George Zimmerman trial similar? What brought about this verdict?
It cannot be ignored that the verdict in both cases came about at least partly due to the failure of the prosecution to do a good job of proving their case. I don't know if the prosecution attempted to conceal evidence, but the IT director of the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Florida just got fired, apparently for doing just that. It cannot be ignored that Rachel Jeantel was not properly prepped for her appearance on the witness stand. Her telling of lies prior to her courtroom testimony did not help her credibility. The technical issues revolving around the difference between the Daubert standard and the Frye standard regarding the admissibility of expert testimony caused the judge to order that no testimony would be allowed by audio analysts regarding the voices on the recording of the phone call.
The defense did what the prosecution did not. They gave the jury enough reasonable doubt for them to find Zimmerman not guilty. When the prosecution is asking questions during their closing arguments rather than making statements to articulate the reasons why the jury should bring back a guilty verdict, the case is probably lost right then and there. I knew this before I heard a number of legal analysts mentioning it.
That Trayvon Martin is dead is a horrible tragedy. That what most seem to perceive as "justice" was not achieved in the court case is also tragic. It also must be noted that the prosecution's case was weak to begin with. Only two people ever knew everything that happened that night and one of them isn't around to give us his version of the facts.
Hopefully two things will come from this verdict. A re-examination of the "stand your ground" legal doctrine. And, the residents of Florida can show us that they don't have to resort to rioting and violence to express their outrage at this verdict.
* * *
Even though he was found not-guilty, George Zimmerman was wrong. He should not have been carrying a gun. He was not performing in his role as a member of Neighborhood Watch. Even if he had been, their job is to observe and report, not confront. He should have never gotten out of his vehicle. If he was in fear for his life, rather than reaching for a gun, he should have stayed where he was safe. The ultimate responsibility for the death of Trayvon Martin lies in George Zimmerman's "cop wannabe" mindset.
* * *
I've heard a lot of people postulating that this case would have been totally different if the dead man had been the white man, and the shooter had been the black man. Maybe. Maybe not. I'm far more interested in why all of the people who are so outraged and trying to make this a racial issue (which it is on some levels and is not on others) would probably have been indifferent if a black man had shot another black man.
http://www.columbia.edu/~rs328/Homicide.pdf
Here is an extract from the above link:
The murder rate in Chicago is skyrocketing. Black on black murder seems to be getting worse all the time. Where is the concern? Where is the outrage? The causes of such disparities aren't racial in their origins. They are economic. Therein lies the problem and within can be found the solution. If we had the moral courage to be outraged and take action to change the continually worsening status quo.
We don't. Whoever said the biggest problem coming out of the acquittal of George Zimmerman won't be more riots, but will be more George Zimmermans is right. And that's the real tragedy here.
Rioting broke out. More than a dozen people were killed in that rioting. Dozens and dozens were injured. Property damage ran into the millions of dollars.
No, not Rodney King. No, not Trayvon Martin, at least not yet. The innocent black man who was unlawfully killed was an insurance salesman named Arthur MacDuffie. He'd been riding his motorcycle when Dade County police officers attempted to stop him. He had a number of accumulated traffic violations and was riding with a suspended license. He refused to stop. When he was finally stopped, the six cops who were chasing him beat him to death.
They were tried. A state's attorney in Florida named Janet Reno did a horrible job prosecuting the case. Even in light of the fact that the officers had tried to cover up what happened by running the motorcycle over with a police car so as to make it look like MacDuffie had died in an accident, the four officers charged were acquitted.
A large protest turned into a riot. The rest is now forgotten history, except by those who lived in that part of Miami at the time.
How is the George Zimmerman trial similar? What brought about this verdict?
It cannot be ignored that the verdict in both cases came about at least partly due to the failure of the prosecution to do a good job of proving their case. I don't know if the prosecution attempted to conceal evidence, but the IT director of the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Florida just got fired, apparently for doing just that. It cannot be ignored that Rachel Jeantel was not properly prepped for her appearance on the witness stand. Her telling of lies prior to her courtroom testimony did not help her credibility. The technical issues revolving around the difference between the Daubert standard and the Frye standard regarding the admissibility of expert testimony caused the judge to order that no testimony would be allowed by audio analysts regarding the voices on the recording of the phone call.
The defense did what the prosecution did not. They gave the jury enough reasonable doubt for them to find Zimmerman not guilty. When the prosecution is asking questions during their closing arguments rather than making statements to articulate the reasons why the jury should bring back a guilty verdict, the case is probably lost right then and there. I knew this before I heard a number of legal analysts mentioning it.
That Trayvon Martin is dead is a horrible tragedy. That what most seem to perceive as "justice" was not achieved in the court case is also tragic. It also must be noted that the prosecution's case was weak to begin with. Only two people ever knew everything that happened that night and one of them isn't around to give us his version of the facts.
Hopefully two things will come from this verdict. A re-examination of the "stand your ground" legal doctrine. And, the residents of Florida can show us that they don't have to resort to rioting and violence to express their outrage at this verdict.
* * *
Even though he was found not-guilty, George Zimmerman was wrong. He should not have been carrying a gun. He was not performing in his role as a member of Neighborhood Watch. Even if he had been, their job is to observe and report, not confront. He should have never gotten out of his vehicle. If he was in fear for his life, rather than reaching for a gun, he should have stayed where he was safe. The ultimate responsibility for the death of Trayvon Martin lies in George Zimmerman's "cop wannabe" mindset.
* * *
I've heard a lot of people postulating that this case would have been totally different if the dead man had been the white man, and the shooter had been the black man. Maybe. Maybe not. I'm far more interested in why all of the people who are so outraged and trying to make this a racial issue (which it is on some levels and is not on others) would probably have been indifferent if a black man had shot another black man.
http://www.columbia.edu/~rs328/Homicide.pdf
Here is an extract from the above link:
"African-Americans are six times as likely as white Americans to die at the hands of a murderer, and roughly seven times as likely to murder someone. Young black men are fifteen times as likely to be murdered as young white men. This disparity is historic and pervasive, and cannot be accounted for by individual characteristics. Culture-of-violence and tail-of-the-distribution theories are also inadequate to explain the geographic and demographic pattern of the disparity. We argue that any satisfactory explanation must take into account the fact that murder can have a preemptive motive: people sometimes kill simply to avoid being killed. As a result, disputes can escalate dramatically in environments (endogenously) perceived to be dangerous, resulting in self-fulfilling expectations of violence for particular dyadic interactions, and significant racial disparities in rates of murder and victimization. Because of strategic complementarity, small differences in fundamentals can cause large differences in murder rates. Differences in the manner in which the criminal justice system treats murders with victims from different groups, and differences across groups in involvement in street vice, may be sufficient to explain the size and
pattern of the racial disparity."
The murder rate in Chicago is skyrocketing. Black on black murder seems to be getting worse all the time. Where is the concern? Where is the outrage? The causes of such disparities aren't racial in their origins. They are economic. Therein lies the problem and within can be found the solution. If we had the moral courage to be outraged and take action to change the continually worsening status quo.
We don't. Whoever said the biggest problem coming out of the acquittal of George Zimmerman won't be more riots, but will be more George Zimmermans is right. And that's the real tragedy here.
posted by me at 9:36 PM
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