The jury … will either find him guilty as sin, or its six ‘angry’ women will be hung.
There’s simply no reasonable justification, even for this ‘all-White’ jury, to let this trigger-happy wannabe cop walk scot-free.
(“Zimmerman Trial a Sensation Only Because Media Made It So,” The iPINIONS Journal, July 13, 2013)
I clearly thought (perhaps hoped) that George Zimmerman would be found guilty of the vigilante killing of Trayvon Martin.
In fact, I was convinced of his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt from the time I learned about the undisputed facts soon after Zimmerman committed this crime 17 months ago. Chief among those facts are that:
- He harbored seething resentment about Black kids – who he damned as “assholes … fucking punks [who] always get away” with burglarizing homes in his neighborhood.
- He was a wannabe cop who was determined not to let this one get away.
- He racially profiled Trayvon walking in his neighborhood, which also happened to be Trayvon’s.
- He defied police instructions not to follow Trayvon.
- He instigated the fatal fight with Trayvon by getting out of his car to confront this kid – who was actually running away in fear from what he described, in some of his last words, as the “creepy-ass cracka” stalking him.
- And he shot Trayvon in the heart – instead of using his gun (if he had to at all) to fend off the kid, or to even disable him with a non-fatal shot, when he realized he was losing the mano-a-mano fight he instigated.
But I was wrong. The jury has spoken, and I respect its verdict: Not Guilty! Not just of murder in the second degree, but even of the lesser-included charge of manslaughter.
To get a little appreciation of why I thought this Florida jury would find him guilty, it might be helpful to know that, just months after Zimmerman killed Trayvon, another Florida jury found a woman guilty – not for killing anyone, but for merely firing warning shots (as I contend Zimmerman could/should have done) to fend off her physically abusive husband. She was convicted of attempted murder (despite also claiming self-defense) and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Oh, if you think it’s just a coincidence that this woman, named Marissa Alexander, is Black, think again.
Enough said?
Except that it would be remiss of me not to comment on the dark cloud that hovered over this case – from the time Zimmerman had Trayvon in his sights last year to the reading of the jury’s verdict last night. That cloud of course is the still determinative factor of race, which is the haunting legacy of America’s irredeemable original sin of Slavery.
It was racially polarizing enough that Zimmerman, a White man, was being tried for murdering Trayvon, a Black teenager. Therefore, you could be forgiven for thinking the judge lit a fuse for inevitable racial combustion when she empaneled an all-White jury.
Not to mention that newscasters reporting on (and the police preparing for) the potential for racial violence if Zimmerman were found not guilty was rather like weather forecasters reporting on the potential for damage if a looming hurricane were to make landfall. And the sound of disappointment in the voices of newscasters now that no (significant) violence has materialized is just as palpable as it invariably is in the voices of forecasters when all of their hype about the impending doom of the big one peters out.
But everyone from Trayvon’s parents to perennially race-baiting activists like Reverend Al Sharpton deserve national commendation – not only for pledging (from day one and throughout) to respect the Zimmerman verdict come what may, but also for calling for peace and reconciliation in its aftermath.
In any event, I hope all Whites who think this was a just verdict will take a moment to recall how they felt when that all-Black jury found O.J. Simpson not guilty of murdering two White people. By the same token, I hope all Blacks who think this was an unjust verdict will take a moment to recall how they felt. Because I suspect many Whites are feeling today the way most Blacks felt back then, and vice versa.
Now, lest you think I’m drawing some racial symmetry in pursuit of poetic justice, let me hasten to clarify that an all-Black jury acquitting a Black O.J. was the exception to the rule in American history; whereas an all-White jury acquitting a White Zimmerman is merely abiding by the rule.
This is why Blacks may be forgiven their emotional double standards – given a criminal justice system that for decades, if not centuries, has allowed Whites to get away with murdering Blacks. After all, Trayvon is only the latest in a fateful litany that includes Emmett Till, Willie Edwards, James Chaney, Michael Donald, Michael Griffith, Yusef Hawkins, James Byrd Jr.
Indeed, is it any wonder that their frustration finally combusted so spectacularly after an all-White jury found the four White cops who beat Rodney King within an inch of his life … not guilty?
Even so, there can be no denying that Whites are more likely to riot and pillage after a championship hockey game than Blacks are to riot and pillage after an unjust jury verdict. This, notwithstanding the thousands of cases that have provoked Blacks to mount protest marches over the years under the banner of “no justice, no peace.”
Finally, it might lend more credibility to my bona fides in this respect to note that, while most Blacks cheered when that all-Black jury found O.J. not guilty, I jeered. Alas, that same uncompromising principle (with respect to criminal justice and Race Matters) compels me to swim against the intra-racial tide again.
Because while most Blacks (being led by the NAACP no less) are now calling for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to file criminal civil rights charges against Zimmerman, I’m calling on the DOJ to stay out this case. Not least because, as I indicated in my original commentary, “The Vigilante Killing of Black Teenager Trayvon Martin,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 12, 2012, a successful civil rights action could be sustained based solely on public outrage/pressure, not legal reasoning.
I fully appreciate that this was the recourse Black supporters of Rodney King were forced to take to get justice for him. But, as systematic attempts by Whites to suppress the votes of Blacks in last year’s presidential and congressional elections attest, the NAACP and DOJ have far more consequential civil rights battles to fight.
I stand with those who want to make the killing of innocent Black kids the civil rights cause of our times. But Zimmerman has nothing on Black men who kill Black kids every day in even more depraved and indifferent ways. Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find a single civil rights leader who has demanded the DOJ file civil rights charges to render justice in those cases.
I say let Zimmerman’s fate take its course. For I suspect that, just like O.J., he will eventually get what’s coming to him. The last time I checked O.J. was rotting away in prison on a 33-year sentence stemming from a completely unrelated crime – for which he was probably (legally and factually) innocent. How’s that for poetic justice….
The Media
Given the racial polarization this case incited, you’d think it was the first one since O.J.s where race was a factor in the verdict, if not in the murder itself. Whereas, in fact, people commit racially motivated murders every day in the United States.
But only God knows why some of them are deemed worthy of wall-to-wall media coverage. For example, according to the “FBI Uniform Crime Report,” Whites kill about 200 Blacks each year. Yet for some reason this trial became the media sensation.
What is clear, though, is that the media invariably play a facilitating role in stoking public interest in certain trials. Why, for example, didn’t the media report on the obvious travesty of justice that befell Marissa Alexander last year — instead of doing so now only for provocative comparisons with the outcome in Zimmerman’s case? Come to think of it, why didn’t the civil rights activists – who championed Trayvon’s cause – champion her arguably more sympathetic cause…?
Not to mention their failure to champion the cause of Black 13-year-old Darius Simmons — who was gunned down in cold blood in his own yard in May 2012, right in front of his mother, by his next-door neighbor. After all, this neighbor happens to be White 76-year-old John Henry Spooner — a crotchety old bastard who wrongly suspected Darius of breaking into his home and stealing some of his other prized guns. And why aren’t the media reporting on Spooner’s trial on first-degree murder charges, which is currently underway in Milwaukee, Wisconsin? But I digress.
I am convinced that if cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, and if cable stations were not providing obsessive coverage (complete with legal analysts sounding more like sports analysts), Zimmerman’s trial would not have been so racially polarizing.
Which makes this an instructive occasion to reiterate my call for professional juries:
The time for the American criminal justice system to empanel professional juries is long past due. Because it has become self-evident that presenting lay jurors with reams of evidence and endless pages of jury instructions, then sending them off to make a life or death decision (sometimes under extreme social duress), is every bit as foolhardy as giving a lay person a medical journal, then sending her off to perform brain surgery.
Indeed, given this untenable premise, it’s really no wonder there have been so many cases where juries have returned verdicts that can only be described as gross miscarriages of justice.
The only way to arrest this trend … is to select professional juries comprised of individuals who have the legal training to appreciate that ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ does not mean the absence of all doubt and who can make logical inferences and deductions from the evidence presented.
(“The Case for Professional Juries: Proved Beyond a Reasonable Doubt,” The iPINIONS Journal, July 1, 2005)
That said, I have no doubt that the ratings whores who drive media coverage will soon stimulate a much-needed release from this racial polarization by turning the public on to the imminent birth of Britain’s future king/queen. Never mind that this child will be “in waiting” (perhaps for as many as seventy years) until his/her great grandmother Elizabeth, grandfather Charles, and father William all finish their successional reigns. But if you have any reasonable doubt about the media getting over Zimmerman in a flash, try to remember the last time you saw or read a report on one-time media darlings Casey Anthony and Jodi Arias….
By the way, Charles is probably wondering why his Mummy doesn’t do the decent thing and abdicate to make him king before his dotage, the way two European monarchs (in Belgium and the Netherlands) – both of whom are much younger than she – did earlier this year.
But seriously, think about it folks: what does it say about Elizabeth’s self-importance if even the infallible pope can abdicate in favor of a younger pope without fearing the Catholic Church would crumble, but she can’t abdicate in favor of a younger monarch without fearing the British monarchy would?
Ahhh – better already, no…?
Related commentaries:
Vigilante killing of Trayvon Martin…
Professional juries…
O.J. Simpson…
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Sunday, at 2:21 pm
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