Editor's note: Your ProbateShark agrees with Eric Zorn about the failure of the Federal Court when it is used to provide double jeopardy in criminal cases. The FEDs have also failed Gore, Wyman, Tyler, Sykes and a myriad of others by NOT enforcing the basic civil rights of these elderly disabled people. Eric may not remember interviewing the daughter of Alice R. Gore in the 80's regarding Alice's disabled granddaughter in the famous "Cooper Case". Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Zimmerman acquitted: Your thoughts and mine
Just got back from a night out and saw the news. Your thoughts first....
UPDATE--I don't have a lot to add to my 25 thoughts on all this (20 things I think about the George Zimmerman case & 5 more things I think about the George Zimmerman case). Perhaps the jurors agreed with my basic outline of the story, that Zimmerman wrongly felt Martin was up to no good, got out of his truck to follow (not chase) Martin so he could lead police to him when they arrived, was ambushed by an angry Martin, was getting his butt beaten and panicked and shot him, then embellished his story in order to bolster what was already a legitimate claim of self-defense under Florida law.
It's pretty clear jurors didn't buy the idea suggested by prosecutors that Zimmerman actively pursued Martin, confronted him, provoked the fight that he was winning at the time the fatal shot was fired and then made up a bunch of lies to justify what he did.
And it may have been that, as I've suggested all along, they focused almost exclusively on the final altercation and what likely happened in the 30 seconds or so leading up to that. And that they found that long gap in the timeline -- a gap when Martin could easily have strolled home -- highly suggestive that Martin himself sought and initiated the fight.
We'll know if and when they give interviews.
One of the reasons I began writing about this case in the first place was my worry that the public was not being fully and adequately informed about what's known about what actually happened that night compared to what many people think happened. And that an acquittal, which has always seemed both possible and just to me, would be greeted by just the sort of exasperated, furious, inaccurate statements I've been listening to these last two hours on cable TV.
Zimmerman chased Martin. Zimmerman confronted Martin. Zimmerman had no reason to shoot Martin.
These were always opinions, never facts that appeared to be backed up with evidence offering proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and no number of clumsily phrased news reports and no amount of incendiary punditry suggesting otherwise could make it so. All they could do was make people angrier than they ought to be at this verdict.
Proof wasn't there. Our system demands such proof, and the system worked. All along, those who were demanding "justice for Trayvon" were telling us what that meant was for Zimmerman to face a fair trial and the judgment of the jury of his peers.
Some of those outraged by the verdict are calling tonight for the U.S. Justice Dept. to file civil rights charges against Zimmerman -- federal charges being a slippery way around the Constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy -- and that sounds like many kinds of wrong. We need to move the conversations about race and guns forward and not keep this particular wound open any longer.
And we can't let civil rights charges be used as political tools to attempt to assuage people who are angry about not-guilty verdicts in otherwise straightforward local criminal trials. If U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder gives the go-head to such an effort, it will rip the country apart.
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