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.

President Obama, leading with maturity and understanding

By Mustang Bobby 

Andrew Sullivan marvels at President Obama's ability to handle a very tense situation with coolness and reflection.

No other president could have said what Obama said on Friday afternoon with similar authority. What was striking to me was the tone of acute sadness – a tone others could have used after what was, under any interpretation, a tragedy. And then there was the fact that this first black president, even after such a polarizing incident, spoke to all Americans, white and black. I cannot fathom how some on the knee-jerk right could have seen this as a divisive set of comments – just as I cannot quite fathom how this president is capable of controlling and channeling his own emotions.

What he tried to do was explain to white America how it must feel like to be perpetually deemed guilty before being proven innocent just because of your age, gender and the color of your skin. He didn’t deny the facts of the Martin case; he didn't dispute the jury's decision; he didn't dismiss legitimate issues like the toll of gun violence within the young black male population – but he did insist that we all understand the context, the history, and the reason, behind the anguish and anger of many African-American men and parents and boys. What he was asking for was some mutual empathy.

To answer his point about the knee-jerk right seeing this as divisive, it was a given; Sean Hannity and the rest of the people at Fox News and other such places would have had the same reaction if the president had come out and given his mother's recipe for beef stew.  Their response to anything he says is programmed far in advance. He speaks like Martin Luther King, they hear Malcolm X.

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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.

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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.)