A whole lot of things went wrong for Trayvon Martin on February 26th. In the days that followed, other things went wrong, too. One of the biggest failures was that it took several weeks for the local and the national newspapers to cover this topic.
The New York Times didn't pick up this story until three weeks later. The first story in the New York Times appears on March 17th. The Orlando Sentinel wrote a short article on February 29th, but with major elements of the story missing. Finally, on March 8th, the Sentinel starts to give this story more attention. A couple more stories were written that week. But it wasn't until three weeks after Trayvon was killed, that the local newspapers really began to cover this story.
I heard about this case, not from the mainstream media, but from Holly Robinson, an entertainment reporter, that I follow on Twitter.
Apt. 11d 
The story has had a very interesting media history. NBC is doing an internal investigation now over how this exchange metamorphosized into something very different:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.
After NBC finished working it over, the clip ran like this:
Zimmerman: Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/nbc-to-do-internal-investigation-on-zimmerman-segment/2012/03/31/gIQAc4HhnS_blog.html
There’ve been a lot of similar adjustments as time goes by with this case. For example, in the initial reporting, Zimmerman outweighed Martin by 100 pounds. After a month of that being reported everywhere, that detail has been quietly retracted. The actual weight difference between the two seems to have been more like 10-20 pounds (in Zimmerman’s favor), while Martin was 3-5 inches taller than Zimmerman. There are lots of links here:
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2012/04/is-the-ny-times-breaking-news-or-breaking-wind.html
There have been similar (but faster) developments in the description of Zimmerman’s race. He started out white and has turned “white Hispanic”, terminology hitherto unseen in the US press.
The treatment of who exactly was screaming before the shot was fired is also developing.
The good thing about this case is that there are lots of witnesses, ballistics, physical evidence, cell phone records, 911 call recordings, etc. On the other hand, because of the politicization and lynch mob atmosphere surrounding the case, it may well be very difficult to get a fair trail, not to mention to get testimony from witnesses that is not affected by prejudice or fear of violent retaliation.
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The difficulty is because the police (and the the DA) completely dropped the ball on doing an investigation, not because of the politicization of the event. Without the politization, nothing would have happened with any of the testimony.
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Amy P: “White Hispanic” has actually been around in the press since at least the last census and the resulting media coverage–it’s a term of big debate in the Latino/Hispanic community.
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Amy P–are you trying to insinuate that hispanics cannot be racist? Because I’m not sure otherwise what relevance that point could have otherwise.
On this issue there are no excuses for those who follow right wing talking points. None at all. Much of what is being said on those sites is unspeakably evil.
Also, have you all seen the racist tweets re the Hunger Games?
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“The difficulty is because the police (and the the DA) completely dropped the ball on doing an investigation, not because of the politicization of the event.”
They certainly didn’t follow up on Martin’s phone or track down his girlfriend fast enough (it took weeks for her to surface), and they should have done at least a breathalyzer for Zimmerman.
“Amy P: “White Hispanic” has actually been around in the press since at least the last census and the resulting media coverage–it’s a term of big debate in the Latino/Hispanic community.”
The term doesn’t normally get used in crime stories, though. Plus, Zimmerman is a pretty indigenous looking dude–not at all what I would think of as “White Hispanic”. Nobody is going to confuse Zimmerman with Ricky Martin or Antonio Banderas.
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Again, Amy, what does that have to do with the price of potatoes? Spell it out, because I don’t get it.
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A guy was shot and they gathered no evidence but the verbal testimony of the shooter. That’s beyond horrible.
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“A guy was shot and they gathered no evidence but the verbal testimony of the shooter. That’s beyond horrible. ”
Yup, and further more, there’s the possibility that that’s actually the law in Florida. The NY times pointed out in the editorial that only the person who is alive at the end gets to tell a story (independent of any police investigation). If the story is enough to prevent any further investigation, it’s a significant failure of the law.
The research I would like to see is further analysis of the justified homicide defense, in Florida and other states with “stand your ground” laws. None of the articles have struck me as digging in sufficiently to that story (and I’ve seen sloppy statistics all over the place).
(Also, people have to get over the idea that racism is a personality trait, rather than a behavior. Everyone can be racist and that includes people of all races. Racism is making negative assumptions about a person because of their race, and does not depend on the race of the individual making that assumption).
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Everyone can be racist and that includes people of all races.
There was a song about it linked here just the other day.
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I think the law is dangerous (but I support the right to use force inside your own house), but the idea that the police can’t investigate seems wrong. After saying self-defense is grounds for immunity, the law goes on to add:
A law enforcement agency may use standard procedures for investigating the use of force as described in subsection (1), but the agency may not arrest the person for using force unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force that was used was unlawful.
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There was a song about it linked here just the other day.
Here we go.
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Part of our differing interpretations will depdn on what it means to follow “standard procedures” are and the standard of probable cause, and it goes on to put a significant burden on the investigative officers (attorney’s fees and compensation if the court finds the defendant immune from prosecution). That is, if the police investigate and detain the individual, and a court eventually finds that the homicide was justified, the governmental authority has to pay damages (i.e. for trying to prosecute them at all).
It is not surprising, then, to see local enforcement authorities taking the easy way out of not trying to prosecute (and, presumably, if the likelihood of prosecution is very low, then what’s the point of spending significant resources on investigation–there’s no damages due for *not* detaining the person).
“A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”
Reading this section of the law, it seems like it basically boils down to who initiated the first physical contact, ’cause you’re allowed to kill someone if they shove you (if you say you thought you had to, because it’s not whether deadly force was necessary, but only whether you believed it was necessary). And, if one of you is dead, only one of you gets to say who threw the first punch (absent obvious and clear witnesses, and who wants to judge who made first contact, unless they have instant replay, anyway?).
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It also wouldn’t be the first time the national newspapers were ahead of local papers on a story like this. My Taylor Branch is in Germany right now, but I bet he’s got good chapter and verse from the 1950s and ’60s. See also The Race Beat by Gene Roberts & Hank Kilbanoff.
I doubt it will be the last time either.
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That is, if the police investigate and detain the individual, and a court eventually finds that the homicide was justified, the governmental authority has to pay damages (i.e. for trying to prosecute them at all).
They did detain him briefly but didn’t investigate anything that could have been investigated otherwise. They’re just incompentent, racist, or bowing to political pressure.
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Though I think they might be incompetent, racist, and bowing to political pressure, I think they were also working within the incentives defined by the law: there’s financial punishment and censure for detaining and prosecuting the individual claiming justifiable homicide. On the other hand, unless the situation blows up in your face, there’s no incentive to prosecute or investigate (other than the moral incentives of doing your job).
The law has been purposeful set up to incentive police to avoid investigations; the law was opposed by the police in Florida before it was passed (and they were tossed the bone of specifically exempting law enforcement); it is not at all surprising that the structure of the law resulted in the police taking the actions they did (i.e. no action).
“Under Stand Your Ground, a deadly force case doesn’t need to be resolved by a jury; police or a judge can make that determination.
“When you have a Stand Your Ground law in place, it then becomes easier to simply chalk up an incident to Stand Your Ground,” Jarvis said. “It makes it easier to wrap cases up by saying, ‘This is a justifiable self defense.’ ”
(SunSentinal)
In particular, I don’t think there can be charges in this case unless there was eye witness testimony or video taped evidence showing that Zimmerman shot before Martin touched him at all. That’s a bad law.
If I were a black man, I’d find a way of wearing a body camera.
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It’s always easier to do nothing unless the situations blows up in your face. “Should I even bother?” is a question we should all ask ourselves often. Granted this law tilts things a bit more toward doing nothing, but if they are following the law, the police are supposed to find for self defense only if they find that you had a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm and that you are not the aggressor. They didn’t do that in the least.
It is a bad law, but it isn’t that bad.
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I’m trying to imagine what would have happened if Trayvon Martin had shot Zimmerman in (justified) self-defense in this situation. Do you think the police would have taken his word and not pursued the case or held him in custody? This is a lose/lose situation for black men.
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Kids can’t legally have a handgun anyway. He’d have been arrested for certain.
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“Amy P–are you trying to insinuate that hispanics cannot be racist? Because I’m not sure otherwise what relevance that point could have otherwise.”
Sure it has relevance. What the weirdness over Zimmerman’s race suggests is that the major media had a pre-written template (white vigilante guns down innocent black kid in gated community) and that they were trying desperately to shoe-horn the facts of the case into that story line.
Why might that be? Aside from political bias, there’s also a phenomenon that you see in Hollywood movies where a story with mainly non-white characters needs a white savior character to become marketable (see, for example The Last King of Scotland or any number of heroic-white-teacher-in-inner-city-school movies). In the same way, perhaps the US media just isn’t very interested in stories involving black people gunning down black people. The recent Miami-Dade funeral home mass shooting is not going to turn into a media phenomenon, even though as far as I know, the shooter or shooters are still at large.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/02/2728339/funeral-home-shooting-leaves-questions.html
And going back to media failure, there was another interesting media failure in the Trayvon Martin case. ABC aired a grainy video purporting to show that Zimmerman was not injured when he was brought back to the police station. To give ABC credit, they eventually digitally remastered the video, at which point it became clear that Zimmerman did in fact have lacerations on the back of his head that are perhaps consistent with his story of having his head pounded on the sidewalk by Trayvon Martin before the fatal shooting.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/george-zimmerman-enhanced-video-shows-injury-trayvon-martin-16053206
Beyond that, there has been a lot of eye-witness testimony from neighbors, much of which supports Zimmerman’s story of a desperate struggle before Zimmerman fired. Now, what remains unclear (and perhaps will remain so) is the question of how the altercation began and who hit first.
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Another reporting issue is that the initial claim of two gunshots has been amended to one.
Tom Maguire of
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/
has been very good on sifting the minutiae of this case over the past couple weeks.
Just as with the Ravi/Clementi case, a lot of stuff that people know about the Zimmerman/Martin case just isn’t so.
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Here’s another one. Initially, it was said that Zimmerman had called 911 46 times over the course of a single year, which made him sound like a raging nut. However, eventually, there had been some sort of mistake, and that was revised to 46 times over the course of 11 years, which is more in line with just being a concerned citizen and good neighbor.
http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/seminole_news/032012-Man-who-shot-%26-killed-teen-has-history-calling-911
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Amy, did you read those 911 calls? They do make him sound like a nut.
As for the relevance of his being hispanic, well, it may be relevant to a discussion about the media’s coverage of the case, which frankly is umimportant to me (although I know it is the topic of the thread), but it is not at all relevant to whether he could have acted on racist impulses; or whether or not the police could have been racially biased.
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I’ve called 911 five times in my life. Once because I heard someone screaming ” Help! Somebody call the police!” (we were walking home from a campus event on a weekend night–it was a stabbing). Once my husband was choking to death (gave him the Heimlich, but the police were on their way already). And 3 times for E (twice for breathing issues and once when the dog took him for a walk and he didn’t come back home).
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I’ve never called 911.
Amy, your fellow commenters are being very patient with you.
Every scrap of evidence so far points to the fact that Zimmerman was loony toons. We have a report from Martin’s girl friend who was on the cell phone with him for much of this incident. The 911 operator told Zimmerman to stop following Martin. He didn’t listen to her.
This “Stand Your Ground” law in FL is crazy. It provides shelter for vigilantes. Zimmerman may not have been a traditional racist, but he was looking for a fight and came across a kid who was in wrong place at the wrong time. His looks may have played a part in becoming a victim of Zimmerman and may have also played part in the long lag time before local media began covering this case.
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Even the conservative National Review thinks Zimmerman should be charged.
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Amy, your fellow commenters are being very patient with you.
Mama always taught, if you don’t have anything nice to say . . .
When a person’s digging her own hole, there’s no value in de-railing by pointing out the depth of the hole she is standing in.
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What is it about this case that drives people off the rails?
It appears that the police — who held Zimmerman for most of the fatal night – wanted him charged but he was let go when the DA’s office declined to press charges. There wasn’t some police conspiracy and no reason to think a thorough investigation wasn’t conducted.
There appears to be evidence that Zimmerman was injured during the altercation with Martin. If Zimmerman was attacked, then that would constitute a solid defense. This is the crux of the case and the information has not yet been released.
It’s not clear Zimmerman did pursue Martin. That needs to be established.
The residential development where the shooting occurred was in the midst of a crime wave. It was reasonable for residents to be very suspicious of strangers walking around the development.
And neither Zimmerman nor Martin were choirboys. Let’s put it that way.
There is so much disinformation about this case being dessiminated in the press – including the amazing NBC report which Amy discusses in her first post (amazing journalistic malpractice) — and so much passion involved, I really think everyone should dial it down and let the facts emerge.
Is Zimmerman guilty of manslaughter or a similar charge? I have no idea and neither do you.
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What is it about this case that drives people off the rails?
I certainly agree about that. The rest of that seems beside the point. We do know Zimmerman followed Martin, from his own 911 call. If Zimmerman was attacked, it was the ending of a series of events that his own poor judgement started (poor judgement plus he must be a really shitty fighter to lose so badly that he was in fear of his own life). And being suspicious of strangers in a crime wave is a very long way from having a reasonable fear of death or grevious harm, which is what you need to justify a killing in self-defense even with the Florida law.
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I agree with MH. The point where Zimmerman lost me is when, on the 911 call, the dispatcher tells him to stay in the car and that the police don’t need him. And he f-ing goes after Martin anyway.
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Just to be clear about my views, I don’t think he’s obligated to stay in the car because the po-po said to stay in the car. For me it really raises the bar as to what I would accept as a reasonable fear of death or grievous harm. I’m not saying he’s clearly guilty*. I’m saying he clearly needs to be tried to see if he is guilty.
* He’s clearly stupid or cruel or worse.
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