As I sit down to the computer to write this morning, I’m turning over a dozen or so topics in my head. There’s a lot going on the world and in my family, and I always have too many opinions about things. But I don’t know how to NOT talk about the Zimmerman trial.
In many ways, it’s the worst possible topic for me. After all, I am a white, suburban woman. My life experiences are completely different from the major characters in this drama. I can’t tie events to personal stories in my life. I’ve never been harassed by cops. I’ve never been looked at with suspicion. At my worst moments, as a SAHM with a disabled child, I sometimes feel invisible, but that’s a different kind of horrible. I’ve also never walked around with a gun or felt the need to have a gun or worried about neighborhood break-ins. I probably should be better about remembering to lock my door, when I go to the store.
So, I should not write a post about the Zimmerman trial. But to ignore it, also seems wrong.
My twitterfeed and Facebook pages were billboards of grief yesterday. People were stunned by the not guilty verdict. I’m not sure why people were so surprised. Just my passing attention to the trial in the past few months made it obvious where things were going. Zimmerman’s defense did a very good job of establishing a reasonable doubt, the prosecution oversold the case in the beginning, and Florida laws need some serious attention. The outcome in the case was obvious a few weeks ago. Still, their grief is real and appropriate. A tragedy happened. A tragedy with no closure.
Some interesting commentary: Jelani Cobb in the New Yorker talks about how this case ultimately found Trayvon guilty and the historic neglect of these crimes. Talk Left slams the media narrative. Zimmerman’s backstory in Reuters. TNC thinks that the jury got it right, but that there are bigger problems that must be addressed. Scott Lemieux wants the discussion to turn to gun control.
I agree with TNC. There are bigger problems that must be addressed. Larger issues that set events in motion. It’s a tragedy worthy of the Greeks. A guy who thinks he’s doing the “right” thing makes error after error that ends up with a boy dead on the sidewalk. We need to talk about problems and remedies, not because Trayvon or Zimmerman could be me or my kid. We need to talk about it, because it’s the right thing to do.
Apt. 11d 
Seems more Shakespearean (Polonious behind the curtain) than Greek as far as tragedy goes. The Greeks at least had both sides armed.
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Yes, it’s horrible, and it’s hard to know what to do. It seems to me that Florida’s laws are to blame, but I doubt Florida’s voters will overturn or change them. Can they be overturned at a federal level? Are they unconstitutional? I doubt it, but I don’t know.
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I don’t think Florida’s self-defense laws are very different from any other state laws, except for Stand Your Ground and that wasn’t used by the defense. I think Florida’s juries are more likely to see “black guy” and think “lethal threat” than you might see in a sane state.
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Sorry Anon, I was wrong. Zimmerman’s lawyers didn’t raise stand your ground, but it was in the jury instructions and seems to have played a role.
See here.
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The Jelani Cobb article is excellent.
I too knew this was going to happen. And I knew that it would cause much pain. I wish those who don’t understand why the verdict causes such pain would try to understand. Not lecture, berate, or otherwise tell people who are hurt by it why they shouldn’t be hurt by it; but just try to see from a different perspective. We could all be a lot more empathetic.
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I wonder if Zimmerman’s lawyers didn’t tell him to eat until he was round enough to look incapable of fighting?
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He had been heavy earlier in life–I expect that knowing that he’ll never be able to be a cop now probably makes overeating harder to control. Also, there’s the whole somebody’s-gonna-kill-me thing that would be hard on the stress-eater.
I personally think he looked much less imposing at the time of the shooting than in court. It was more obvious that Zimmerman is a little guy (relatively speaking).
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I am seeing this in the context of what happens in trials that are widely observed and in which the accused is vigorously defended — take Casey Alexander, OJ Simpson, the Kennedy who was accused of rape — interacts with our “reasonable doubt” standard.
I’ve always thought I would have a tough time serving on a jury because I would almost always see reasonable doubt (absent evidence in which I did not have to assess the truthfulness of those who testified). And, in all the cases with a murder, the victim doesn’t get to testify (Simpson’s wife, Trayvon Martin, Alexander’s baby).
But, I’ll note, I can’t cast anyone in my family as Zimmerman, because nobody in my family walks around armed. I can cast them as Martin, though.
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This passage from bell hooks’ All About Love was being tweeted last night and is quite relevant:
“White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action.”
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You know what’s really unmanly. Being armed, fighting with a unarmed teenager who is smaller than you, and doing it badly enough that you can convince a jury you’re in reasonable fear of dying.
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But Zimmerman wasn’t bigger than him. Z is about 5’7″, Martin was 6’4″.
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Oh, don’t forget that Corey is a nasty piece of work. She was attempting to try Cristian Fernandez as an adult and send him to prison for life for the murder of his 2-year-old younger brother when Cristian was 12 years old (Cristian had been left in charge of three younger siblings for an unknown period of time as apparently often happened in that household). Cristian was kept in the county jail for at least some time, before being moved to juvenile, which is wildly inappropriate for a 12-year-old. (The last I heard, Cristian was convicted of manslaughter and will be in prison until 19, which is a much more reasonable sentence.)
http://justice4juveniles.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/the-story-of-cristian-fernandez/
“Angela Corey ignored the psychologist’s recommendations and sought a grand jury indictment in adult court anyway. The indictment read that David’s death resulted from a “premeditated design”. The wording seemed out of place considering that the State Attorney had no evidence that Cristian had intended to kill his brother. In fact, had the act been intentional he would likely not have notified his mother about what happened, subsequently relying on her to seek treatment for the toddler.”
Cristian Fernandez’s mother waited 8 hours to seek medical care for David (the toddler). She was also convicted of manslaughter.
.
http://staugustine.com/news/florida-news/2013-02-08/cristian-fernandez-13-pleads-guilty#.UeQuRzs3tGg
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We should lower the plea-bargain rate, which is now over 90%. More cases should go to trial. Perhaps then educated people wouldn’t be shocked when the prosecution fails to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Those accused of a crime have a right to a trial by jury. Not a trial in the press.
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“We need to talk about problems and remedies . . . .”
Most people (including myself) aren’t interested in discussion unless it is civil, and I have already seen that civil discussion of this topic is impossible on this site. So talk amongst yourselves.
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“Perhaps you have been lucky enough to not receive the above “portrait” of Trayvon Martin and its accompanying text. The portrait is actually of a 32-year old man. Perhaps you were lucky enough to not see the Trayvon Martin imagery used for target practice (by law enforcement, no less.) Perhaps you did not see the iPhone games. Or maybe you missed the theory presently being floated by Zimmerman’s family that Martin was a gun-runner and drug-dealer in training, that texts and tweets he sent mark him as a criminal in waiting. Or the theory floated that the mere donning of a hoodie marks you a thug, leaving one wondering why this guy is a criminal and this one is not.
“We have spent much of this year outlining the ways in which American policy has placed black people outside of the law. We are now being told that after having pursued such policies for 200 years, after codifying violence in slavery, after a people conceived in mass rape, after permitting the disenfranchisement of black people through violence, after Draft riots, after white-lines, white leagues, and red shirts, after terrorism, after standing aside for the better reduction of Rosewood and the improvement of Tulsa, after the coup d’etat in Wilmington, after Airport Homes and Cicero, after Ossian Sweet, after Arthur Lee McDuffie, after Anthony Baez, Amadou Diallo and Eleanor Bumpers, after Kathryn Johnston and the Danziger Bridge, that there are no ill effects, that we are pure, that we are just, that we are clean. Our sense of self is incredible. We believe ourselves to have inherited all of Jefferson’s love of freedom, but none of his affection for white supremacy.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/trayvon-martin-and-the-irony-of-american-justice/277782/
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I think Zimmerman’s brother’s comments illustrate that we’re dealing with a contemptable family.
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