One of them is dead, and the other isn't exactly an unbiased source of information.
This has been a difficult case for me, because I believe, in my heart, that George Zimmerman should be sent to prison. If I were on the jury, however, I would probably feel compelled to acquit. This is because the law was stacked in Zimmerman's favor from the very get go. Once the judge had accepted, based on a preponderance of the evidence, that Zimmerman was acting in self-defense, the prosecutors were essentially forced to prove a negative: that the defendant did not act out of self-defense. Once again, the lack of witnesses and video footage made this an insurmountable challenge. Thus, the acquittal.
To my mind, it seems wrong that a defendant can openly admit to killing someone, but shift the responsibility of proving that it wasn't a justifiable homicide to the prosecution by claiming self-defense. However, this is apparently the way it works in 48 out of 50 states, so Florida is hardly alone.
My other problem with the self-defense claim is that there appears to be no agreed upon spectrum for what constitutes a reasonable belief that lethal force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. Trayvon Martin stood at a less-than-menacing 5'11", 158 lbs, per the medical examiner's report. George Zimmerman was 5'7", 185 lbs. I do not believe that a scrawny 17-year-old intended, or was even fully capable of beating Zimmerman to death. Had the two been professional wrestlers, the weight difference would have put them in entirely different weight classes. In addition to this, Zimmerman was training in mixed martial arts for at least a year before the night of the shooting (though his trainer testified that his abilities were less than exemplary). I simply don't buy that an older, heavier man trained in MMA truly needed a gun to defend himself from Trayvon Martin. Shooting and killing the teenager was not an act of necessity; it was an act of convenience.
Zimmerman's injuries indicate this as well. During the trial, a medical examiner testified that they were "insignificant" and "minor." From the article:
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"Rao said she was given photographs of Zimmerman's injuries, along with other evidence including Martin's autopsy photographs and Zimmerman's videotaped account of the fatal struggle.
...
"The individual who examined him and treated Mr. Zimmerman told him sutures were not required," Rao said. "She put a BandAid on each of them, and that was the extent of the treatment."
Reviewing a video of Zimmerman walking from a police car into the police station the night of the altercation, she said Zimmerman "was not incapacitated in any way. He was very alert and walking in pace with the officers."
Answering questions from prosecutors, Rao said she believed the injuries were too minor to be consistent with repeated slamming on a sidewalk.
"If someone's head is repeatedly slammed against concrete with great force I would expect lacerations, a lot of injuries that would bleed profusely that would necessitate suturing, so I don't see that in this picture," Rao said."
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These are the specifics of the case that I find troubling. However, when discussing the Zimmerman trial, it seems obligatory to discuss the broader issues: particularly, those pertaining to race.
To be sure, I can't prove that Zimmerman racially profiled Martin the night of the shooting. Indeed, an FBI report concluded there was no evidence that racial bias was a motivating factor in the shooting. That's the point, though; you can never conclusively prove these things. To do so would necessitate viewing George Zimmerman's thoughts when he decided that the young Trayvon Martin was "acting suspicious."
One of the more touching written pieces on this phenomenon, in which blacks tolerate subtle acts of racism on a frequent basis, was written by drummer and bandleader Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson. In it, he writes:
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"I'm in scenarios all the time in which primitive, exotic-looking me — six-foot-two, 300 pounds, uncivilized Afro, for starters — finds himself in places where people who look like me aren't normally found. I mean, what can I do? I have to be somewhere on Earth, correct? In the beginning — let's say 2002, when the gates of "Hey, Ahmir, would you like to come to [swanky elitist place]?" opened — I'd say "no," mostly because it's been hammered in my DNA to not "rock the boat," which means not making "certain people" feel uncomfortable.
I mean, that is a crazy way to live. Seriously, imagine a life in which you think of other people's safety and comfort first, before your own. You're programmed and taught that from the gate. It's like the opposite of entitlement."
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Polling indicates that there's a sharp racial divide over the trial's outcome. A recent Washington Post poll indicated that 86% of African Americans disagreed with the verdict, while 51% of whites approved (only 31% disapproved).
Again, I can't say I disagree with the jury's decision, based on my understanding of the law. But I feel compelled, as a white man, to take white people to task on a number of items. Two, specifically:
1) Putting the dead, black 17-year-old "on trial," so to speak, by emphasizing his character flaws, while being unaware or completing ignoring George Zimmerman's checkered history.
2) Pretending that the "mainstream media" is biased by giving this case an enormous amount of attention, while supposedly ignoring instances of black on white violence.
We know a number of things about Trayvon Martin. We know that he has been suspended from school in the past, for things such as tardiness and graffiti. On the night he was shot, Martin was on his third suspension, after his high school uncovered his marijuana pipe. On one occasion, an officer discovered woman's jewelry in his backpack. The items were impounded, but it was never proven that Martin actually stole the jewelry. An excessive amount of attention was given to other aspects of Martin's teenage life, such as text messages alluding to getting into fights, and a picture he had taken of himself sporting a grill.
Objectively speaking, though, none of these are a big deal. There's nothing unusual about a teenager who enjoys smoking pot (more than half of young Americans have tried weed at least once). At worst, he was a petty thief (once again, this was never proven; if the presumption of innocence applies to Zimmerman, then it's only fair to apply it to Martin). What a wonderful world we would live in if the very worst it had to offer were "thugs" such as Trayvon Martin. For all his faults, none of them were egregious enough to warrant a death sentence. He was somebody's son. He had tattoos sporting the names of his great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother - 3 generations.
The Skittles he was carrying on the night he was killed were actually a gift for Tracy Martin's (his father) girlfriend's son.
People are complicated.
And yet, in many of the comment sections of news articles I've read about the trial over the past year, Martin was referred to as a "thug," and a "gangbanger" for these transgressions (he wasn't affiliated with any known gang). It's odd. I smoked pot as a teenager, and I've never been called a "thug" or a "gangbanger." I've come to the inescapable conclusion that these terms are dog-whistles for the n-word. Of course, it's no longer socially acceptable to use this word, so whites simply came up with more creative ways of expressing it. It's racism with a wink and a nod.
George Zimmerman, meanwhile, has a dark history of his own. In 2005, he was arrested and charged for assaulting a police officer at a club. The charges were dropped after he reached a deal to take anger management classes. In addition to this he had a restraining order taken out against him by his ex-fiancee, Veronica Zuazo, for alleged domestic violence. Zimmerman also secured a restraining order against her. According to Zuazo, Zimmerman once attacked her while the two were driving to a counseling session, by repeatedly smacking her in the face. In another instance, he reportedly threw her on the bed and hit her.
Finally, George Zimmerman's cousin has accused him of sexually molesting her, beginning when she was 6. Per her statement in another article:
"We'd all lay in front of the TV and we had pillows and blankets and he would reach under the blankets and try to do things and I would try to push him off but he was bigger and stronger and older. It was in front of everybody and I don't know how I didn't say anything, I just didn't know any better."
In the same article, she alleges:
"I was afraid that he may have done something because the kid was black. Because growing up they've always made, him and his family have always made statements that they don't like black people if they don't act like white people. They like black people if they act white and other than that, they talk a lot of bad things about black people."
In fairness, neither individual's past sins are exceptionally relevant to what occurred the night of the shooting. Nevertheless, it doesn't make much sense to pretend that Martin's previous actions somehow justified his death - especially since Zimmerman's past is objectively worse by every conceivable metric.
As to the second item, I couldn't help but notice some of my white Facebook friends posting various memes of instances in which white people were brutally murdered by blacks, with seemingly much less media fanfare. The idea here is to express frustration over all the attention being given to a case in which a black teenager was killed when it obviously cuts both ways. Such posts usually invoke the specter of black civil rights leaders Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and wondering, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, why they aren't as concerned with instances of black on white or black on black violence.
For one, I'm not aware of any progressives, black or otherwise, who really give a shit about Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. They're typically nothing more than straw men for conservatives to easily knock over while conveniently ignoring the more prevalent problem of systematic racism against blacks.
Also, it seems the same people have forgotten why this case became a national issue in the first place: there very nearly wasn't even a trial. George Zimmerman wasn't charged until a special prosecutor was appointed by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, more than a month later. The Sanford Police Department initially decided not to charge Zimmerman because of Florida's now infamous "Stand Your Ground" law. The lead homicide investigator in the case, Chris Serino, initially wanted at least a manslaughter charge. He was rebutted by the state attorney's office, however.
I'm not aware of any case in which a black person killed a white person and the black person wasn't immediately arrested, charged, and put on trial. That's the difference. That's why the George Zimmerman case garnered national attention, and why various instances of blacks killing whites have not. In those cases, as awful as they may have been, protocol was followed. There's no justification to not have a trial when a man openly admits to killing a 17-year-old. It's blatantly obvious that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is guilty of killing people at the Boston Marathon. To this date, I'm not aware of any prominent media figures suggesting that we just skip the trial and toss him in prison. We don't skip trials in America. At least, we shouldn't. Zimmerman had his day in court, and was found "not guilty." Now we have some measure of closure; that's the value in having a trial.
Race matters. White people like to roll their eyes and pretend that it doesn't, but it does. "White privilege" is invisible to those who have it.
The problem is, it takes a a great deal of self-actualization and awareness to see that we are surrounded by racism, sexism, and xenophobia. We are all inescapable participates in it. This is why proclamations of "not seeing race," and "why do we have to identify as African-Americans or Hispanic Americans? Why can't we simply be Americans?" are fucking stupid. In reality, all of our interactions are influenced by race to some degree, even if we aren't actively aware of it.
In closing, watch this awesome video of noted white-guy-who-gets-it, Tim Wise.
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