George Zimmerman has been taken into “investigative custody” in Florida after threatening his estranged wife and her father with a gun.
A jury couldn’t do it, but ole George will get himself put away for something, trust me. He is just one angry dude.
One of the Zimmerman jurors now says that he “got away with murder.” Um, wasn’t that kind of your job, to keep that from happening?
From “The Truth About Trayvon,” Ekow N. Yankah*, NYT:
“The Trayvon Martin verdict is frustrating, fracturing, angering and predictable. More than anything, for many of us, it is exhausting. Exhausting because nothing could bring back our lost child, exhausting because the verdict, which should have felt shocking, arrived with the inevitability that black Americans know too well when criminal law announces that they are worth less than other Americans.
“The anger felt by so many African-Americans speaks to the simplest of truths: that race and law cannot be cleanly separated. … We are tired of pretending that ‘reasonable doubt’ is not, in every sense of the word, colored.
“I do not have to believe that Mr. Zimmerman is a hate-filled racist to recognize that he would probably not even have noticed Mr. Martin if he had been a casually dressed white teenager.
“Imagine that a militant black man, with a history of race-based suspicion and a loaded gun, followed an unarmed white teenager around his neighborhood. The young man is scared, and runs through the streets trying to get away. Unable to elude his black stalker and, perhaps, feeling cornered, he finally holds his ground — only to be shot at point-blank range after a confrontation.
“A young, white Trayvon Martin would unquestionably be said to have behaved reasonably, while it is unimaginable that a militant black George Zimmerman would not be viewed as the legal aggressor, and thus guilty of at least manslaughter.”
* Yankah is a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University
From “What If Zimmerman Had Been Indigent,” Matthew Yglesias, Slate:
“What if George Zimmerman had been poor? What if his legal case hadn’t attracted national attention and raised over $300,000?
“What if Zimmerman, like most criminal defendants in the United States, was relying on a public defender with little emotional or financial investment in winning the case and no resources with which to pursue a robust defense even if he’s been inclined to do so. Wouldn’t that defender have told Zimmerman that the smart way to avoid a second-degree murder sentence was to plead guilty to manslaughter and work out terms of incarceration that would be less onerous than what he’d end up with if he fought and lost?
“Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is a very difficult evidentiary burden to meet if the state is facing off against a competent, well-financed, and highly motivated defense team. But all these people sitting in America’s prisons…aren’t losing at trial. Instead 97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state ones end in plea bargains. People ask me sometimes why nobody’s gone to jail for crimes related to the financial crisis. It’s a complicated question, but obviously part of the answer is that you’re not going to resolve a criminal fraud case against a multi-millionaire by railroading him into a plea agreement.”
George Zimmerman was in trouble with the law before he murdered Trayvon Martin (resisting arrest/assaulting an officer, restraining order protecting former girlfriend), and I’m convinced he will get himself in trouble again because that’s just how and who he is. He’ll do another stupid and evil thing, and he won’t get away with it.
I take comfort in the fact that O J Simpson got away with murder, but is now in prison in Nevada — for a long, long time — for other crimes.
You can’t keep a bad guy down, you can just eventually lock him up.
“I’m not surprised the jury didn’t convict Zimmerman of 2nd Degree Murder. I am surprised it doesn’t qualify as manslaughter. The law in Florida has some peculiarities which heavily favored Zimmerman. But this was a situation he created through actions that I don’t think anyone can credibly argue weren’t reckless and showing extremely poor judgment. If a kid who was literally minding his own business ends up dead as the result, it’s hard for me to see it as a just outcome if there’s no criminal culpability whatsoever.”
Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo
This is how I feel too.
I didn’t think he’d be found guilty of second-degree murder, but I thought maybe on manslaughter.
“George Zimmerman decided Trayvon Martin’s fate on Feb. 26, 2012, and now a jury will decide his. A jury that, by the way, is part of a justice system that is not supposed to exclusively serve the best educated and most articulate of our citizenry. So now would be a good time to point out that Jeantel’s weight, her nails, her sex, her color – these things have precisely jack to do with her account of what happened the night Travyon Martin died. Justice is supposed to serve teenagers too, and people who party and who don’t hide it when they’re angry or flustered, and women who can’t read cursive. It’s supposed to serve people whose dialogue wasn’t written for them by David E. Kelley. Remember that. Remember that Rachel Jeantel is not the one on trial.”
Mary Elizabeth Williams, “The smearing of Rachel Jeantel,” Salon
George Zimmerman has been arrested (he turned himself in) and charged with second-degree murder.
The Special Prosecutor in Florida is going to charge George Zimmerman with…something. The charges aren’t know yet.
As for Zimmerman himself, he is no longer believed to be in Florida.
Embattled Farmers 