First of all, I have to admit up front that I had not been following the Zimmerman trial at all until the Not Guilty verdict flooded my Twitter feed and Facebook page. The case was just too common, too parochial and had attracted the type of Americans who normally don’t read the more cerebral musings found on this blog (if you get my drift).
I knew it was racially-charged, and that it was taking place in the South, but other than that I had really been in the dark about the relevant details. Nevertheless, you’re gonna get my two cents.
Here are the details that I have found relevant. Some of them may not, at first glance, seem relevant because they don’t even pertain to the Zimmerman-Martin case at all, but stay with me:
- George Zimmerman identifies as a Hispanic, not a white person, and is a registered, tried-and-true member of the Democratic Party. I bring this up first and foremost because race in this country has become an odd thing, to say the least. Perhaps it always has been. See Dr Delacroix’s ethnographic musings on race in America here for more on race in the US.
- In Jacksonville (also in Florida), a black woman was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a judge (not a jury) for firing warning shots at her estranged (and black) husband. It is unclear if the woman had a prior criminal record.* She was seeking a restraining order against the man and her defense team used the same “Stand Your Ground” laws used by Zimmerman’s team.** The trial was taking place at the same time as the Zimmerman one.
- In Miller Place, an affluent, predominantly white hamlet of Long Island in New York City, a black man was convicted by a jury of killing an unarmed white teenager who showed up at the black man’s house in the early hours of the morning and was threatening to assault the man’s son. The white teenager, now dead, had been friends with the black man’s teenage son.
All three of the verdicts were handed down over the weekend. I take away a couple of things about American society from these three cases. Firstly, the only white person involved in any of these cases directly was an unarmed teenager who got shot in the face. Secondly, America still has a long way to go before racism becomes more irrelevant than relevant. Jim Crow ended in the late 1960s, but its legacy of state-sponsored racism lives on in a number of ways that I don’t want to list here (feel free to do so in the ‘comments’ section).
Thirdly, and perhaps more importantly, I think that, were the woman from Jacksonville to have received a trial by jury (and it is still unclear to me why she did not get this constitutional right), she would have been found Not Guilty. Given this speculation, and given the large amount of ignorance about each of these cases on my part, I still have to conclude that the juries made the right decision.
Tocqueville once wrote about the unique trial by jury system found in the United States and argued that it was the jury itself which guaranteed liberty and freedom in the United States. Were this unique system ever to be removed from the legal system, Tocqueville mused, it would signify the beginning of the end of the American experiment in self-government. The right to be judged by one’s peers, instead of by a member of the court, is a right too few Americans appreciate enough. The trial by jury is not perfect, not by a long shot, but it is also no accident that liberty, tranquility and prosperity reign prominently in the few societies where it has been implemented.
*[Update: the woman had no prior criminal record]
**[Update: the Zimmerman team did not use the “Stand Your Ground” law of Florida]
Notes On Liberty 
Well said sir. Thank you for pointing this out.
Thank you.
Amen!
😉
“The trial by jury is not perfect, not by a long shot, but it is also no accident that liberty, tranquility and prosperity reign prominently in the few societies where it has been implemented.”
Well stated. This case, I feel, will turn out to be fraught with prosecutorial misconduct and political interference that in any other system would have caused Mr. Zimmerman to lose his liberty. The jury system nullified the vile acts of government officials and safeguarded the presumption of innocence by setting Mr. Zimmerman free.
Thanks –Rick.
[…] The Zimmerman Verdict, Racism and Trial by Jury […]
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As great as the jury system is within the system. Upon listening to Juror B37 tonight on Anderson Cooper. I believe that the jury was bias prior to the case. The jury wasn’t balanced and chose to ignore crucial information and facts that were given….but as the system remains….we have to respect the juries decision and try to repeal the “Stand your Ground” law in all 16 states which it is in. So that people don’t use it as an excuse to go on a killing spree or become a vigilante.
Big Irv,
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I am more than willing to consider your argument, which is obviously well thought out, but I do need to see some sort of substantive evidence to back up your claims. Can you direct me to anything (no youtube videos, please!)?
You’re welcome. As for the interview between Juror B37 and Anderson Cooper I am not sure when or if they will re-air it on CNN. So I am not sure where you can watch it outside of YouTube. As for the trial, I watched the majority of the trial online via a live stream. You can try to Google State of Florida vs George Zimmerman court documents for the court documents. If I state facts from the case…without you watching or reading the case, it will just sound like hearsay.
As for the Stand Your Ground law in Florida, it reads as follows:
” 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. “
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String&URL=0700-0799/0776/Sections/0776.013.html
As a result of the broad spectrum/span due to the poor wording and open ended interpretation of the law. It opens a loop hole for individuals to shot and kill whoever they like as long as their aren’t any witnesses. The wording “reasonably believe” implies that there doesn’t have to be a “provable or visible threat,” it just requires that you have to “believe” that there is a threat. The law also removes the requirement for you to try to avoid a confrontation. It is overall, a poorly written law.
Sorry for writing what seems like an essay. 🙂
Interesting Big Irv. Thanks for your reply.
Your argument, as you have thus far presented it, contains absolutely zero evidence. With no evidence to back up your argument, I would hope that you will either a) attempt to find some and present it to me (this is an open forum that strives to foster debate) or b) rethink your previous assertions.
Incidentally, the “stand your ground” law in Florida had absolutely nothing to do with the Zimmerman case. So far you have forced me to engage with your imagination rather than a substantive argument.
While this may sound like a curt response, can you blame me at this point?
In response to Big Irv @ Inform and Engage
Here are key issues that bother me about the way the prosecution presented the case:
1. They say that Zimmerman never should have left his vehicle and that was the precipitating factor that triggered Trayvon’s reaction.
2. No one denies that Zimmerman, as a watchman, had a right – if not a duty to keep tabs on a suspicious person in his neighborhood; but, in this case, because the person acting suspiciously was black, it somehow became racial profiling.
What they don’t say is that Trayvon had a working cell phone that he was using to describe the “crazy ass cracka” to his girlfriend:
1. He could have hung up with her and dialed 911 to report being followed and request assistance as a person unfamiliar with the area. He didn’t do that.
2. He could have stayed on the telephone with his friend and asked her to call 911 with the same information. He didn’t do that either.
3. As he passed from house to house, he could, at any point along the way, have walked up, rung a doorbell and asked for assistance or shelter from a pursuing stranger. He didn’t do that either.
4. He lost George and had 4 minutes that he could have kept heading toward home, but he chose, instead, to circle back and attack George turning himself from victim to perpetrator of an assault.
By assaulting George, Trayvon put George in a position of either submitting to the beating he was receiving or defending himself from serious injury.
With these facts in hand, how can you say that George created the condition of violence and that he had any other choice than to defend himself.
How can anyone argue that Trayvon did not have options other than to attack George when it was clear that with so many options available, Trayvon was anything but a “cornered animal” who had no other way out?
What made this case was NBC’s doctoring their tapes to falsely demonstrate a racial motive to push their anti-second amendment agenda. This inflamed racial reaction within the community and throughout the nation thanks to the actions of race baiters such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the NAACP and even the President of the United States speaking prematurely as he did to precipitate the beer summit.
His AG jumped on the bandwagon even though it was clear from the evidence that this was a state issue and not one that required or demanded federal intervention. Even the FBI eliminated race as a factor, but the politics of the day and of the Obama Administration would not allow the rule of law to decide the case.
The Governor of Florida recklessly assigned a corrupt, political District Attorney from outside the district in which the shooting occurred and removed the standing DA in that area from the case while encouraging the Chief of Police to resign and step aside in favor of a “temporary” Chief.
This case demonstrates the insult, danger and damage politicians and corrupt government officials operating under less than honorable motives can do to liberty, to justice and to the concept of presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Zimmerman was proven innocent by the jury in spite of all the shenanigans and still, the AG is bending to the whims of the NAACP and others to pursue Zimmerman and weaken or remove 2nd amendment rights.
If you can demonstrate how, with these facts present, that Trayvon Martin was denied fairness and a just verdict under the law, I’d love to hear and share your noble case.
My expectation is that you are willfully denying reality in preference to assuaging the undeserved guilt of an emotional set of circumstances as opposed to the presiding facts.