Late yesterday evening, after I wrongly thought that the jury in the trial of George Zimmerman would adjourn for the day, they completed their deliberations and returned a verdict of "not guilty" of the charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of Trayvon Martin. They had earlier asked for some clarification about the manslaughter charge, causing some speculation that this would become their verdict, but this would not turn out to be the case.
From what facts that I could learn, the verdict is not surprising. Zimmerman appeared all along to have had a credible case of self-defense.
He had injuries consistent with his story of Martin pummeling his face with his fists and slamming his head into the sidewalk. Obviously, Zimmerman is the only person alive who knows for sure what happened that day. Anyone who wants to disagree with the verdict has every right under the 1st Amendment to do so. But in my opinion, it is very likely that the jury got it right.
Read more at
USA Today,
Fox News,
NBC News,
Yahoo News,
ABC News and the
Washington Post.
My opinion continues below the fold.
No matter what anyone thinks of the trial and the verdict, the death of Trayvon Martin is a tragedy. His family deserves our sympathy. The acquittal of George Zimmerman is not a cause for celebration, but for sobriety. When the news of this killing went national, the president himself talked about a need for "soul-searching" and remarked that if he had a son, "
he'd look like Trayvon." In a sense, the president is right about soul-searching. I don't know the numbers offhand, but every day in America, teenagers and young men who look like Trayvon Martin or like Barack Obama's hypothetical son are murdered or killed in justifiable self-defense homicides - but not by white racists, lynch mobs, overzealous cops, Hispanics or even "white Hispanics". In over 90% of these incidents, they are killed by other teenagers or young men who look like Trayvon Martin or Obama's hypothetical son. Yet, what makes national news are the relative minority of incidents in which the killer is not black. We also largely ignore the violent crime by blacks against non-blacks, which is far more prevalent that the reverse, although still less frequent than black-on-black crime. Here, indeed, is some cause for soul-searching, for the reasons we pay attention to the relatively infrequent demographic categories of crime and not those which are more frequent, thus painting a false picture. Perhaps we could also do some soul-searching about why our very definitions of race are becoming politicized, such as why white liberal politician Elizabeth Warren can call herself "Native American" even though she has no such ancestry, and why a new classification was created so that a Hispanic man of Peruvian descent could be presented as the latest symbol of white racism against blacks.
In one sense, I am happy about this verdict. A jury, to the extent that I can determine, decided this case on the facts and not race-inspired emotions. There is still in this country a right to self-defense, without regard to the race and color of the attacker and defender. And best of all, Barack Obama,
Eric Holder, Al Sharpton (who still clings to his Tawana Brawley hoax), the New Black Panthers (whom I regard as the KKK in reverse) and others who in various ways made this case into a
cause celebré did not get get to influence the outcome. A neighborhood watch volunteer who tried to protect his neighbors against burglary and had to shoot someone in self-defense, who was wrongly portrayed as a racist, will now hopefully get a chance to get on with his life. I fear, however, that because of some people I've just mentioned,
he might not get that chance. Like it or not, this story is probably not over yet.
