So, the Treyvon Martin case is over. George Zimmerman, to
the outrage of many, was found not guilty on all counts.
Now, tensions are obviously quite high, and already a lot
of people are crying "injustice" and "racism!" and calling
for the blood of George Zimmerman to run through the streets.
But let's all take a step back here. There are lots of
people and interests who we can't expect to be reasonable, but we can be.
As established previously,
this case was very much unlike what we were sold. I too was initially told of a
white man shooting an unarmed kid in Florida, and the good ole boy cops didn't
arrest him because they probably Treyvon Martin would of been killed in a gang
shooting in a few years anyway. And this was from watching Fox News of all
places! However, what we ended up with was a Hispanic man (because apparently
his being "white" mattered) with conspicuous injuries and a story of
self-defense that was at least plausible. An aside, it turns out that he also
tutored and mentored black kids in his neighborhood and spent his life doing
lots of other not racist things, so, that also takes some of the edge off of
the narrative of racist white guy who didn't want the wrong-colored people
living in his neighborhood ("George Zimmerman's"; Yawson).
Back to the case, while I can't say for certain that
Zimmerman was telling the truth and that he wasn't actually guilty of murder,
it was by no means a clear cut case against him. After all, despite the red
herring about how George Zimmerman followed him and therefore is guilty no
matter what, nothing that was beyond dispute actually disproved or invalidated
his claims of self-defense. Yes, the 911 operator told him they didn't need him
to keep tailing Treyvon Martin, but that doesn't make it illegal to do so, nor
does it make him the aggressor if Martin turned and physically attacked him.
Furthermore, according to Zimmerman, he had given up following Martin, and was
heading back to his car when Martin confronted him. According to Zimmerman,
Treyvon Martin attacked him, knocked him down, was punching him and hitting his
head against the ground, all the while telling Zimmerman that he intended to
kill him, and then reached down where Zimmerman's gun was. If Zimmerman was
telling the truth, then although Treyvon Martin was only "armed with
Skittles and iced tea" (the cliched red herring that everyone on the
entire planet who has seen a TV in the last year has heard), that doesn't
negate self-defense. It's not like Treyvon Martin was just annoyingly bopping
him in the head with the bag of Skittles! If Zimmerman was telling the truth,
then Zimmerman to using deadly force was undeniably justifiable homicide. When
it came down to it, the only thing that mattered was whether or not the jury
would believe him. Apparently, they did.
It doesn't matter if Treyvon Martin wasn't actually
reaching for the gun. It doesn't matter if when he told Zimmerman "you're
gonna die" he was just being a little punk like so many other 17 year-olds
and didn't mean it. I wouldn't be surprised if, even assuming Zimmerman's story
is true, Martin was just being a typical aggressive, testosterone-filled
teenager and was never going to actually kill him. But that doesn't matter in a
self-defense case; what matters is perception. Just as someone is justified
when they shoot someone who brandishes an unloaded gun (as long as they don't
know it's unloaded), what matters is not what is actually happening, but what
the person thinks is happening, and whether a reasonable person in that
situation would have fear of death or great bodily harm. You can't say that if George Zimmerman was telling the
truth about everything, then a reasonable person wouldn't fear for their life.
It doesn't matter that in the end, Zimmerman's injuries, though significant,
were not life-threatening or even all that severe. It only matters what is
going through the person's mind the moment they shoot, and whether a reasonable
person would likewise be in mortal fear.
What matters, then, is not that a "white" man
(half-Peruvian native Spanish speaker) killed a black child (6'3" tall
17-year-old), nor is it the fact that George Zimmerman made the total legal
decision to get out of his car; what mattered was whether or not the jury
believed Zimmerman enough to where they had reasonable doubt that he did what
the prosecution said he did. If they believed him, or even believed that there
was a reasonable chance he was telling the truth, then they had to acquit.
That's how it works in America (and more specifically, Florida).
Was there reasonable doubt? Well, keep in mind that this
was the trial where prosecution, among other things, introduced a witness that
said that Martin was on top of Zimmerman while punching him (as Zimmerman
claimed), put on the stand a detective who said that he believed Zimmerman's
story (even though a witness totally isn't supposed to do that), and aired
Zimmerman's interview with Sean Hannity from a year before, thereby giving the
defense the best of both worlds by letting the jury hear Zimmerman's defense of
himself without him having to be cross-examined by the prosecution. Although
the defense case was nothing spectacular, the prosecution was terrible. Seeing
as how the cops on the scene believed Zimmerman, and the DA didn't think it was
worth pressing charges, it shouldn't surprise us that, when you drown out the
cries of racism and the assumptions that Zimmerman profiled Martin because
Zimmerman was "white" and Martin was black (an assumption that is
honestly a bit racist in itself), there just wasn't a good case against him.
It's one thing to thing the jury was wrong. I can
understand that. After all, Zimmerman's injuries weren't that bad, and...well,
okay, I didn't say there were a lot of reasons to hold that view.... But that's
one thing. It wasn't a perfect defense case, either. Not that it has to be, in
a civilized country like America, but still. Juries don't always get it right.
It's a whole different matter to think that this was some
horrible travesty that pushed race relations back 50 years. Truth be told, I
think that this case has pushed race relations back, but that would have
happened with any verdict. The media turned this into nationwide white vs.
black instead of a case of a killing and a potentially questionable claim of
self-defense. Zimmerman was used as a pawn, meant to represent racism and white
privelage, and Martin similarly was raised up, being the face of every
oppressed minority. That paradigm worked fine until people started actually
looking into the facts and realized, a the very least, there were reasons to
think that Treyvon might not have been hunted like a dog for being black and
murdered for wearing a hoody and being in the wrong neighborhood. It's not even
that racism and injustice aren't real in America; that's another red herring.
To say that Geroge Zimmerman wasn't guilty, or just might not have been,
becomes tantamount to saying that racism doesn't exist, which is absurd.
Because they were turned into representatives of such bigger things, it was no
longer about whether in this particular case, Zimmerman was guilty of murder or
not.
But that's not how the justice system works. The question
is, and should be, whether or not the one individual guilty of the one crime he
is accused of, and not the crimes of his forefather's (from one side of his
family). In this case, there was reasonable doubt. When it came down to it, we
had one version of events that amounted to murder (or at least manslaughter),
and one version that amounted to justifiable homicide, with little of it having
been seen by anyone except Zimmerman and Martin themselves. What little
evidence there was generally favored Zimmerman (e.g. the people who say a few
snippets of the encounter), or could have gone either way (e.g. Zimmerman's
injuries). Zimmerman gave an explanation that amounted to justifiable homicide,
and in the end, the jury believed him enough to give him the benefit of the
doubt. Ultimately, the media picked the wrong guy to try and make an example
of. This wasn't a case of college students going into the deep south to help
blacks vote, getting murdered, and then the murderers getting off despite
telling everyone in town what they did. This was a case with a lot of question
marks, where we'll probably never know what really happened on this side of
eternity, where a racially-mixed jury decided that they believed one version of
events over another. If they are wrong, then that is terrible, as is every case
where the jury gets in wrong, but it isn't a blight on our nation that some
would lead us to believe.
Works Cited
"George Zimmerman's African-American Friend Defends
Him On Hannity." Live
Leak. N.p., n.d., Web. 13 Jul
2013.<http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8d8_1332814891&comments=1>.
Yawson, Amy. "I Am Goerge Zimmerman." Huffington Post. Huffington
Post. 13 Jul 2013. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ama-yawson/george-zimmerman-trayvon-martin_b_1399944.html>.
No comments:
Post a Comment