The George Zimmerman Verdict and the Conversation We OUGHT to be Having

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Since the jury acquitted Mr. Zimmerman, I have read it asserted far more vigorously than before that Trayvon Martin violently assaulted Mr. Zimmerman first and that resulted in a legitimate use of the firearm in self defense. It is certainly a POSSIBILITY that Mr. Zimmerman's telling of the story is absolutely true, and it is clearly not possible to fully refute it. It is also an important technicality to note that "not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" does not mean the jury fully believed Mr. Zimmerna -- it means that there were reasonable doubts about other scenarios and the prosecution failed to establish them to that standard of proof. In American criminal law, that standard is properly seen as incredibly high and for very good reasons -- the idea is SUPPOSED to mean that it is better that many guilty people go free than for one innocent person to be jailed. We fail that standard too often, but the high burden of proof within a court of law is absolutely the correct one to use.

However, outside of a court of law, it is actually permissible for citizens to draw their own conclusions and high profile cases that dominate media outlets practically invite our inexpert opinions. I will openly stipulate that this is my inexpert opinion.

I don't believe Mr. Zimmerman's account in its totality because, while it matches some of the scant evidence of which act followed which, his version is embellished with what I believe to be cartoonish fictions. Mr. Zimmerman's account, which was released in his reenactment, includes Mr. Martin telling Mr. Zimmerman "You are going to die tonight" and, upon being shot, "You got me". It is my perogative to find this ridiculous, and I do. It brings to mind classic cartoon characters clutching the heart, rolling around on the ground, bending up and down and finally coming to rest with a lilly in one hand and a little halo of birds in flight.



I also think it is important to remember that when the dispatcher asked Mr. Zimmerman if he was following Mr. Martin, it was at 7:11:59 according to the timeline. His call with the police lasted until 7:13:41 and the 911 call about a fight in the walkway area between units was at 7:16:11, and Mr. Zimmerman's account is that he was attacked by Mr. Martin in that area of the complex, not at his truck. Given the location of the fatal encounter and Mr. Zimmerman's truck:



It is fairly obvious that if Mr. Zimmerman WAS returning to his truck it was either minutes after his call ended with the police or he returned to the truck, changed his mind and went looking for Mr. Martin again. While it is true that Mr. Martin did not run all the way back to the unit he was staying in in the time he had, it is also true that Mr. Zimmerman did not simply return to his truck and wait there until he was attacked by Mr. Martin.

Given what I consider Mr. Zimmerman's embellished description of his fight with Mr. Martin and given his agitated statements about assholes always getting away, I find it very likely that he was not waiting for the police by his truck as he said he would in the call but that he was still out looking for Mr. Martin for several minutes after his call with the police dispatcher ended.

What happened at that point is, as most people with a reasonable perspective admit, disputable. Is it possible that Mr. Martin then approached Mr. Zimmerman, exchanged hostile words and violently attacked him as Mr. Zimmerman contends? Yes, it is. It is also plausible that Mr. Martin approached Mr. Zimmerman, exchanged hostile words and that Mr. Zimmerman tried to keep Mr. Martin from leaving and prompted the fight. It is also plausible that Mr. Martin was still talking on the phone (the call that went dead between 7:16:00 and 7:16:59) and Mr. Zimmerman, without provocation, tried to detain him and that prompted the fight.

I do not know which one happened, although I do not believe Mr. Zimmerman's account can be taken at face value. But that disbelief does not establish the other accounts to a reasonable doubt which was the prosecution's burden.

I will leave the section, however, with a reminder: to those who have spoken and written as if it were PROVEN that Mr. Martin violently assaulted Mr. Zimmerman FIRST, you are wrong about that level of certainty. What you are certain about is that the prosecution could not prove that Mr. Zimmerman initiated that fight within a reasonable doubt. Conversely, if the criminal proceedings were different and it was Mr. Martin who was being prosecuted for assaulting Mr. Zimmerman, you would have to accept that there was reasonable doubt in that eventuality as well. Namely, the evidence that permitted Mr. Zimmerman to be acquitted would also require that Mr. Martin be acquitted of assaulting him.





As I wrote above, I do not fully believe Mr. Zimmerman, but if his version of events is questionable to me, there is not another version that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The police investigation was not especially solid. The other real eye witness is dead, so there is no counter narrative by a credible witness to events. If multiple scenarios are actually plausible, the presupposition in our system is supposed to favor reasonable doubt. Fair enough.

Further, the jury instructions may have left the jury with no choice but to acquit. I do not like linking to The Huffington Post, but the author here is qualified and it is not one of their awful lead stories. If this analysis is correct, the judge declined to instruct the jury that they could consider if Mr. Zimmerman had provoked the final confrontation with Mr. Martin. Contrary to popular belief, Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law does not permit someone to provoke a fight and shoot his way out. There is an "initial aggressor" limitation to the law that disallows someone who provokes violence to claim self defense unless he flees or, in essence, cries uncle.

The prosecution wanted the jury to be instructed in that limitation to the Florida law, and the judge declined to do so. With that, the jury was instructed in the parameters of the Florida law that allowed Mr. Zimmerman to claim a legitimate self defense and were not instructed on the limitations of that claim. Without that instruction, the jury could not consider if Mr. Martin felt legitimately threatened by Mr. Zimmerman or if they did not believe that Mr. Martin was the first to make the confrontation physical. Absent those consideration, Mr. Zimmerman's being on the losing side of the fight legitimizes his claim of self defense regardless of any doubts about his account that someone might have. If I were on that jury, even with my belief that Mr. Zimmerman made up at least some of the conversation in his version, if I were faithful to the judge's instuctions, I would have to acquit.





As reaction to the verdict has unfolded, it is abundantly clear that the conversation has remained deeply centered on the disputed events of that night -- so much so that I am front loading this entire post with it to stake out my multiple takes on it in the hopes that a more important conversation take place. Lengthy, back and forth, yes-yes-yes vs. nope-nope-nope arguments over the disputed facts of that night distract from a vital question that is at the very heart of why Mr. Trayvon Martin is dead at the hands of Mr. Zimmerman. At the heart of it is why did Mr. Zimmerman suspect Mr. Martin in the first place?

It may be true that Mr. Zimmerman's neighborhood in Sanford, FL had been subject to a run of break ins by young black suspects. It may be possible to conclude that Mr. Zimmerman's phone call to the 911 dispatch was acceptable given that context and given that Mr. Martin was not known to him although I will get to that momentarily. It is clear to me that Mr. Zimmerman was far more than interested in the actions of someone unknown to him a neighborhood subject to burglaries. He commented to the dispatcher about "assholes" who "always get away". He got out of his vehicle and was still out of his vehicle when he claims Mr. Martin assaulted him tens of yards away and between the rows of units. Far more than being suspicious of Mr. Martin's presence in the neighborhood, Mr. Zimmerman was obviously quite intent that this particular "asshole" was not going to get away. This is not mere watchfulness; this is anxiousness. And if he had followed the actual guidelines of real neighborhood watch organizations, he would not have been on his own and he would not have left his vehicle. He would have called the police, told them what he saw and waited for them. If you conclude that Mr. Zimmerman was being responsible in his watchfulness despite this, I do question your judgement.

Further, I dispute the reasonableness of assuming Mr. Zimmerman was right to suspect a young man who, ultimately, was simply walking through the neighborhood to the home of a resident. The problem is the one that exists with most applications of profiling, specifically racial profiling. Take New York City's Stop and Frisk program. Now it is sadly true that criminal suspects in NYC are roughly 80% black and Hispanic. They also make up roughly 62% of victims of criminal activity. Some might then argue that the 87% of stop and frisk stops that are black and Hispanic were justified. But that misses a crucial point: just because a criminal demographic is heavily concentrated in a certain racial profile does not mean that most members of that racial profile are part of the criminal demographic. It is, in fact, racist to subject huge members of a racial profile to suspicion of criminal wrongdoing based upon the minority of that profile who are criminals. And the numbers on stop and frisk back that up -- 89% of those stopped in 2012 were entirely innocent out of more than 473,000 stops. That's over 420,000 stops that were an insult to the dignity of each and every person stopped. That's 420,000 stops that put a strain on the relationship between police and the community. That's 420,000 stops that make it LESS likely that people who live in high crime neighborhoods will trust that the police see them as law abiding citizens in need of police help rather than as automatic criminal suspects.

Profiling and the ability of many people of otherwise good character to participate in it, contributes to a system which perpetually tells young blacks, especially young black MEN that it is not enough for them to be as good as their white peers; they must be better. To be held above suspicion means eschewing any outward sign that one may fit a white person's stereotype of a black man intent on commiting criminal mischief. Geraldo Rivera's anti-hoodie comments in the immediate wake of the shooting is a particularly offensive and clownish example of that.

But it goes beyond that -- this element in our society has led many black men to have to go to extraordinary lengths to legitimize themselves in the face of law enforcement and other citizens, even if that black man is a national treasure like Levar Burton:

It is hard to tell if Mr. Burton is laughing or crying when Tim Wise recalls the time a police officer, without question, helped him break into his own car.

This is reality. This is life for millions of law abiding black people. This is racism. And if you argue that Mr. Zimmerman was entirely and unequivocably correct to suspect and follow Mr. Martin simply because Mr. Martin could be seen to fit a profile of previous criminals in his neighborhood, then I question not just your judgement but your wisdom.

Finally, a truly ugly side has emerged more prominently since the verdict. And it is the post-mortum character assassination of Mr. Martin. I've read almost triumphant declarations that Mr. Martin was a "thug" based upon the misbelief that it was proven in court that he assaulted Mr. Zimmerman without provocation. I point out again that this is absolutely not the case. Worse are accusations that Mr. Martin was clearly out for no good because of some of his high school suspensions. While these may be true, it takes a particularly desperate desire to see Mr. Martin as an awful stereotype to take up a less than perfect high school record as evidence that he was a bad person or prone to violence. Even worse is the resufacing of alleged content from Mr. Martin's Facebook and personal email accounts -- that originated with the claim of hacking from an avowed White Supremacist posting on the carbuncled ass of the Internet. This material leads to accusations that Mr. Martin was involved in drugs, especially a concoction made up of cough medicine, candy and fruit drinks, that he was proud of fighting and presented himself as a "thug". Considering the ultimate source for these accusations, I stand by my assessment that they are part of a corner of society that is not content with Mr. Zimmerman being exonerated -- they want Mr. Martin to have "deserved it" much as the citizens of Omaha, Nebraska believed Will Brown "deserved it":







I am deadly serious on this point. The posthumous assault on Mr. Martin's character has three negative effects: First, it clouds the issues of the night in question because even if all of these accusations about Mr. Martin were true, Mr. Zimmerman had no way to know them on that night and they could have played no role in his decision to suspect Mr. Martin of wrongdoing. Second, it sets up an irrelevent morality play that insinuates that even if Mr. Martin was doing nothing wrong that night, then we should not feel quite so sorry about his death since he was "one of them". Finally, it plays directly into a relic of America's White Supremacist past -- a past that generations of heroes, both black and white, have struggled, bled and died to abolish -- that relic is the belief that any black man must continuously prove himself to be better than anyone else, possibly better than anyone can be, or to face scorn and suspicion that is justified in the minds of the people holding him suspect by vicious stereotyping. There is an effort to shoehorn the young Mr. Martin into a narrative where no black man can be viewed without suspicion.

I do not know the full depths of Mr. Zimmerman's heart. I do not know or have evidence that he is hardened racist and I suspect that he is not. I do believe that he allowed widely held stereotypes of black men to suspect Mr. Martin. I do believe that he allowed himself to become agitated at the thought of another "asshole" getting "away with it" and that agitation prompted him to violate sensible guidelines of community watch volunteers that would have avoided the deadly confrontation altogether. I do not condemn him as a hardened racist for this, but I note him as a contributor to a racist system in our society, as many of us are.

The people who are so intent on making Mr. Martin fit into somer version of the black brute stereotype -- an intent entirely unnecessary to acquit Mr. Zimmerman of murder -- those people are seeding the conversation with some of the most vile aspects of our national past, a past that, to this day, we largely refuse to talk about. They are possibly doing a service by being so obvious in their intent as it demands that we stop thinking this thought process is entirely a relic and entirely encapsulated in the American Deep South. White Supremacism was so mainstream in American society a mere 50 years ago that citizens of communities across the nation rioted rather than integrate their schools. And it is still with us today in the need some of us have to assert not merely Mr. Zimmerman's innocence beyond a reasonable doubt but to assert the assumed badness of Mr. Martin.

If you have found those protrayals compelling, then I do not merely question your judgement and your wisdom -- I am worried about your soul.