I’m not sure how I feel about the notion that different communities can have legitimately different standards of justice. There is something to the argument, I am just not sure how much weight to assign to it.
Cohen’s rather dramatic interpretation of the facts as we know them – that Zimmerman went “looking for trouble” and that neighborhood watch participants are “vigilantes” – is more evidence of a regional bias at work in the author’s writing. Perhaps citizens in New York are more comfortable waiting for police to show up and save their property – or their lives – than in empowering their neighbors to proactively prevent crime. Given the draconian restrictions on guns in New York, that attitude would seem to work for local residents and is an acceptable, if incomprehensible to many, opinion to hold.
I think Mr. Moran has tapped into one of the under-discussed reasons why there are two very divided camps who interpret the killing of Trayvon Martin in very different ways. But there is still something missing from his argument. Mr. Zimmerman made a mistake. As the prosecution argued, he made some bad assumptions. And those bad assumptions led to the death of 17 year-old boy. There ought to be some provision under the law that allows Zimmerman to be held accountable for that.
I mean, we might disagree about whether it was reasonable to call the non-emergency number in the first place. We might disagree about whether Zimmerman was acting like a vigilante or just trying to protect his neighborhood. But we should be able to agree that he was wrong to suspect Trayvon Martin and that he made a mistake when he decided to pursue him on foot. He should have been able to identify himself as the captain of the Neighborhood Watch team and have a civil discussion about Martin’s right to be there.
The problem isn’t so much that Zimmerman isn’t doing 25 or 30 years in prison. The problem is that he isn’t being punished at all. All his mistakes are forgiven. An innocent life was lost, and no one will be held accountable. And that should be unacceptable in every community.
The problem is that under Florida law George Zimmerman is getting his gun back.
The problem is that black parents are in a quandary about what to tell their kids in order to keep them alive.
The problem is that there will be copycats of George Zimmerman.
The problem is that the Oakland Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Department still don’t care about peaceful protests and use all the old tactics to disrupt them. The trials after the beating of Rodney King and the death of Oscar Grant have changed nothing.
The problem is that we have a bunch of writers on wingnut welfare who seek to exploit division in order to continue to feather their nest.
I could go on, but there are too many reflections from this event.
Going off a TPM item, it appears a key issue is that in Florida, unlike in many other states, a defendant can claim self defense and then the burden is on the state to prove it wasn’t. In most other states, the defendant has to testify and prove that it was self defense.
Basically, if you kill someone and there are no witnesses, and you can present any evidence whatsoever of fearing for your life, rationally or not, you’re golden. Well, and if you can afford high priced lawyers.
This has been my argument for the past few days; and every time I bring it up someone tells me that its unconstitutional. However I think there are some situations where it could be incumbent on the defense to prove themselves.
I can understand that if your argument is, “I didn’t do it at all” then its up to the state to prove that you did.
In that case the state is making an accusation, and its up to them to prove it. Fair enough.
But to say, “Yeah, I did it but you have to prove that it wasn’t self-defense” seems like its going to be impossible to prove – especially when there are no other witnesses.
In the case of George Zimmerman, I feel that like most people do: as soon as he got out of the vehicle he assumes responsibility for everything that happened.
Unfortunately the State just couldn’t (or didn’t) prove it.
If he had called the non-emergency number and stayed in his car (and met the police officers where he had said he was going to) then TM would probably have survived that night.
I realize that following someone is not illegal, but then you have the argument that TM had the right to Stand His Ground. And if TM thought that his life was in imminent danger, then he had the right to self-defense. But as I’ve said before, TM’s only crime was that he brought a sidewalk to a gun fight.
Shooting unarmed kids who commit no crime is “empowering neighbors to proactively prevent crime”.
Where’s the “get a brain morans” sign when you need it.
The Justice Department has yet to be heard from.
Though I doubt that President Obama and AG Holder will do anything, without a tremendous amount of us pressuring them, and demanding justice.
Imo, though I’m not a lawyer – this could be easily thought of as a ‘Hate Crime.’
An armed adult white man, when told to stay in his car until the police come, then openly disobeyed the request, and stalked a young black man/boy, and eventually killed him.
Also, the shooter had called the police well over 40 times in the span of several years, basically calling every time he saw someone HE deemed suspicious.
In other words, this guy was powder keg, waiting to explode.
Maybe someone better versed in the law can tell me why this couldn’t be brought back to Federal Court as a ‘Hate Crime” case?
And there will probably be a Civil Trial, at some point.
And since Zimmerman will likely be a welcome addition to Wingnut Welfare, maybe Martin’s family will receive some money.
Small compensation, though, for losing a loved one.
the problem with the Trayvon case was that nobody was charged.
it took 45 days for this racist sociopath to actually be charged.
The other problem is how badly they botched the crime scene investigation.
Just in case you haven’t seen this already, there was and interesting letter by a Wisconsin defense attorney posted on talkingpointsmemo that said the law in Florida and Wisconsin was different, and that he was astrounded that the defense would claim self defense and not have the defendant testify.
http://editors.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/07/how_much_is_about_florida_law.php
Goddamn, you want to talk about draconian, how about having an armed and unstable young man sitting in a pickup truck in every neighborhood. As far as this whole neighborhood watch business, it doesn’t even occur to Moran that Trayvon Martin was actually one of the neighbors that George Zimmerman was allegedly protecting.
Booman writes:
and
I have a question for you, Booman How many innocent lives have been lost…and how many more have been ruined…by America’s various economic imperialist wars over the past 50 or 60 years? Wars that have been pursued in a totally bipartisan manner up and down the PermaGov structure.
Another version of the above second quote might well be in order here.
Yes, it should be held unacceptable in every community. But it is not.
You say that you are “not sure how [you] feel about the notion that different communities can have legitimately different standards of justice?”
You put the lie to that statement every time you excuse your own DemRat Party’s own depredations both internationally and domestically. You are obviously quite sure how you feel about different standards of justice when it’s your allies’ actions that are being examined.
What?
What’s that you say?
You didn’t mean that kind of community?
Oh.
Nevermind.
Later…
AG
You know, it may just be that I’ve been reading up on neoconfederacy lately, but I couldn’t help noticing that the states where citizens are empowered to attack unarmed teenagers are all in the South.
That may be today, but the Florida “Stand Your Ground” legislation was ALEC boilerplate. It is coming to any legislature that can get a majority to pass ALEC bills and a governor to sign them. (And ALEC doesn’t care much about which party does it.)
bmaz made an argument early in the case that the important thing was no witnesses to the confrontation and that anyone in any state could accomplish exactly what George Zimmeran did if he had a folks like O’Mara’s team argue the case.
By the way, who funded the Zimmerman defense? What role did the NRA play?
The neo-confederacy story allows the rest of the country to ignore the fact that they still control the majority of votes in Congress and could put an end to a lot of these issues at any time (and did prior to the Reagan administration).
Well, I’m partly responding to what Moran was saying–he’s talking about a regional difference in standards of justice. But no, I don’t want to tar the whole south with the same brush, so it’s worth keeping in mind that there are violent assholes in every state.
But look, we’ve got Rick Moran explaining that things are just different in the south, we’ve got Republicans passing neo-Jim Crow laws in, yes, every state they control (not just the south), we’ve got the Republicans openly discussing an all-white people strategy, and we’ve got Rand Paul as a leading contender for the GOP nomination in 2016.
So you can call it neoconfederate or not, and I won’t blame the south, but the Republicans really are following a strategy that combines active hostility to the federal government with racial discrimination.
And good moderate folks are being co-dependent and letting them get away with instead of calling them out. We have seen this pattern of co-dependency before in the readmission of Confederate generals to power in the 1870s and in the toleration of lynching and the nation-wide KKK after World War I.
That’s where I’m coming from. Neo-confederate thinking is the shiny distracting object. Regional differences is pretty much bullshit for what he is talking about. I posted a tweet in the previous thread from a guy in Chicago who claims Lithuanian ancestry that is just as unhinged and racist as any neo-confederate.
FL certainly has become ground zero as a national shit hole, and can now add the Zimmerman disgrace to its bulging charm necklace. I certainly hope never to see the crappy state again.
It appears that FL “self defense” and ALEC-approved gun laws (that its solidly white Repub legislature have gleefully enacted) made this a pretty tough case for conviction, even manslaughter–and this with an obvious officious pathetic police wannabe zealot gunning down a black teen who wasn’t remotely engaged in a crime, nor did Zimmerturd have any evidence of wrongdoing. With an acquittal after intentionally, willfully and unnecessarily chasing and confronting the (unarmed) teen down, then crying “self defense” after he shoots and kills the kid in a confrontation he alone compelled, against the advice of the po-lice to boot. Pretty strange law of “self defense”. If this is FL law, its law is an ass. As are Floridians (and others) who think this result makes the slightest sense or somehow represents “justice”.
Looks like the proper strategy for gun-totin’ FL racists is now focus on single black male victims at night and simply shoot them dead—FL law then permits the cornpone vigilante a ridiculous “self defense” argument (assuming that the FL state gub’mint even engages in a special prosecution after the FL county and local police force(s) look the other way initially.) Dead black males tell no tales. And one thing’s for sure, this Zimmerturd atrocity won’t result in any changes to FL’s insane legal regime. Indeed, will Zimmerman be awarded the FL Medal of Freedom by elected FL Repubs?
Stay the hell out of this deranged and degenerate sinkhole of a state, that’s the best advice. Visitors are taking their lives in their hands if they decide to travel to this Repub NRA asylum. The question is should one risk traveling to ANY Stand Your Ground state? We can’t actually call ourselves Third World America b/c most undeveloped countries are not as dangerous…anyway, thanks noble patriotic “conservatives” for another victory in your ceaseless crappification of America!
When I was growing up in the South a very long time ago, I liked the westerns that portrayed the Wild West. But for civilization to develop there, you know, families and all that, the Wild West had to be tamed. This was a job for Marshall Matt Dillon. No more taking your guns to town and shooting whoever crosses you. No, in town guns had to be checked in to the Marshall. Once the guns were gone, at least in town, Dodge City was a place where you could live, raise a family, start a business. I wondered back then what it would be like living in one of the untamed towns to have a confrontation with someone and they could call you out into the street for a quick draw gunfight to settle whatever the trivial matter happened to be. If you didn’t have a gun, someone would loan you one. Come to think of it, never an option for Travon Martin. The Wild West was not a place where I would ever want to live where the neighbors would be the (concealed carry) armed fat white guys from `Dances With Wolves.’ Now we have the Wild West revisited. It’s just not the West but all the NRA and ALEC Republican dominated states. I agree, I will never live in, for that matter travel to or even drive through any of those states, except of course, in the air. I just hope the airplane is high enough so the bullets can’t reach it.
The fact is no one with a principled decision to be non-violent and/or choses to never touch a gun is now in danger in every state. Conceal Carry laws are in all 50 states.
And in the aftermath of the verdict we get these gems- makes us feel so much better, eh?
Mark O’Mara remarks that the Zimmerman trial was reverse racism:
“…if George Zimmerman was black for this reason. He never would have been charged with a crime.”
Elsewhere in Florida an African American woman (who had a protective order against her husband) was tried for firing warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband and has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
And Rober Zimmerman Jr. (George’s brother) in an interview last night after the verdict says:
“There are people that would want to take the law into their own hands…they will always present a threat to George”.
http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/14/robert-zimmerman-jr-to-piers-morgan-there-are-people-tha
t-would-want-to-take-the-law-into-their-own-hands-they-will-always-present-a-threat-to-george/
Oh, and Robert still demands to know if Trayvon Martin was a drug dealer and looking to buy a gun!
Yesterday after hearing the verdict, I was not really shocked, but I just felt this numbness. I was upset and just had a long time trying to get my mind settles enough to finally get to sleep. This morning I woke up and I no longer felt numbness, I felt anger. And not the normal kind of anger at stubbing your toe, or angry cause I’m broke, but this quiet, festering anger that just seemed to get stronger as the day goes by and as I read the reactions from both side of the divide and I just had to stop watching tv or reading twitter. That anger is still festering and simmering under the surface. To know me is to know that I’m not a volatile person. I’m pretty even-handed when it comes to the justice system, I don’t trust it, but I realize that we have to live within it. But as African Americans, I suspect that majority of us feel the same particularly when it comes to the justice system.
I’m angry. That’s it. I don’t feel violent, I don’t feel reactive, I FEEL ANGRY! And right now, I don’t want to hear anything about this being “the right verdict” or about “respecting the verdict” or “why are people so surprised”. I don’t want to hear anything about SYG, or about white on black crime or any other reasoning people have been using to create “calm”. Can Black folk just for right now be allowed to be damn angry and not RATIONAL and not LOGICAL, just ANGRY. without someone trying to calm us down.
WE ARE ANGRY and damn I think we deserve at least the day to rant and rave in anger and not LOGIC. That way at least we can go to work on Monday in our probably majority white work place and public places and not feel the need to scream in white folks faces!
That sound I’m hearing in the distance? I do believe that’s the sound of the lady of justice – the blindfolded woman who holds the scales of justice – turning over in her grave.
We should all be African Americans now.
Same sidewalk weapon, where’s this one going to end? http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/07/annals_of_new_york.php?ref=fpblg At least it’s in New York City.
Yesterday afternoon an African-American couple was eating at the outside tables at Benny’s Burrito in Greenwich Village when a drunken man, complaining about his wife leaving him and his job at Goldman Sachs, crashed their table. Douglass Reddish, 25, the man with his girlfriend, tried to help the man steady himself but got a different response than he likely expected.
“This nigger wants to fight me?” said the unidentified man according to witnesses at the scene, “You niggers are why I lost my job!”
Reddish clocked the man with a punch to his face which knocked him out cold. The back of the man’s head then struck the concrete and started to bleed profusely.
“He was out cold. I thought he was dead,” said Robert Garcia, a worker at the restaurant.
On seeing the extent of the man’s wounds, Reddish attempted to flee the scene but was later arrested by police and charged with assault.
The unidentified man, believed to be in his 30s, remains in critical condition at Beth Israel Medical Center.
Well, fuck.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
That never ends well.
As a Black person, we’ve all had ‘ the talk’ with our parents when we get into high school.
Our parents, even the ones that usually ‘play’, are deadly serious with this ‘ talk’.
Us learning the lesson, as my mother told me..
could be the difference of me coming to pick you up at the police station vs. visiting you in the morgue.
there is no 6 degrees of separation for Black people knowing of an incident where someone – without the hint of a police record – winds up in the morgue for some sort of variation of ‘ resisting arrest’.
fundamentally, I don’t believe White people:
I’ve never once heard some White person tell me that they have the same conversation with their children…BECAUSE THEY KNOW IT’S A FLIP OF A COIN as to whether they will wind up going to the police station vs. the morgue.
because, when I’ve tried to have this conversation with White folks, they always want to go do , ‘ but they must have been doing something’.
um, no. they were BLACK…that’s all that they were doing.
So, to be told by White folks that we have to ‘respect the law’, and that the law can abuse us and our children is one thing….
The reason why the Trayvon Martin case cut so deep is because NOW, you’re saying that our Black children, have to grovel at the feet of some random White person, ‘ just cause’?
GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!
That’s just what the message is. So wrong, and, sadly, so true.
Don’t scare the white guy who’s coming after you. Don’t upset the racist guy that’s stalking you, the one who quite possibly has a weapon now that concealed carry is the law. In what world does that make sense?
I get so angry when I hear people say Trayvon’s mistake was this or that. From where i sit, Trayvon’s “mistake” was being black and living on the same planet as Zimmerman.
It’s like saying the battered woman made a mistake when she asked the wrong question, or cooked the wrong thing for dinner, or looked at her husband the wrong way. Except this is worse, because at least an abused woman can leave. (Assuming she hasn’t been isolated to the point where she can’t see any way out.)
How can you leave when you’re the “wrong” color??
I keep telling myself that maybe I’m overreacting, but this keeps feeling to me like open season on lynching again, murder without consequences.
You know what else this feels like to me? KNOW YOUR PLACE, N*. Trayvon was apparently too uppity when he felt he could stand up for himself.
Seems like we are going in the wrong direction on so many things, and it makes me sick.