Zimmerman/Martin Case Examined

It's been a little while since the verdict was read that acquitted George Zimmerman of the murder of Trayvon Martin, so now I think enough time has passed for me to stand back and look at this case.  Some observations...

--Many, especially on the political left like Al Sharpton, framed this entire case almost solely in terms of race.  Trayvon was racially profiled and followed like a crime suspect when he was just legitimately and purposefully walking down the street, minding his own business.  I happen to agree with Sharpton to the degree that Zimmerman appeared to presume guilt upon Martin largely from his race (that's called prejudice, by the way).  But the problem here is larger...

--I've gone running around my own neighborhood, and I'm not black.  No, I'm just some small middle-aged dumpy looking white dude with jogging threads...no hoodies are involved.  Yet I have experienced on a number of occasions the eerie, creepy feeling of seeing vehicles slowing down when they approach me and then linger around, often for several minutes, as I run down the road.  Maybe they're not all neighborhood vigilantes like George Zimmerman, but it scares me a little to think that people safely locked in their own enclosed motor vehicles, possibly if not probably armed, would view a vulnerable pedestrian such as myself to present any kind of danger.  To me, a legitimate neighborhood patrol would make a priority of challenging strange vehicles instead of relatively helpless people walking (or running) down the street.  But in any case, this problem isn't completely about race, although I'll be quick to admit that blacks have a much tougher time with this unwarranted scrutiny and suspicion.

--After the trial, a panelist guy on Fox's The Five show...the obnoxious and utterly humorless one sitting in the middle, angrily stressed that the trial had nothing to do with the Florida 2006 Stand Your Ground law.  But the fact is that the instruction that the judge gave the jury was directly from this law, which gave so much latitude to the defendant that all that was needed for a not guilty verdict was that he "felt" at some point like his life was in danger.  I wonder whether Martin would have been accorded the same latitude under the legal system as Zimmerman had he prevailed in the struggle and Zimmerman perished...

--This entire tragedy would have been avoided if an armed man, George Zimmerman, had decided to follow police instructions and not stalked Trayvon Martin in his vehicle...and then not gotten out and approached his imagined adversary with the full knowledge that he himself was carrying a loaded, lethal weapon.  Zimmerman completely provoked the confrontation, but the trial seemed to stress only the final fight between the two...

--I guess from the above that you can tell I'm not a big George Zimmerman fan.  But here is when I have to scratch my head at my own country's system of justice.  Or should I say, two systems.  A lot of people in the U.S. were outraged when Amanda Knox, who had been tried and convicted of murder in Italy but later released to return here after that conviction was overturned, was recently accused again of the same crime...something that other countries do but not the United States, with our prohibition against "double jeopardy".  But that's not entirely accurate, since in America one can be acquitted of a crime within the criminal system but still possibly have to undergo another trial in the civil courts: O.J. Simpson is a case in point.  And I think that Zimmerman will probably be subjected to a similar ordeal, which is a boon to lawyers but makes little sense to me.

Well, maybe I didn't get around to saying everything I felt about this case, but I think I got in the major stuff...