Here is what an opinion piece in the Washington Post had to say about the case today, along with my comments:
Trayvon Martin never had a chance
By Eugene Robinson
WASHINGTON -- Justice failed Trayvon Martin the night he was killed. We should be appalled and outraged, but perhaps not surprised, that it failed him again Saturday night with a verdict setting his killer free.
Our society considers young black men to be dangerous, interchangeable, expendable, guilty until proven innocent. This is the conversation about race that we desperately need to have -- but probably, as in the past, will try our best to avoid.
I don't see anyone avoiding the conversation about race. In fact, that seems to be the only conversation anyone is having, even though a conversation about self-defense and Florida law would also be nice to hear.
George Zimmerman’s acquittal was set in motion on Feb. 26, 2012, before Martin’s body was cold. When Sanford, Fla., police arrived on the scene, they encountered a grown man who acknowledged killing an unarmed 17-year-old boy. They did not arrest the man or test him for drug or alcohol use. They conducted a less-than-energetic search for forensic evidence. They hardly bothered to look for witnesses.
Really? They interviewed basically every single resident in the area where the shooting occurred and collected many statements, including four separate interviews with Zimmerman. They appear to have collected as much forensic evidence as they could given that it was raining. Later, they went back to the scene and videotaped Zimmerman's description of what happened.
Only a national outcry forced authorities to investigate the killing seriously. Even after six weeks, evidence was found to justify arresting Zimmerman, charging him with second-degree murder and putting him on trial. But the chance of dispassionately and definitively establishing what happened that night was probably lost. The only complete narrative of what transpired was Zimmerman’s.
This is simply false. The only evidence that was found after six weeks to arrest Zimmerman was in the minds of Florida politicians who saw this case as an opportunity to grandstand, which is exactly what they did, including that ridiculous post-verdict press conference with Angela Corey where she sounded like Jim Harbaugh whining about not getting a pass interference call after losing the Super Bowl.
Jurors knew that Zimmerman was an overeager would-be cop, a self-appointed guardian of the neighborhood who carried a loaded gun. They were told that he profiled Martin -- young, black, hooded sweatshirt -- as a criminal. They heard that he stalked Martin despite the advice of a 911 operator; that the stalking led to a confrontation; and that, in the confrontation, Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.
Something tells me that the jurors would disagree with the statement above.
The jurors also knew that Martin was carrying only a bag of candy and a soft drink. They knew that Martin was walking from a 7-Eleven to the home of his father’s girlfriend when he noticed a strange man in an SUV following him.
Martin was carrying two fists and had a concrete sidewalk available to him for head pounding. The "Skittles and Tea" narrative is just plan cynical and stupid.
To me, and to many who watched the trial, the fact that Zimmerman recklessly initiated the tragic encounter was enough to establish, at a minimum, guilt of manslaughter. The six women on the jury disagreed.
There was no evidence that Zimmerman recklessly initiated the encounter. The term "reckless" has a precise legal definition and Zimmerman simply didn't act recklessly, in part because it wouldn't have been reasonable for him to conclude the Martin would attack him and try to kill him just for walking near him.
Those jurors also knew that Martin, at the time of his death, was just three weeks past his 17th birthday. But black boys in this country are not allowed to be children. They are assumed to be men, and to be full of menace.
Nonsense. This is just an inflammatory remark intended to stir people up.
I don’t know if the jury, which included no African-Americans, consciously or unconsciously bought into this racist way of thinking -- there’s really no other word. But it hardly matters, because police and prosecutors initially did.
Honestly, the writer of the article sounds more racist than anyone else he is talking about. What evidence is there that the police, prosecutors or jury used "racist ways of thinking"? None that I can see.
The assumption underlying their ho-hum approach to the case was that Zimmerman had the right to self-defense but Martin -- young, male, black -- did not. The assumption was that Zimmerman would fear for his life in a hand-to-hand struggle but Martin -- young, male, black -- would not.
There was no hand to hand struggle. It was an attack. There was no ho-hum approach to the investigation--it seemed very thorough. The assumption was not that Zimmerman would fear for his life in a hand to hand struggle; rather, the conclusion was that Zimmerman DID fear for his life as his head was being pounded on the sidewalk by his attacker.
If anyone wonders why African-Americans feel so passionately about this case, it’s because we know that our 17-year-old sons are boys, not men. It’s because we know their adolescent bravura is just that -- an imitation of manhood, not the real thing.
Yes, but a skull that is cracked by a demonstration of this bravura IS the real thing.
We know how frightened our sons would be, walking home alone on a rainy night and realizing they were being followed. We know how torn they would be between a child’s fear and a child’s immature idea of manly behavior. We know how they would struggle to decide the right course of action, flight or fight.
I don't presume to know what anyone else is thinking, much less an entire segment of society. Martin actually had more than two options: one of them was to attack, which he did.
And we know that a skinny boy armed only with candy, no matter how big and bad he tries to seem, does not pose a mortal threat to a healthy adult man who outweighs him by 50 pounds and has had martial arts training (even if the lessons were mostly a waste of money). We know that the boy may well have threatened the man’s pride, but likely not his life. How many murders-by-sidewalk have you heard of recently? Or ever?
Armed with candy? Really?
Anyone pounding my head on a sidewalk after breaking my nose IS a mortal threat to me.
I have heard of many murders that involved hitting someone and knocking them to ground and when their head hit the ground it led to a fatal head injury. This sort of thing happens often.
The conversation we need to have is about how black men, even black boys, are denied the right to be young, to be vulnerable, to make mistakes. We need to talk about why, for example, black men are no more likely than white men to smoke marijuana but nearly four times as likely to be arrested for it -- and condemned to a dead-end cycle of incarceration and unemployment. I call this racism. What do you call it?
I could not agree more with this sentiment. Blacks are clearly targeted by law enforcement FAR more often than other groups are targeted, and I think that this is sad and very unfair, and it's one more example of the government using the threat of force to intimidate certain segments of society.
Trayvon Martin was fighting more than George Zimmerman that night. He was up against prejudices as old as American history, and he never had a chance.
That's just a stupid comment. Martin clearly had a chance. All he needed to do was walk home and not attack anyone.
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Anyway, the piece above is a fair representation of what many people seem to be thinking about this case right now.