Okay, this one will be pretty short. Unlike some people, I'm not prepared to rush to judgment, not prepared to decide that the tragic incident which resulted in a young man's death is for sure a 'murder,' not prepared to agree that it's on a par with Emmet Till's murder, not ready to agree it's proof that nothing has changed in this country, not prepared to agree with the increasingly hysterical emotion that passes for activism these days.
What I do agree with is that a tragedy has occurred, Martin's family deserves a thorough, competent and impartial investigation, and George Zimmerman should be held responsible for whatever degree of culpability an investigation and subsequent trial, if there is one, is assigned to him. But I also believe he is entitled, like everyone else, to the presumption of innocence and to due process of law.
'But he should be arrested!' people are screaming. They say that law enforcement failed to do its job. But these same people would be outraged if someone to whom they were sympathetic was arrested without probable cause, and as I understand it, the standards for probable cause in this case were not met. (That said, if the local law enforcement were planning to consider the case closed rather than continue to investigate and try to determine what happened, with an arrest to come if it's warranted, they would be in the wrong. It certainly sounded as if Zimmerman could have avoided a confrontation if he had used better judgment.) But at the scene, the police were confronted with an injured, bleeding man who claimed self-defense, who had already called 911 to report somebody suspicious in his neighborhood, which had been subject to an increasing amount of crime as more houses became vacant. I just read three different articles about this, and none of them even mentioned Zimmerman's injuries or that he had apparently been knocked to the ground. Doesn't need to be mentioned, I guess, if your goal is to stoke the fires. Under this set of circumstances, an arrest was not immediately warranted, but that doesn't mean one was never going to occur, and I've heard nothing to indicate Zimmerman is a flight risk or was refusing to cooperate.
For those who think I am saying the man is innocent--no, I'm not. I don't know that, any more than do those who are sure he's guilty, but that's not stopping _them_. An investigation, conducted by an agency in whom all involved can have confidence, should proceed without delay. But those who are ranting for 'justice,' those like Farrakhan who are making veiled threats of general violence and those who are making explicit death threats to Zimmerman, and those like Sharpton who never seem to have any outrage about racially motivated violence unless the victims are black, don't even know the meaning of the word.
In any case of a homicide, it seems self-evident to me, that the person responsible for that homicide should be intensely and privately questioned, at the very least. Ot appears that Zimmerman was not and that speaks very poorly for the police in this instance. Of course everyone in the USA is innocent until proven guilty and that includes Mr. Zimmerman AND Mr. Martin. This is what is at issue here: One man is not even detained and he is the killer and the other man may have been preemptively executed and certainly did not get his day in court - and, therefore, certainly he died an innocent American citizen, especially since he certainly was not committing a crime when he died. The only witness accounts I have heard about claim that Zimmerman had his knee on Martin's back as he was dying.
ReplyDeleteShall we not cloud what this is really about and at least acknowledge that so far what happened on the night on question, especially concerning police procedures, sure seems antithetical to the spirit of the American Constitution? Shall we not simply ignore the racial implications of this possible murder given where in occurred and the history of racism in that area?
Thanks for your comments, Mr. Teagarden. We agree, completely, that Zimmerman should have been questioned intensively (although I'm not sure what you mean by 'privately') and if the local police failed to do that, criticism of them is entirely justified. And I certainly never suggested that Trayvon did anything criminal.
DeleteBut, 'may have been preemptively executed'?? How many people call 911 to report that they are following someone they believe to be a suspicious character prior to 'executing' them?
I repeat that if the police mishandled this, either willfully or through incompetence, they should answer for it. But you allude to 'what this is really about' and the 'racial implications.' You're absolutely sure that the latter exist? That this Hispanic man, whose family says he has black friends and even family members, wouldn't have done the same thing if it had been a white or Hispanic kid? How do you or anyone know that?
What was it really about on the night in question? A racially motivated preemptive execution, or an overeager guy who shouldn't have been armed and who should have stayed in his vehicle after calling 911, who ended up in a confrontation that went horribly wrong? Or something else we don't know yet?
I have not heard that Mr. Zimmerman was injured and bleeding anywhere else so I question the veracity of that bit of information. Secondly, I'm not sure the police were out of line in not pursuing this any further. From what I'm learning about this "Stand Your Ground" law is that if a shooter claims self defense and there aren't any obvious reasons to question that, it's pretty much over legally. That is the result of laws like this. I don't call it "Stand Your Ground" As much as "In Your Face."
ReplyDeleteNo doubt people have a right to self defense but the burden of proof should be a tough sell. As it is now, the burden of proof seems to be that it has to be proved that you WEREN'T in danger rather than you were.That's pretty hard if your "attacker" is dead. From an article I've read the amount of justifiable homicides in Florida went from 30 to 100 in the year after the law passed.
Having said all that I think the majority of this country would rather allow killing of this sort with little need to prove anything rather than have victims die because we were afraid to shoot real attackers. We're headed back to the wild west.
Ben, here is a link to an article that came out several days ago, on the 20th. The tone is certainly critical of Zimmerman and sympathetic to Trayvon, and it contains the sentence, "Police say Zimmermann was bleeding from the back of his head and from his nose." I saw several more articles that repeated this information, and added that police said Zimmerman's back was wet and had grass stains on it. However, that fact is not being included much, now, and the fact that you have not seen it, and question its veracity, only reinforces my point--the media want to feed the frenzy, so why include any information that might make people question the conclusions they've already reached?
Deletehttp://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/politics/2012/Mar/20/us_to_investigate_fatal_shooting_of_black_teen.html