One last thread before I bow out of World War Z [View all]

[XemaSab]

REASONABLE DOUBT

I think Zimmerman's a coward, a sketchball, and an asshole who really fucked up and killed a kid. His narrative was full of inconsistencies and he should have gone down for murder II, manslaughter, or negligent homicide.

It was a massive failure on the part of the police department. They just took Zimmerman's story at face value. They didn't test Zimmerman for drugs or alcohol. Evidence was contaminated and destroyed and weeks went by before they talked to crucial witnesses. They didn't take the shooting death of this black kid seriously at all, and the DOJ should investigate them for evidence of racism in the handling of this case.

*HOWEVER*

The prosecution's case was terrible. The lead witness came off as a flake, they couldn't identify who was screaming on the 911 call, and they acknowledged that Martin was on top of Zimmerman when he was shot, among other problems. The only evidence that they presented that it was a fair fight and not a beatdown was eyewitness testimony, which is notoriously unreliable. They failed to present a version of events that explained all the evidence in a cohesive way.

The defense, meanwhile, did present a cohesive narrative. They eviscerated the key witness for the prosecution, and packaged the forensic testimony together in a way that fit Zimmerman's account to the police.

The job of the prosecution was to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman wasn't acting in self defense. The defense's job was to leave the door open for an alternative narrative in which Zimmerman was afraid for his life at the moment he pulled the trigger.

Did the prosecution prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman was acting in anything other than self defense? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

I think it's entirely possible that Zimmerman was getting his ass kicked and was afraid for his life when he pulled that trigger. Zimmerman's a coward and he probably took a few lumps and freaked out. Based on the testimony given in the trial, I think it's likely that Zimmerman was the one who was screaming on the 911 tape. Rachel Jeantel's letter to Mrs. Fulton, her testimony, and her statements after the trial paint a portrait of a kid who was not afraid of a fight. If this is how it went down, it doesn't make Trayvon a bad person or the villain in the situation, it makes him a normal kid. (IMHO, pretending that Trayvon was too good for this sinful earth is just another racist trope, and seeing him as a human being means seeing him in all his complexity: he was looking at colleges, he sent raunchy tweets, he bought candy for his dad's fiance's son, he smoked weed, and he did nothing wrong and did not deserve to die that night.)

I'm disappointed in the verdict, but I don't see how the jury could have found anything different considering the fact that the prosecution's case had giant holes in it. And again, it's not the job of the defense to PROVE anything, just demonstrate that the prosecution's case is flawed.

I'm also disappointed in DU for being so willing to throw away such concepts as "innocent until proven guilty," "burden of proof," "self defense," and "beyond reasonable doubt," just because we "know" that Zimmerman was a racist fucker who set out to kill an innocent black kid.

These legal concepts protect (or should protect) everyone, black and white, male and female. If anything, I think juries don't use these concepts enough and innocent people are victimized by a racist justice system that doesn't give black people any benefit of the doubt, either in life or death.