George Zimmerman
"Not Guilty"
That's not my opinion, but it was the opinion of the jury, and that's what counts.
My sentiments are echoed in this Washington Post editorial.
My focus is on the ineptness of the Sanford police, who failed to collect evidence on the night of the murder. And yes, I said murder. That said, my hope is that those who protest the verdict will cease and desist with their efforts to press for justice.
It was a fair trial, in my opinion, and the fact that the state couldn't prove that George Zimmerman was lying is the fault, as I've indicated, of the police. My bias is showing all over the place, possibly influenced by listening too much to Al Sharpton, but I THINK my bias is based on my antipathy to guns. There's nothing about "Neighborhood Watch" that says you should carry a gun in the first place. All the Watch is supposed to do is notify the police of suspicions, and let the police take it from there.
Zimmerman's story, which could not be disproven, was that the only reason he got out of his vehicle was to check the street sign so that he could accurately report Trayvon Martin's location. But I don't like people who carry guns when they don't need to, and I don't believe people I don't like.
So I say: Trayvon Martin was murdered by George Zimmerman. May the teenager rest in peace. Zimmerman, even if he is "free" now, will never be free from the haunt of what he did. He will neither live nor rest in peace.
Despite my convictions, I am appalled with the way Al Sharpton has reported this case. Yes, MSNBC has a strongly liberal slant on things, and that stance is needed to counterbalance the opposite viewpoint on Fox "News," but I would still like to see an attempt at honest journalism. If I had any sense I'd switch to NBC or ABC or CBS, but I guess I just need the counterbalance, given the right-wing looney tunes nutcases that I work with at the hospital.
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This is really a tough case to analyze. Zimmerman's story IS plausible, and it's hard to blame the jury for its (to me) surprising verdict. There was much cogency in the reactive comments to the Washington Post article linked above.
But getting out of the car and then being confronted by the guy you're stalking, then claiming self-defense -- it's kind of like the old chestnut of murdering your parents and then pleading for mercy because you're an orphan.
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Monday edit:
Leonard Pitts
He my favorite, has been for a good long while. -- twoberry
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Tuesday edit:
Eugene Robinson
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Wednesday edit:
Rather than put up a link, I'm just going to publish this account by John Carlson, a radio journalist who seems to be of roughly the same mindset as mine. This is a MUCH better version of the "other side" than that presented by one of my commenters below, the guy who calls himself "Bro.Doc." I was tempted to block that person, and delete his comments, and for the moment I'm glad I didn't. I will respond to two of his points here:
1. I could have written a treatise as long as Plato's Republic and not mentioned every important factoid regarding this case. To chastise me for not mentioning this or that is what caused me to think of "Bro.Doc" as a moron.
2. And the police didn't arrest Zimmerman that night because (I think): 1. they didn't want to, 2. they could cite a provision in the Stand Your Ground law that literally barred them from arresting, and 3. after a cursory investigation, they believed his version of events. I maintain that there should have been a more thorough investigation THAT NIGHT, and that the police should have found some grounds for arrest -- if not for the killing then for jaywalking or SOMETHING. An unarmed teenager was dead. And carry permit or not, shooting an unarmed person dead means the shooter should at least be held until the facts are sorted out.
I've read and reread my own original entry above, and I believe I was very clear in my disapproval of Al Sharpton's reporting. And very truthful about my own biases. I do not like guns.
Okay, now here's Mr. Carlson:
Martin v. Zimmerman: The media at its worst
Everything I initially wrote about the Trayvon Martin killing was based on network news reports. And it was almost entirely wrong.
In my KOMO radio commentary of March 23, 2012, I said the following about the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman:
“Thinking of 17-year old Trayvon the way we’d think of our own kids is exactly how to view this tragedy. The man who police say shot him, George Zimmerman, is a 28-year old CrimeWatch volunteer, who apparently did just about everything a Crimewatch volunteer SHOULDN’T do, such as following the 17 year old teen when a 911 dispatcher advised him not to, confronting him when he had no business doing so, and shooting him. Mr. Zimmerman was not standing his ground against an aggressor, he WAS the aggressor. And Trayvon Martin received the death penalty for walking home in the rain wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and carrying a pack of candy.”
Everything I said was based on what the network news media had been reporting, and continued to report for months. And it was almost entirely wrong.
Eyewitness testimony and physical evidence backs up George Zimmerman’s claim that he was neither the physical aggressor, nor even “standing his ground” that night. He was confronted by an angry Martin, who knocked him down with a punch to the nose and proceeded to pummel him. (There is no evidence of a “fight,” but abundant evidence of an assault).
Trayvon Martin was shot not “walking home in the rain wearing a hooded sweatshirt,”but while straddling Zimmerman MMA style, beating him senseless, bloodying his face and punching or pounding his head against the concrete sidewalk.
The most disputed question that night — who was screaming for help before the shot was fired by Zimmerman? — has family and friends on both sides divided. But it raises another question that essentially answers itself: Who would more likely scream for help? The person being beaten, or the one doing the beating?
One of the most important, and remarkably under-publicized facts that came out at trial is that one of the detectives, while interrogating Zimmerman at the police station that night, told him that the entire incident had been caught on surveillance video. The detective was bluffing, but Zimmerman didn’t know that. His reaction: “Thank God”.
“Thank God.” How many people who do something wrong, lie about it and are told it’s on tape react that way?
Zimmerman certainly made mistakes that night; he should have stayed in his car. But they were mistakes in judgment. So weak was the criminal case against him that many were predicting his acquittal two days into the trial before the defense had even presented its case.
So why are so many people upset and angry about the verdict?
Because they still believe what I believed in that commentary a year and a half ago.
The news media, aided by activists like Al Sharpton, made this entire saga about race from the very beginning. When the racial narrative didn’t fit, the media distorted evidence, doctored audio tape or misled the public about the facts until it did. As Zimmerman’s attorney Mark O’Mara said after the verdict, the press turned Zimmerman, a man who mentored young African American school kids, into a “monster.”
Columnist John Nolte from Bigjournalism.com (the people who caught NBC editing a tape to make Zimmerman appear racist) compiled a superb timeline of the media’s race-crime narrative, supplemented with links. Some highlights:
On March 13, 2012, Al Sharpton interviewed the Martin family’s attorney Benjamin Crump, who described Zimmerman as white and claimed that it was Zimmerman who approached Trayvon Martin. The Associated Press had also erroneously described Zimmerman, a Hispanic, as white.
On March 21, 2012, CNN falsely accused Zimmerman of muttering the word “coon” when he called authorities. That was false, but not corrected by CNN for two weeks, long after it had influenced the media angle that Zimmerman was motivated by racial hostility.
On March 22, 2012, when it became clear that Zimmerman was Hispanic (Latina mom, white dad), the New York Times used a new term to describe Zimmerman: “White Hispanic.” Talk about reaching. People would rightfully take umbrage if the Times described the President of the United States as a “White African American.”
Also on March 22nd, at a Florida rally designed to build racial tension and force an arrest of Zimmerman, Al Sharpton stated “Trayvon could have been any one of our sons…” One day later, President Barack Obama echoed that line: “If I had a son," said the president. "he would look like Trayvon.” The racial narrative was set in stone.
It was reinforced by NBC four days later, when it edited Zimmerman’s call to police to make him look like a racist. Here is what NBC reported Zimmerman said:
“This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”
Here’s the actual exchange between Zimmerman and the police dispatcher:
Zimmerman: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”
Dispatcher: “OK, and this guy, is he black, white or Hispanic?”
Zimmerman: “He looks black.”
A few days after that, ABC claimed that Zimmerman wasn’t injured the night the shooting took place, airing a blurry video of Zimmerman at the police station and stating that “a police surveillance video taken the night Trayvon Martin was shot dead shows no blood or bruises on George Zimmerman.”
As Nolte pointed out, ABC didn’t even bother to enhance the video before running with the report.
A day after that, when ABC’s report was sweeping the nation, NBC’s Chris Matthews backed up ABC’s version, even though one of his Hardball guests pointed out, with pictures, that Zimmerman’s head did show cuts and bleeding.
On April 9th, PBS anchor Gwen Ifill, again described Zimmerman as “white” and that he shot Martin after a “disputed altercation.”
Two days later, Special Prosecutor Angela Corey charged Zimmerman with Second Degree Murder.
And you wonder why so many people still despise George Zimmerman?
Liberal Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, to his credit, says that Corey’s decision to charge Zimmerman with Murder 2 was outrageous, politically motivated, based on a false affidavit and worthy of disbarment. Even when Judge Debra Nelson allowed an eleventh-hour request by prosecutors to convict Zimmerman on lesser grounds of manslaughter, the jury still cleared him.
What happened that night in Sanford Florida is a tragedy that cost one young man his life and likely ruined the life of another. But as an African-American minister told me, this trial needed to be about truth, not race. For the media, which distorted George Zimmerman’s ethnicity, his words and his injuries, it was precisely the opposite.
John Carlson hosts The Commute With Carlson weekday mornings from 5 to 9 a.m. on 570 KVI AM, and does daily commentary on KOMO Newsradio. Reach him at jcarlson@fisherradio.com.
© 2013 Crosscut Public Media. All rights reserved.
Printed on July 17, 2013
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And this is twoberry again. I'm not apologizing for my original report, above, just reassessing it. And as always, I'll defend our President. There was nothing wrong with any of his statements. He's a human being. A reporter asked him a question on March 23, 2012. He answered it, and no way was it an answer that "echoed" Al Sharpton.
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