The miscarriage of justice in
the Trayvon Martin trial resulted from two causalities.
First the prosecuting council
was totally inept. Using Florida
The prosecuting attorneys
seemed to have no real understanding of establishing legal precedence, but
instead floundered around in a morass of racism accusations, character
assassinations, who was on top, and who was speaking during cell phone
conversations. For most of the trial it
seemed the prosecutors were substantiating the claims of the defendant.
Not even a great lawyer, but
just a competent lawyer should have been able to bring in a verdict against
Zimmerman.
The verdict outcome totally
rest on the incompetence of the prosecution.
Secondly, I have served on a
jury and can testify how reckless it is to leave life and death decisions to
people picked at random from the general public and agreed upon by two
attorneys with varying degrees of competence.
Perhaps in theory ‘a jury of your
peers’ sounds reasonable. But you
should remember that half of the general public fall on the back side of the
intelligence bell curve. At least half
of the jury members are ill-informed; have no legal background; and are pissed
off they are missing their reality shows.
Most juries can be swayed and persuaded by who ever is the best
courtroom evangelist.
If ever in the unfortunate
situation of appearing in court and expecting justice to be served – especially
if you are expecting a legally based decision – it would be advisable to avoid
a jury trial and appear before a judge: and even that could be crap shoot.
the Ol’Buzzard
OB,
ReplyDeleteI don't like the DOJ getting involved in this case. The jury rendered their decision and like it or not justice was done. Now, we all agree that Trayvon Martin did not deserve to die that night and that George Zimmerman was at least guilty of something.
Hovever, the bottom line is - what the jury decided final.
Good post,
Sarge
Juries can, and have been wrong.
DeleteOB
There is a blogger who I was sort of following after he popped up in my blog followers. who never really posted about politics but posted tales from his sort of deteriorating reality. I thought he was a nice guy and posted a little encouragement to him from time to time. I have to admit there was a bit of morbid fascination reading his tales of mishaps and disorientation from the Prescription drugs and alcohol he seemed to have to depend on to get through his ongoing disaster. He recently posted a piece on the Trayvon Martin trial and did a piece that I thought was some kind of ironic satirical humor. He posted videos about Martin using the Skittles and soft drink to make a sort of drug cocktail. I complemented the blogger on his ironic humor and said he had showed a side of his personality that I had never seen before, but it was so serious, that didn't he think that someone not as acute as he might take it seriously?
ReplyDeleteWell, it wasn't humor and he was serious. His regular posters formed a circle jerk cluster fuck of hate directed at me. They claimed they had gone to my blog and as far as I was concerned, I was seriously disturbed and full of hate.
I have to admit, I lost my temper and to take my name off of his blog roll..he doubled down on his racist rants. It was pretty interesting. I went back and checked the origins of the Skittles, Arizona Watermelon Ice Tea Drug story and how the rumor started to grow to the fact that some bloggers claimed they actually had evidence that the coroner covered up the condition of Martins liver in the autopsy. I have seen some pretty amazing attempts by amateur "experts" to reinterpret the coroners report to fit their hate.
As an experiment,I was used Trayvon Martins photo as my blog avatar on Disqus and Facebook for a week. I actually collected some of the reactions. I'm not sure what I will do with them...they are in a folder on my desktop that is seething with utter irrational hate.
I didn't agree with the jury's finding, but I don't fault the jury. I explained that in the post in which I tried to analyze the legal issues as they were presented in the charges that were what the jury had to decide on. I have been on 3 juries in NYC involving murder and attempted murder but then again NYC isn't Florida.We convicted twice and acquitted once.
I basically believe the process but I think it is flawed.
There will be a civil suit and the Zimmerman family is already threatening to make it as ugly as possible, but that's typical pre litigation posturing. I do believe that there will be positive outcomes from all of this. A realization for the rest of America that we are still dealing with the very real unique social problems of trying to create a society that was profoundly racist for well over 200 years. It's still there. And now the focus is on the Stand Your Ground gun laws...the real problems they have caused and will cause, because the Zimmerman acquittal will enable many idiots to step over the line and act out their little fantasies. America had a problem, now it has a much bigger one.
As I said; I believe Trayvon Martin had a right to stand his ground; but he was killed as a result. Who can deny that Zimmerman was the initial aggressor?
DeleteOB
The prosecutors threw the trial. They had no intention of seeing Zimmerman got to jail for killing a black kid.
ReplyDelete