The mainstream media has done their usual disgraceful best to mislead, misdirect and misinform on the case of State of Florida vs. George Zimmerman, but once the defense rested their case this Wednesday afternoon, anyone who actually watched the trial with even a modicum of rationality could be clear on the results.
The only eyewitness to any part of the fight, John Good, definitively put Trayvon Martin on top of George Zimmerman from a vantage just 17 feet away.
The Sanford Police Department’s chief investigator in the case, Chris Serino, said he thought George Zimmerman told the truth in his numerous interviews and recreation.
Noted forensic pathologist Dr. Vincent Di Maio declared the case very simple “101” from a forensic perspective, and agreed with Serino: Zimmerman’s story comported with both Zimmerman’s testimony and the evidence in the case.
Dennis Root, a police officer trainer in nondeadly and deadly force and the use of force continuum, examined every witness statement and bit of evidence collected before the trial, accounted for Zimmerman’s docile personality, his inability to defend himself (physically or psychologically), the extreme length of the attack (forty seconds, the average fight length he’s record is five seconds), and concluded that George Zimmerman had no choice but to draw and fire his gun to prevent what he reasonably felt was his immediately impending death.
40 prosecution witnesses and 19 defense witnesses have done nothing to taint George Zimmerman’s very reasonable claim that he was in fear for his life when he drew his gun and fired one shot to stop the relentless assault by Trayvon Martin. Two men made bad decisions that night, but the only crime that took place was a violent attack by Trayvon Martin that sought to use a cold slab of concrete as a deadly weapon. Trayvon Martin used that weapon, and forced George Zimmerman to chose between using his weapon to defend his life when his neighbors refused to intervene, or possibly die. George Zimmerman chose to safe his life.
Regardless of the eventual verdict in this politically charged trial, that truth did come out.
Many of us have postulated that if the trial verdict comes back and George Zimmerman is acquitted, then there may be social unrest, up to and including rioting, looting, and arson. And tensions are indeed high.
Two very smart men have me convinced, however, that it won’t come to that.
Danield Greenfield wrote a brilliantly observant piece called Wrong Side of the Street that I won’t even begin to paraphrase or quote. I encourage your read, and really digest, what he has to say.
The other is outspoken Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, in an interview he recorded just today.
Starting at about the 8:11 mark, Dershowitz was asked about the possibility of riots, and noted this simply isn’t a Rodney King-type case. Rodney King’s beating was brutal, obvious, and televised to millions. It was the obvious miscarriage justice that caused those riots.
Even the most vocal and strident of Trayvon Martin’s supporters know they don’t know what happened that night, and if they were honest with themselves at any point, they know that this simply isn’t a remotely similar case.
In Greenfield’s article—which I hope you’ve read by now—he notes that what underlies this case at the deepest levels isn’t race, as the media attempts to portray it, but basic views about how men and women view their role in this society.
George Zimmerman, for all his flaws, imperfections, and questionable decisions, was a constitutionally meek and generally honorable man with idealistic goals about the role good men should play in protecting their communities.
Trayvon Martin, for all his cherubic photos, and media whitewashing, was a very troubled young man who believed very strongly in impulsively trying to get whatever he wanted, and did not care if others were hurt if it made him feel better. He was likely incapable of caring about society as a whole. His social media accounts—which were not allowed into evidence in a very questionable decision by a Cliff’s Notes reading Judge—reveal his as violent young man wrapped up in culture of ” Imma get me mine’s” self-gratification at any cost, no matter what others must suffer for a temporary feeling of self gratification. Trayon Martin was a predator of the very society George Zimmerman so desperately felt drawn to protect.
There very well make be some loud protests, and minor crimes if George Zimmerman is found not guilty, for a very simple reason. The overwhelming majority of us are still good people who don’t want to hurt others, and there is nothing in this trial that suggests that society itself is as broken as it was in 1992, despite the worst efforts of Barack Obama’s Justice Department.
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