BRAGADAYJAH 139

Monday, July 15, 2013

Justice for Trayvon Martin

Zimmerman v Martin
A White Washed Jury
In A White Washed Trial
The Jury has spoken, says the President; but the question is has justice spoken?
            I have heard a number of biased and prejudicial pronouncements on both sides of the racial divide, and I have no intention of adding any further fuel to the fire; but I do think that a lot of questions remain to be asked, and answers provided.  One outstanding question of course is, has justice been served?  George Zimmerman was arrested, tried and set free.  So is that the end, should it be the end of the matter?
            First of all, a brief rehash of the known facts and circumstances that gave rise to this nationally debated matter would be in order.
            On a certain evening, Trayvon Martin was in a certain neighborhood.  His ordinary place of residence was in Miami, Florida, and he was there in Sanford visiting his father. 
            On that evening he had done a little shopping and was returning home when he was spotted by George Zimmerman, who apparently took objection to this black boy in his neighborhood. He reported the boy’s presence to the police and was told to leave him alone. 
            Zimmerman was not satisfied; so armed with a gun he decided to go after Martin and having accosted him shot him dead.
            Clearly only Zimmerman and Martin knew exactly what happened immediately before the fatal shot was fired. Martin is dead and Zimmerman alone was left to say what happened or did not happen.
            Clearly Zimmerman could have taken the position, “I caught him and shot him dead,” or “I got into an altercation with him and the gun went off accidentally,” or he could say, as he eventually claimed that Martin attacked him and he stood his ground and shot Martin because at some stage his life was in danger.
            Now, it would seem to any level headed, conscientious, justice-fearing person, that once the report was made to the police, the proper course would have been to arrest Zimmerman and then go about gathering evidence, and see where the facts led them. But contrary to all rules of common sense, and investigative procedure and precedence, the police acted as judge and jury, and decided not to arrest Zimmerman. But not only that it is asserted that the police went further and aided and abetted Zimmerman by providing him with a defense to murder, by either with his consent inflicting superficial wounds on him or advising him, and or helping him to inflict those wounds on himself. 
            It is already well documented that several hours elapsed before the dead boy’s family was informed, and it is averred that they used that time in preparing his defense of self defense.  But in any event as has been said above an impartial police would have at least arrested first and investigated after.  This was not a report of a battery or a stolen car.  A young boy, some body’s son had been killed.
            Nationwide public protests forced the police to make an arrest, and after a year, and much public interest, a trial was put on.
            Let me say here and now that in my view, it was nothing more than a mock trial, a farce.  I must confess that armed with this belief, I did not attend, and I did not listen to all of the evidence; but I must say that such as I listened to or saw, cemented my earlier opinion that it was a trial of appeasement rather than a trial in pursuit of justice.
            Firstly, I confess that I did not know that a murder trial could be conducted with only six jurors deciding.  That’s a farce in itself.  When in 1791 the sixth amendment to the Constitution was passed, the framers would have said, certainly not, to any suggestion that a jury of one’s peers could be 6, the standard at that time being 12 good men and true.
            When the amendment spoke of an impartial jury they meant 12 men who had no interest in the case except that of doing justice.  The provision for an impartial jury would suggest that they must not be biased and should represent a fair cross section of the accused’s peers from within his community.
            I would contend that 6 jurors do not represent a sufficient cross section.  12 Jurors was the accepted norm; and although I have seen that number reduced to 9 in non capital cases in small communities for logistical purposes, 6 is unrepresentative of the letter and spirit of the amendment. 
            In addition, women were not qualified to sit on jurors or to vote at the time of the passing of the 6th amendment.  So that would constitute a further reason why one may argue that the spirit of the amendment has been violated.
            Another peculiarity with the jurors is not only the number 6, but 6 white women.  Could 6 white women be said to be representative of Martin’s Peers? But oh yes, Zimmerman not Martin was on trial and 6 white women were representative of Zimmerman’s peers.  True but that is my point exactly, justice for Martin should have been on trial too; his freedom, his life, his death, were on trial, and he aught to have been represented.
            Secondly, the few times I listened in or watched, I was utterly disgusted with what I saw and heard.  Where is the prosecution, where is the judge? I proclaimed more than once.  The defense was having it all their own way.  I heard a witness on the stand, not an expert witness, being led by the defense to give evidence by drawing conclusions and inferences, and state opinions that only the jury in a criminal trial is allowed to draw or state. The Prosecution did not object and the judge did not intervene.  At that moment I told a friend of mine this is a pantomime.
            Thirdly, the prosecution never at any stage, advance a sensible theory of its own, concerning the events surrounding the shooting.  What they did was to build the prosecution around the defense’s false claims. When, therefore, I saw prosecuting counsel on the floor playing with the defense’s dummy, I sometimes couldn’t quite determine which was counsel, and which was the dummy.
            Obviously, apart from pleading guilty, what was Zimmerman to do if he wanted to escape punishment for his crime?  He had to come up with a defense and self-defense was the only one available to him.  And to construct self defense he had to construct a fight, which it would seem even the prosecution naively went along with.
            My own construct is that Zimmerman chased and caught up with Martin and gun in hand, asked him to lie flat on the ground. Martin lay on his back, terrified and started to scream. Zimmerman sat on top of him and grabbed his shirt. Martin reached up to grab hold of Zimmerman whereupon Zimmerman shot him.  All of this time, Martin was yelling and screaming for help and or mercy. That is why the evidence shows that once the fatal shot was fired the cry for help stopped.
            This is in fact such a simple case of murder, it is not funny.  The Defense say there was a fight.  So let us examine that further.  A man is stalking you with a gun.  You run, and he follows you. You try to hide and he comes upon you. He points the gun and you spring at him as your only fair chance, after a short scuffle he shoots you. The gun did not go off accidentally, he shoots you. What exculpates him? Could he then claim he shot you because you fought back, when he hunts you down with intent to kill you?
The one element that the prosecution would have to prove in this scenario would be the intent.  What Zimmerman intended to do when he went after Martin.  If I were prosecuting this case, that would have been my one main concern.  If there was evidence from which the intent could be reasonably inferred, I would nail him. If not I would still have a second bite at him for a lesser charge of manslaughter on the basis that he was performing a dangerous act the natural consequence of which caused the death of Trayvon Martin.
            Fourthly, I must be clear that apart from my objection of having 6 white women try the case, I do not impeach their verdict based on the weak way in which the prosecution presented its case.  I am led to question whether they were just acting, white washing or doing their incompetent best.
            I listened to the whole of the O J Simpson case and concluded that the defense was brilliant particularly because the prosecution was so hopeless. I also watched most of the Tracy Anthony case and determined that both the prosecution and defense were bungling, and that the defense did not win, as much as the prosecution lost. In both cases, the juror’s verdict was the proper one having regard to the way the evidence was presented.  In the premises, I cannot fault the jury in this case either.
            Fifthly, I really was not impressed with the role the judge played. She appeared to have given the defense a whole lot of leeway to introduce prejudicial evidence as well as opinion evidence, for instance the evidence about crimes in the area committed by black men.  How does that feature into a reason for shooting an innocent black boy?  As counsel for the defense I would never introduce such evidence as a skilful prosecutor could cause it to backfire, as it tends to show racial profiling, a fact which I hope the Federal Prosecutor will take into account in its future determination to charge or not to charge with a Federal offence.
            Those facts notwithstanding, I would have thought that the prejudicial value of the “crimes in the neighborhood evidence committed by black men,” was inadmissible and irrelevant in addition to the fact that its prejudicial value far outweighed its evidential value, unless its admission was for exactly that purpose.  Someone suggested that the judge smiled broadly when the verdict was read.  But who am I to say when or why, or what amuses a judge that should cause a smile?              
            I regrettably conclude, therefore, that justice was neither done, nor manifestly appeared to have been done in the case of the death of Trayvon Martin.
Rev Dr John S Weekes

July 15, 2013.

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