The Verdict

Well, as you all know by now, George Zimmerman was cleared of all counts last night in the Trayvon Martin shooting.

There’s little to cheer about here, beside the fact that the legal system worked as intended. An unarmed 17-year-old has been shot dead, and another young man will never know a day’s peace as long as he lives. The case became a disgraceful media spectacle — a “high-tech lynching”, to use Clarence Thomas’s memorable phrase — of a man with a name that, save for a single vowel, might have belonged to a member of the Waffen-SS, despite his substantial admixture of black and Hispanic blood. Even the President of The United States stooped so low as to express racial partisanship long before the case ever went to trial, and apparently the DOJ got involved as well — in what was, by any criteria other than inflammatory racial sensationalism, a local crime story.

As I said, there is nothing to cheer about here. If you are a conservative who is gloating about this today, you should be ashamed of yourself.

If you live in a liberal precinct you may, however, find yourself in conversation with someone who declares this verdict to be an outrage, a stain on the nation, and a miscarriage of justice. A great deal of emotion has been whipped up over this case, and emotion, like fire, moves fast and consumes everything. (Reason, by contrast, is positively glacial.) So if you do find yourself having such a chat, I suggest that if you disagree, you clarify matters by asking questions, rather than making contrary assertions. (The point, after all, is to understand exactly where, and how, justice is alleged to have gone off the rails.)

It might go something like:

This is a horrible story all round, but what, exactly, do you object to here? Is it the verdict itself?

If the answer is “yes”, then:

Why do you think the verdict was wrong? Do you believe that the evidence presented by the state convincingly proved its case beyond any reasonable doubt, and that the jurors are at fault? (They did, after all, unanimously agree to acquit on all charges, after only a single day of deliberation.)

If the answer here is “yes”, that’s clear enough. It’s fair to expect, however, that anyone making such a claim must have watched the trial every day, paying close attention to every detail — because that’s what the jury did — and to be able explain in detail why the jury’s interpretation of the evidence presented was mistaken, beyond reasonable doubt.

If the answer is “no” — that the state failed to make its case, but that the jury have convicted Zimmerman anyway, because of the obvious, inherent injustice of the act itself, then:

Are you saying, then, that in our justice system the principle of evidentiary proof of a defendant’s guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” should be made secondary to a jury’s intuition? (Many innocent people are not particularly likable, after all.) If you, or a member of your family, were on trial, which standard of evidence would you prefer?

If the answer to this question is “yes” — that gut feelings should trump evidence — then you have established that the dissenter is calling into question the very foundations of Western jurisprudence, and while you can certainly have a lively conversation about that, it might be best to walk away.

If, on the other hand, the answer to the very first question is that the jurors were right to return the verdict they did, based on the case presented by the state, but that the state should have made a better case, then the question becomes what evidence, exactly, the state failed to present. This is of course a perfectly reasonable position if there is, in fact, damning evidence that was never given in court. I’m not aware of any, though, and it’s fair to expect anyone making this argument to be able to produce something that would in fact have removed all reasonable doubt.

More likely, the answer to the opening question will be something else altogether: an appeal to some intuition or other, based on Martin’s being unarmed, that he was black and Zimmerman (mostly) isn’t, that racism is still alive and well in America, and so on. But this leads us far afield from the trial itself, and the verdict.

Should Zimmerman have followed Trayvon Martin? Arguably not; he was advised by a 911 dispatcher that they “didn’t need him to do that”. But suggestions by 911 dispatchers carry no legal force, and following someone is not a crime. (Physically attacking someone for following you, however, is; and the defense maintained, plausibly, that this is what happened to George Zimmerman. It is, at least, beyond dispute that he was lying on his back, being severely beaten.)

Beyond this, we wander out into the tall grass. Should one be able to use lethal force in self-defense? For just one example, the astromomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson tweeted this today:

Unlike Florida today, only if threatened by another Gun did “Wild West” codes of conduct allow you to shoot another person.

This misses the point that guns are equalizers. Under the code cited by Dr. Tyson, what recourse would there be for, say, a woman being raped by a much larger assailant?

Walking on, after a while we come to some deep social fissures: Second Amendment rights, for one, and highly charged questions about race and crime. Further along, where the roads begin to give out, are the fever swamps, where rational discourse dies.

But to explore this hot and rugged terrain is to journey far from the trial of George Zimmerman — which was about a single event, the criminality of which was to be determined under existing Florida law. Whatever form “justice” may ultimately take, it is not the sacrificing of a scapegoat in the name of a general dissatisfaction with society itself.

14 Comments

  1. I honestly can see no way of bridging the “deep fissures.” Argument, debate, or even the quasi-Socratic dialogues you recommend are pointless when values and assumptions among different population segments do not intersect at any point.

    When one group doesn’t even recognize the importance of facts, but instead thinks with its blood or sees everything through an ideological lens, what reconciliation is possible?

    The United States is about as “united” as the United Nations. Any relatively benign scenario has to start with an honest acknowledgement of that. I’ve said it before and I expect to again: we need a constitutional amendment that specifies how states can secede, peacefully. Of course the political and cultural divide doesn’t run neatly along state borders; in any state that secedes, some people will be unhappy about it. That’s true of any law or majority interest. If the residents of a state feel strongly enough about it, they should have under the amendment complete freedom to move to a state where things are more to their preference, without penalty.

    How the right of secession would play out is impossible to answer, since there is no precedent for it — except in 1861-65 when it was crushed by sheer military might. Perhaps we learned something from that nightmare and will not repeat it.

    Whether any actual secession takes place, such an amendment will have a valuable side effect: it puts on the table the concept that Washington is not the ultimate authority over everything, that states and localities have their own powers — not just over speed limits or zoning laws, but over certain fundamental areas (e.g., gun laws, immigration, health insurance).

    As long as all significant power is concentrated in Rome-on-the-Potomac, every faction will be determined to conquer it in a winner-take-all contest, and we will have what amounts to civil wars until there is only the empty shell of a republic.

    Posted July 15, 2013 at 8:08 am | Permalink
  2. “If the answer is “no” – that the state failed to make its case, but that the jury [should] have convicted Zimmerman anyway, because of the obvious, inherent injustice of the act itself, then:”

    An alternative line of questioning here might be: Do you also believe that the state failed to make its case, but that the jury should have convicted O. J. Simpson anyway, because of the obvious, inherent injustice of the act?

    And if the answer to that is “no”, would that be a racist position?

    Posted July 15, 2013 at 10:24 am | Permalink
  3. the one eyed man says

    I would have voted to acquit. The facts of this case are too murky to support a guilty verdict.

    Posted July 15, 2013 at 3:09 pm | Permalink
  4. JK says

    I’ll make one “simple” statement where the er, facts are concerned – I’ve a close relation who insists the 911 dispatcher told George, “Stay in the car.” Somehow or another it seems that’s the way this close person takes the dispatcher (after asking “Are you following?” – “Yes” – “We don’t need you to do that”).
    ______________________________

    Rick Darby Sir.

    I read some article not too long ago mentioning some counties in Colorado [and some adjoining in a bordering state – can’t recall which] were considering seceding from Colorado.

    That might be the way to figure what you seem to be suggesting – West Virginia should be an appropriate precedent.

    Posted July 15, 2013 at 5:24 pm | Permalink
  5. Philip Ngai says

    When you criticize Zimmerman for following Trayvon Martin, does it matter to you if he immediately agreed to stop when they said that they “didn’t need him to do that”?

    Posted July 15, 2013 at 7:33 pm | Permalink
  6. Philip Ngai says

    Also, does it matter to you if he was already out of his car when the dispatcher said that they “didn’t need him to do that”?

    Posted July 15, 2013 at 7:36 pm | Permalink
  7. Bill says

    It strikes me that the correct verdict was achieved despite massive pressure and attempts from the outside to the judge and prosecuting attorneys to force a different verdict. It is to the credit of both the defense team and jury that this did not happen. I maintain that the fundamental protections of our freedom are firearms and juries.

    Posted July 15, 2013 at 7:42 pm | Permalink
  8. Malcolm says

    Philip: yes.

    Posted July 15, 2013 at 10:57 pm | Permalink
  9. Malcolm says

    Rick,

    I completely agree that there’s little hope of reconciliation. I’ll be very surprised if the United States exists as presently constituted twenty years from now.

    Posted July 15, 2013 at 11:10 pm | Permalink
  10. JK says

    I personally didn’t “enjoy” the leisure to follow all that was all on this case. I didn’t “work it” but (if I’m to believe this that I’d normally not be particularly … well) I’d have to be inclined to go with that one-eyed-fellow

    as I understand it – “irregularities abounded” – and me putting a link to this site on Waka …

    In a news broadcast covering the Martin killing, the network edited together two segments of a call Zimmerman made to 911, making it appear that he had spontaneously suggested that Martin looked like “he’s up to no good,” because he was black. The racial identification was instead a response to a question from the 911 dispatcher.

    http://news.yahoo.com/next-three-trials-george-zimmerman-155539718.html

    Posted July 15, 2013 at 11:37 pm | Permalink
  11. the one eyed man says

    It’s worth noting that Bernie Goetz – in roughly similar circumstances – also was acquitted. Juries are unwilling to convict if there is a reasonable belief that the shooter was acting in self-defense.

    Posted July 16, 2013 at 10:30 am | Permalink
  12. Malcolm says

    Right, Peter. As they should be.

    Posted July 16, 2013 at 10:55 am | Permalink
  13. Jim says

    You say the name Georg Zimmermann might have been the name oa a member of the waffen-SS. But isn’t Zimmerman usually a Jewish name.

    Posted July 16, 2013 at 1:52 pm | Permalink
  14. Malcolm says

    No.

    Posted July 16, 2013 at 2:04 pm | Permalink

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