During the past month or so, I unashamedly admit that I stayed glued to the television, watching the George Zimmerman trial unfold. In doing so, I had the ability to record the trial and play back only what happened in the courtroom. I found the trial to be tragic, sometimes outrageous and extremely fascinating.
The trial as presented by the prosecutors proved to be an emotional roller coaster rather than a factual presentation. From the beginning, they were without sufficient evidence to convict anyone of murder or manslaughter. The defense attorneys, in turn, provided Zimmerman a strategy that showed self-defense to be the only legal ground the jury needed to acquit him.
Again, tragically, the no-brainer verdict allowed the confessed killer of Trayvon Martin to walk from the courtroom a free man. Zimmerman’s 16 months of accusations, degradation, investigation and prosecution are now over. Trayvon, the real tragic figure in all this, is gone forever. His death was truly a waste of life.
The verdict of not guilty, which made perfect sense to me, given the circumstances, left us all with a situation that seems to be unsatisfied. A 17-year-old kid is dead, shot in the heart by a man who was legally carrying a concealed weapon; a man who was acting, poorly, as a neighborhood watchman. And the shooter walks away, after those 16 months of being hated and despised by many, a free man. Where is the justice in that?
The national media continues, as it did from day one, to consider this confrontation and killing a racial incident of at least the second degree. Many are comparing the shooting of Trayvon Martin to the killings of civil rights champions of the past 60 years. They consider this killing as a continuation of the injustice that inspired riots in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
Despite the political correctness that brought this un-winnable Zimmerman case to trial in the first place, this case has nothing to do with race, unless you consider that the defendant was labeled by the media as a white Hispanic (whatever that is) and the victim as a black child. In the end, the lead attorney for the defense, Mark O’Mara, blasted the media following the announcement of the verdict.
In what was a brilliant, off-the-cuff description of what brought this case to trial in the first place, O’Mara answered the final question at that press conference with a comment for the ages.
In an attempt to drag out the last bit of detail, a reporter asked, “Did he (Zimmerman) ever cry to you? Did he get emotional?”
“Absolutely,” O’Mara replied. “Some people called him the most hated man in America, for having defended his own life only after being beaten for 45 seconds.”
And then O’Mara dropped a bomb on the reporters.
“Two systems went against George Zimmerman that he can’t understand,” O’Mara said. “You guys, the media. … He didn’t know why he was turned into this monster. But for our sake, you guys had a lot to do with it. You just did. Because you took a story that was fed to you, and you ran with it, and you ran right over him. And that was horrid to him.
“Then, he comes into a system that he trusts and gets prosecutors (who) charge him with a crime they could never, ever prove,” he said. “They didn’t lose evidence along the way. No one would argue with me in this room that they had evidence to second-degree murder. This ‘in your heart’ kind of stuff is not what we are supposed to do, and it is not what they are supposed to do. Those two systems failed him.”
Still, with all that said, the network carrying the trial missed the point. At the end, all racial over- and under-tones continue to win the day. It’s as if we don’t know any other way to go.
After the verdict, a television panel answered this question: “What will be the legacy of this case” Some of those on the panels were attorneys. Some were journalists. None of them could go beyond his or her own biases.
“It’s as clear as black and white,” said television savant Nancy Grace.
Political correctness brought this case to trial, and it continues to define the national media perception of injustice.
The panelists all scratched their talking heads, wondering how all of this mistrust and discord between races can be addressed and solved. Many good questions were raised, but none was relevant. In reality, what we are left with is a 17-year-old kid, “face down in the dirt,” as Grace is fond of reminding us. And a defendant who was found not guilty of murder and manslaughter charges.
So, what do we do to ensure this horrible tragedy doesn’t happen again? We are left with searching for the real failure that brought about Trayvon’s death and for a way to fix it. It all seems so simple, but it isn’t ripe in the emotion upon which the media thrives.
Across our nation, we have apartment complexes, neighborhoods and rural areas in which a neighborhood watch has been initiated to help prevent crime. Volunteers patrolling neighborhoods help deter burglaries, home invasions and assaults, rapes and murders.
Zimmerman failed miserably as a neighborhood watchman. He did so many things wrong, although none of his missteps was illegal, including the tragedy of shooting Trayvon Martin to death. The Sanford Police Department, for its part, failed by not providing Zimmerman and how many others with the training needed to successfully perform the duties of a neighborhood watchman. All he had to do, after all, was to announce who he was to Trayvon that night. That would have allowed them both to arrive safely to their respective homes.
If we, as a law-abiding society, can fix anything, we can fix what happened that night, so it never happens again. A well-trained neighborhood watchman is all that was needed.
Nothing more.
