After depriving unarmed teen of life, Zimmerman gets to walk…
What’s new? The killer of an unarmed young Black male walks.
The judicial system miserably failed Trayvon Martin, in Sanford, Florida much in the same manner in which Southern Courts used to ignore crimes against Black citizens even when the evidence of guilt against the perpetrators was clear.
The Department of Justice must pursue civil rights charges against George Zimmerman for depriving Trayvon Martin of his life based on racial profiling and presuming he was a criminal because he was Black.
Zimmerman called the police to complain of a “suspicious” man whom he decides to follow on the night of February 26, 2012.
Why was he suspicious? Because Zimmerman didn’t know him and he was Black and wearing a hoodie on the drizzly night. What’s more he was in Zimmerman’s neighborhood.
“Fucking punks,” Zimmerman lamented, even as the dispatcher told him not to continue following, since the reason he had called was presumably to have law enforcement get there and handle the matter. “They always get away.”
So why did Zimmerman pursue 17-year- old Trayvon Martin that night last year? Zimmerman knew he was not a police officer and that he would not be able to make an arrest.
If Zimmerman believed Trayvon Martin was dangerous — and presumably that’s why he decided to call the police– why did he continue pursuit? Why was he ready and willing to take the chance?
Because 28 -year -old George Zimmerman was armed with a loaded gun. He knew he had the capacity to kill Trayvon Martin.
Based on his own words, we now know he had the disposition as well, if need be: “The fucking punks,” he’d declared. “They always get away.”
Zimmerman followed Trayvon Martin that night. Zimmerman ended up killing Trayvon Martin that night.
Trayvon Martin wasn’t out to harm anyone that night. All he did was leave his father’s home briefly and go out to the store for a soda and a bag of skittles.
The Florida verdict is an ugly miscarriage of justice.
It shows that in some parts of U.S. states, in the 21st century, even when the facts and the wrongs are so clear, it’s still hard to convince an essentially White jury to convict a non-Black person for murdering a Black male teenager.
In the old Pre-Civil Rights Movement days it was impossible for Black victims of atrocious crimes by Whites in the South to get justice. White jurors were simply not willing to convict those who committed crimes, including heinous ones, even when the evidence was so abundant and clear, as in the trial of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam who brutally murdered Emmett Till in 1955.
The federal government had to eventual start interceding in many cases to ensure that justice was delivered.
In Florida it was clear from the get-go that Trayvon Martin would have a hard time getting justice. His killer was initially not even arrested for six weeks and it took civil protests and the assignment of a special prosecutor.
Here is a case where the federal government must step in.
There must be some clear indication that some court somewhere in these United States values the lives of young Black males.
