In a disgusting if not surprising development, George Zimmerman has been found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin. For coverage, see here.
Discuss, post links, etc below.
EDIT: This is a troll-free thread. If you’re coming here to gloat over the verdict, to use the verdict as an excuse to trash women or feminism, or post racist garbage, don’t. If you want to argue that the verdict was just and/or we live in a post-racial society, go somewhere else. None of us are in the mood for that bullshit.
Let’s look at some perspective:
Zimmerman says that if he didn’t have the gun he might be dead.
I say if he didn’t have the gun he’d have stayed in the car.
It’s not that I’m against guns. I like ’em. I’m good with ’em. I think however that the law in the US does a shitty job (in 21 states, or so) of dealing with the extra responsibility one needs to have if one is carrying a gun.
Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that Trayvon Martin was skilled enough with his hands/using a plastic bottle of iced tea as a weapon to put Zimmerman in mortal peril, Zimmerman acted with a reckless disregard for his own safety.
Why? Because he knew he could try to shoot his way out of trouble. That’s manslaughter.
He got away with murder.
Pell… you sad little man. This is not the hill to die on.
Self-defense is a problematic defense. It plays on the idea of the jurors as to what’s acceptable. Add race, and their fears of what they think they might need to do put a lot of the actual aspects of law out the window.
I had to spend time at work on Sat. telling one of my fellows that her fear of being stabbed on the subway wasn’t a good idea to carry a knife (says the guy who carries at least one all the time). Because pulling it out changes the equation (quite apart from almost never getting the chance to pull it out. I’m not even going into the mental/physical prep required to make pulling it out when someone attacks you an automatic thing. Weapons are complicated).
But when the “perp” one is “defending” oneself from is “black”, things change.
When you have a major slice of the public awareness being shaped by racist images and arguments… well there’s a reason whites killing blacks are acquitted at rates 250 percent higher than blacks killing blacks, and whites killing whites.
In Stand Your Ground Cases it goes up to 350 percent.
John Roberts can kiss my ass when he says “racism ended”.
Racism hasn’t ended. Slavery is barely in it’s grave. My grandparent’s knew people who fought in the Civil War. People who were alive when I was born had been slaves. That’s how fucking close we are to slavery. It may be dead (in the US) but the corpse ain’t cold.
Manboobz group hug!!! You guys always manage to reaffirm my faith in humanity whenever it starts to ebb
“quite apart from almost never getting the chance to pull it out”
You see my question about that? Is it even possible he didn’t already have his gun out when (if) he was attacked?
So much yes to the rest. What’s it about when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail? When you have a gun everything looks like a situation you can shoot your way out of?
And seriously, I can work a gun, I can even shoot fairly accurately, but I also know damned well that getting a carry permit and using it will just mean lugging more weight around, at best.
In semi-related things, I should add my second xacto to my bag, but that’s just because the scissors at my mothers office SUCK and the techs’ knives are, well, shop knives, not really “open the fucking box” knives…and that sort of reason is why one should carry a knife. Not to go stabby stabby but to cut packaging and the like.
In any case, the being prepared to use it part is A Very Big Deal. I almost certainly could’ve tossed rapist ex #2 off me, but I had nowhere to run to, was almost certainly going to injure him beyond a level I was comfortable with, and knew I’d get hurt worse when he caught up (and was sure he would’ve). And hey MRAs? When your partner is calculating this out will you “pile drive” away, it’s fucking rape, stop “pile driving” immediately.
I had a point there >.<
Zimmerman was prepared to kill, mentally as well as physically. Carrying a gun doesn't result in a dead kid unless you're mentally ready, and able, to kill someone.
And I see pecunium’s blog post says exactly what I suspected — Zimmerman had his gun out when he approached, assuming he was attacked at all. Because it just plain isn’t possible to draw under the conditions he was supposedly under.
Joins group hug!!!
From the things said at the trial, I don’t (in my expert opinion) have any doubt about his having the gun in his hand; or placed in a place easy to extract (say his waistband, in front) when he approached Trayvon Martin.
Did he intend to shoot him? I don’t know. I’d like to think not. I’d like to think he meant to wave it around and scare him. That would make it manslaughter, or second degree murder.
It’s not self defense.
Group hug time. Thank goodness for all of you.
Yeah I’ll buy it was in his waistband, but am under the impression that’d only really have made it possible to draw, under the supposed conditions, if the safety was off. And carrying a loaded gun, in your waistband, with the safety off? Hello Darwin Award candidate!
And yeah, I also want to think he meant to use it as a threat, but either way, he was prepared to kill, and did. Which is fucking murder (or homicide, or whatever crime that may be; morally, it’s murder)
I’ve finally worked out how I feel. Originally, I wanted to say raaaaage — but it felt distant and disconnected, like remembered rage from long ago.
It’s that same unsurprised but deeply shocked feeling when an elderly, frail relative dies. You knew it was going to happen, but the day when it inevitably comes is still profoundly shocking and distressing.
It’s the inevitability that’s the key. Because, if it hadn’t been Trayvon killed by Zimmerman, it would have been some other ordinary kid killed by some other far-too-ordinary asshole and getting away with it. Again.
And, being Australian, I feel sad and guilty about being glad I’m not in the US because a few hundred million people are in the US. And they seem powerless to stop the carnage.
mildlymagnificent: That’s exactly how I feel, too (except for the Australia bit).
http://judgybitch.com/2013/07/14/the-laws-are-not-designed-for-people-to-make-moral-or-emotional-decisions-verdicts-must-be-based-on-facts-even-when-the-outcome-might-be-dead-wrong-lets-talk-about-george-and-trayvon/ I hate to seem like I’m pimping this woman out, so to speak (my second comment here) – but I’m a new discoverer of her and it’s like watching a car accident happen before you. You can’t look away.
Is bashing the jury of women really all that they’re taking away from this? And when have feminists ever promoted the idea that women are more ethical?
women
In normal places, yes. Sadly, because Florida has fucked up laws, there the prosecution has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that it wasn’t self defense.
Strangely, this doesn’t seem to have worked for Marissa Alexander.
mildlymagnificent: You have summed up my feelings exactly (substituting UK for Australia).
For me, there is an element of mourning to this but also of guilt that, because of my distance and white privilege, it is for others to truly grieve and I must not make this in any way about me.
Okay, I saw yesterday where lensman stepped in (and stepped in it) and I haven’t been able to finish reading the thread because RAGE, but there was one thing he said in there I wanted to make sure got addressed.
“These laws got passed because of bad rulings where people were convicted defending themselves…”
THIS IS UNTRUE.
(not to say Lensman is lying–much more likely he has been on the receiving end of propaganda without realizing)
Go read Digby’s take-down. This was ALEC legislation. The case in Florida that sparked this? NOBODY WENT TO JAIL UNDER THE LAW AS IT STOOD BEFORE STAND YOUR GROUND.
It was an excuse. This was an ALEC piece of legislation. ALEC, of course, is a conservative think tank.
(and apologies if this was already covered at length)
Here’s a graphic representation of those numbers we’ve been slinging around, about the way SYG laws disproportionately increase the number of white-on-black killings deemed justifiable.
Sociological Images
Notice that there’s not really the same bump in any of the other racial divide categories. In fact, it appears to have a negative effect on some of those categories.
More relevant background on George Zimmerman.
That the judge ruled was not relevant at the trial, and could not be shown to the jury.
I spent a whole weekend not talking about the verdict. I never thought that it would go any other way…
The same way this country has thought about and treated young black men since its inception. Great strides have been made but in so many fundamental ways, we’re the same as we ever were. Look at this:
Zimmerman’s word taken for fact. As absolute truth. How? Why? George Zimmerman is a proven liar.
So I’m on my phone and can’t post a link, but it’s happened again: a white Florida man shot a black man in a gas station parking lot after arguing with him about his loud music… going to invoke Stand Your Ground…
I finally had to post something on Facebook just because I couldn’t stand the wishy-washy “Let’s not make this an issue/it’s not about race!” posts I was seeing. Yeah, sure, people, you keep telling yourselves you’re not racist, that if Zimmerman had shot a white kid or if he himself had been black, you’d be saying the exact same things. Whatever it takes to convince yourself you’re a special snowflake who hasn’t absorbed society’s toxic messages about black people, that you’re not part of systemic racism as a whole, even if it means blatantly disregarding OBVIOUS INJUSTICE IS OBVIOUS cases where race *might* play a part. /sarcasm
No, that’s not what I said on Facebook. I actually did “leave race out of it” and said I didn’t want a legal system that lets someone off the hook for stalking and shooting a minor. But maybe I should’ve said it just to thin out my friendslist. I’m too lazy and too infrequent a user to do it myself.
its not *just* about race now either though- they basically ruled you can stalk someone in a threatening manner until they fight back and then shoot them for doing so. think about the implications this has for women trying to escape a domestic abuser or virtually anyone who has been stalked. I have no idea why the prosecution didn’t hammer on that point, considering that the jury was full of women. It wasn’t until I read some bell hooks that I found out that people of color have the same kinds of fears of violence that a lot of white women do- its violence from institutions such as the police in addition to individuals. I had no idea and I suspect most white people don’t. We have been so indoctrinated into the idea that white people are the scared victims of crime that its hard for people to see the perspective of people like trayvon martin. Its such a shame that this opportunity for empathy has been completely wasted in the mainstream media.
Just wanted to step in and share Ta-Nehisi Coates’s wisdom on this.
Zimmerman was a killer, but the real culprit is Florida Law.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/trayvon-martin-and-the-irony-of-american-justice/277782/
@meadhreid, I can’t look at JudgyBitch’s post. It’s actually being blocked by my company’s pornography blocker. Can you (or someone) give me a summary of what she’s saying in it about the all-women jury?
Of course, I’m sure she’d say they were wrong no matter what they decided.