By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
“Now if I stop there it sort of sounds like I’m asking you to let my guilty client go,” O’Mara told the jury. “I’m not. He’s not guilty of anything but protecting his own life. But the quote continues, ‘but for guilt and crimes that are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished, but if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizens say whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial. If innocence itself is no protection, and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizens, then it would be the end of security whatsoever.’”
~Mark O’Mara’s closing argument to the jury in State of Florida v. George Zimmerman
Innocence? You remember George Zimmerman from the last news cycle, right? He’s the wanna-be Batman, who shot and killed Trayvon Martin on a rainy night as the teenager came back from the all-night convenience store. George was that “mellow” and “peaceful” man who just happened to pack a gun for self-defense according to his then-lawyer, Mark O’Mara. Exonerated by a hand-picked jury, one of whom now regrets the acquittal saying he “got away with murder,” Zimmerman, we were told, would just ride off into the sunset with his loving and apparently loyal to the point of perjury wife, chastened by the experience of being wrongly accused of murder. George was a victim in all of this his family said, and threats to his life were comparable to the Aurora Theatre shooting or the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He needs protection shouted his brother, Robert Zimmerman, Jr., in an email to St. Mary’s Police Chief Steve Bracknell: “Zimmerman is a Sandy Hook, Aurora waiting to happen. Your job is to protect the communities you serve and you are failing big time.”
George is under assault, you see, and the perpetrators are all of us — or at least all of us who threw some skepticism George’s way. But as recent events have shown, George Zimmerman may not be as innocent in the ways of the world as his spin-meisters would have you believe.
In September, George allegedly stormed into his father-in law’s house and assaulted Shellie Zimmerman, the wife who stood by him throughout the trial but who now says she has “doubts about his innocence.” After smashing up a few things, Zimmerman then allegedly threatened the former love of his life and hit his senior citizen father-in-law in the nose all the while brandishing that ultimate validation of the Second Amendment, a handgun. That case is now dropped after a smashed Ipad failed to corroborate the testimony of two — count ’em — two witnesses. Zimmerman is the Teflon Man, you see.
This month George did an encore — allegedly — on his new girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, who claims that she too was threatened with a shotgun after Zimmerman smashed up her stuff as heard on a released 911 call. George did his own 911 call rebuttal shortly thereafter and then sat peacefully in the dwelling amid his now locked away shotguns as the police broke down the barricaded door to arrest him. Guess the doorbell was on the fritz. Zimmerman, ever the object of everyone’s ill-affections, claims it was Scheibe who did the smashing and the threatening. News is now out that Scheibe contacted a reporter prior to the assault to discuss the details of her relationship with Zimmerman, which, of course, led to a chant of Zimmerman apologists that poor ol’ George is being set up and being victimized all over again. Oh, the humanity! George’s new love denies she set him up claiming she stayed with the man who scared her and has a “fascination for guns” because she wanted to help him. Oh, the humanity!
Whatever the truth, most all would agree that Zimmerman is a man on spiral and the direct isn’t towards the heavens. Por que?, you ask, of the man who was simply defending himself from politically driven charges in his epic TV battle? His former lawyer, who sort of represents him in a defamation suit against NBC, but who announced following the alleged assault on Zimmerman’s wife that he no longer represented him and then added he wanted to be paid for $2.5 million or so in work he’d already done, claims it’s all the haters out there who changed the sweet, innocent lamb of “stand your ground” ( I know it wasn’t raised in the trial but who would claim it wasn’t a big part of the case?) into the Scourge of St. Mary’s. It was all those misguided folks who concluded that shooting a 17-year-old kid armed only with a bag of Skittles and some Arizona Iced Tea was somehow, someway wrong that caused the trauma that now plagues sweet ol’ George Zimmerman.
“He was turned into one of the most hated men in America for having to defend his life. So I’m not sure what happens with a 28-year-old when you do that to him and put him in hiding for 16 or 18 months. Maybe this is some of that fallout,” tutted the admitted killer’s mouth-piece.
Whew! I’m sure glad now TV personality Mark O’Mara cleared that up. For a while there, I actually thought George Zimmerman was going to accept some responsibility for his alleged misdeeds. Perish the thought that some remorse is in order for the man whose estranged wife calls a “pacing lion,” and a”ticking time bomb.”
Nope, we’re all indicted in Zimmerman’s blind rage — allegedly — and it seems everyone around him and even beyond is “in” on the conspiracy to get George. The only innocent in this mess, as Mr. O’Mara claimed then and now, is George. Formerly a victim of politics and now one of society imposed trauma, Zimmerman ought to swear out his own arrest warrant on all of us who believe, as that juror with the slow forming epiphany, that maybe George really did “[get] away with murder.” Ol’ George has become a bastardized version of Janis Ian’s classic tale of woe and the new Society’s Child having been ruthlessly battered by all of us based on our unfounded prejudices. Quite ironic given the history of the case.
If we’re lucky, at our trial we can have Mark O’Mara sitting with us a counsel table and the Zimmerman jury as our judges. We’ll be exonerated from every sin — both now and in the future — no matter how despicably we act. Allegedly, of course.
Source: Click Orlando
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Ross:
I respect decisions that are based on fact and that bear up under the test of time elsewise I would shouting to the heavens that OJ is really an innocent man and that all those angry white guys exonerated by Southern juries in the 1960s after murdering African-Americans were icons of American jurisprudence.
I’m not. Juries are as perfect as most other human institutions.
Ignoring jury verdicts harms African-Americans and minorities the most longterm but here is why you should respect the jury verdict:
Using conservative math, let’s say one day of jury duty equates to 4-6 hours. A trial that takes 10 days would equate to 40-60 hours of jurors listening to testimony, studying laws and legal precedent. A 20 day trial would equate to 80-120 hours of jurors weighing evidence and testimony.
The average arm-chair quarterback usually listens to less than an hour from a biased news media report and never studies the actual statutes.
Again, in the American justice system, the standard of proof is not about a single case. Even if Zimmerman is guilty, thousands or millions of innocent suspects could be harmed if we pervert our constitutional system – a net harm to innocent Americans.
If prosecutors and police can essentially blacklist and harass these citizens after the verdict is rendered (which is a crime under federal color of law statutes) – where does it end?
The canine community is very offended by some of the comments here. They advise that such comments do not represent the views of their community.
As to Z. He is one of those people for whom introspection leads to the absolute conclusion that everyone else is to blame and that he is always right! We have a lot of those in our Congress and elsewhere. The fact that they can easily their hands on multiple guns is frightening.
As to the way in which the police entered the home, I do believe that police more often than not abuse their power but the 911 calls in this case seem to support their actions.
One more thing don’t mention Bradley Manning in the same context as Zimmerman the cases are so dissimilar. One guy did the right thing and was tortured for it, the other Z. Is a danger to anyone he encounters and he has guns.
Poor Georgie….. Everyone’s picking on him….. Now he knows how Bus feels….. The court of public opinion stinks….
This is the first time I’ve liked your blog. As a registered republican, older white Floridian, I was becoming upset with being lumped in the same pot with those who agreed with the “not guilty verdict,” as per a pew poll. I kept asking where are all those conservative voices who normally echo the familiar refrains that one should take responsibility for one’s poor judgment and actions. Unfortunately, this last incident doesn’t pass the smell test. I’m waiting until all the facts have been collected.
Dredd
1, November 23, 2013 at 9:47 am
Sooner or later someone is going to die as a result.
… His first victim already meet that fate.
Ross:
“When a jury renders a verdict, everyone should respect the jury decision. ”
Not quite.
Everyone has to accept that this was the verdict. That’s the law. That’s all.
The jury appears to have believed that unless they could see clear evidence that Zimmerman had intended to kill Martin, then they had to find him not guilty.
Zimmerman should have been charged with manslaughter. Had that case been presented, I think that the jury would have returned a guilty verdict.
Even the juror who – interviewed afterwards – was thinking ‘not guilty (of murder.2)’ from the start said that she would not have someone who acted like Zimmerman on her Neighborhood Watch. Her sop to any concience that she might have was that she belived that Zimmerman had learned his lesson, and would never act like that again. Right!
YO YOU RACIST SCUMBAGS,
(1) 58% of all arrests for weapons violations are blacks.
(2) 46% of all arrests for violent crimes are blacks.
(3) 73% of all “justified self-defense” killings are committed by blacks.
(4) 60.5% of all blacks are armed with some type of weapon at all times.
(5) 98% of all youths arrested for gun fights in Atlanta are blacks.
THE BLACK HOLOCAUST
JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
author@johnwfountain.com
Last Modified: May 6, 2012
Imagine Soldier Field beyond capacity, brimming with 63,879 young African-American men, ages 18 to 24 — more than U.S. losses in the entire Vietnam conflict.
Imagine the University of Michigan’s football stadium — the largest in the U.S. — filled to its limit of 109,901 with black men, age 25 and older. Now add 28,223 more — together totaling more than U.S. deaths in World War I.
Picture two UIC Pavilions packed with 12,658 Trayvon Martins — black boys, ages 14 to 17 — nearly twice the number of U.S. lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now picture all of them dead. The national tally of black males 14 and older murdered in America from 1976 through 2005, according to U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics: 214,661.
The numbers tell only part of the story of this largely urban war, where the victims bear an uncanny resemblance to their killers. A war of brother against brother, filled with wanton and automatic gunfire, even in the light of day, on neighborhood streets, where little boys make mud pies, schoolgirls jump rope, where the innocent are caught in the crossfire, where the spirit of murder blows like the wind.
It is, so far, a ceaseless war in which guns are often the weapon of choice, and the finger on the trigger of the gun pointed at a black male is most often another black male’s.
The numbers alone are enough to make me cry — to wonder why — we as African Americans will march en masse over one slain by someone who is not black, and yet sit silent over the hundreds of thousands of us obliterated from this mortal world by someone black like us, like me. It is a numbing truth borne out by hard facts:
From 1980 through 2008, 93 percent of black victims were killed by blacks.
Translation: For every Trayvon Martin killed by someone not black, nine other blacks were murdered by someone black.
In 2005, — blacks — accounted for 13 percent of the U.S. population but 49 percent of all homicides. The numbers are staggering, the loss incomprehensible.
Add to the tally of black males 14 and older slain across the country from 1976 to 2005, another 29,335 (slain from 2006 to 2010), and their national body count rises to 243,996, representing 82 percent of all black homicides for that 35-year period. What also becomes clear is this: We too often have raised killers. And this war is claiming our sons.
But that’s still not the end of the story. Add to that number 51,892 black females ages 14 and older, plus five whose gender was not identifiable, and the total, not counting children, is 295,893 — more than the combined U.S. losses of World War I, the Vietnam, Korean and Mexican-American wars, the War of 1812 and the American Revolutionary War.
Is the blood of these sons and daughters somehow less American?
Two hundred ninety-five thousand eight hundred ninety-three . . .
Imagine the United Center, Wrigley Field, U.S. Cellular Field and Soldier Field nearly all filled simultaneously with black boys, girls, men and women. Now imagine that twice over. Now imagine them all dead.
As far as I can see, that’s at least 295,893 reasons to cry. And it is cause enough for reticent churches, for communities, for lackadaisical leaders, for all people — no matter our race, color or creed — to find the collective will and the moral resolve to stamp out this human rights atrocity occurring right under our noses.
Just imagine the human carnage and the toll to us all if we don’t.
I can’t. I won’t.
JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
MadDog:
No, No, No, Noooo, NO!
Jes*s H Chruch On A Stick! Get with the program buster! Are you trying to scr*w everything up got George??
He absolutely never ever ever approached Martin. No way!
All he was doing was perambulating along a public patway when Martin ran at him an attacked him – just because George had looked at him earlier.
Admittedly this vicious attack took place three minutes after George got into teh dark central path area. However, hanging about in the rain for three minutes on a dark cold night when out mission was to go to the store in our warm dry truck is just the kind of thing that any sane person would do.
;
Listen to Zimmerman on the latest 911 call.
He’s inside the house. He’s barricaded himself. We can hear the cops banging on the door. He tells the dispatcher that he won’t open the door for the cops because he has nothing to say.
The guy is a fruit-loop. A basket-case. A nutter.
He claims that his gf has smashed up her own place.
He probably would have claimed the Shellie smashed up her own iPad were it not for the fact that CCTV caught him doing the smashing.
And why did Shellie’s dad assault Zimmerman’s fist with his nose?
Poor sweet mild-manned George. He keeps getting involved with people who beat on him – like that ATF officer.
The women are the worst – like the woman he threw ( didn’t, didn’t, didn’t) around while working as a bouncer – and the GF who got a barring order against him – and Shellie – and now his latest flame.
The man’s a saint – having to put up with all that abuse.
.
It’s very simple.
Zimmerman isn’t a racist killer.
He’s just a very stupid person with a mental condition on top of that. He’s on a cocktail of drugs with alarming side-effects for a condition that is alarming in the first place.
His head is and has been a complete mess.
He’s also a consummate liar.
To quote his latest – “He knows how to play this game”. Crazy like a fox.
“With his loving and apparently loyal to the point of perjury wife.”
That was a Saturday morning coffee spitter. Good one!
The Stand My Ground Laws. Not “your” ground. Should exist whether there are sociopaths or psychopaths out there. Trayvon might have been a sociopath. He was a criminal. He was banging George Z’s head on the ground when George shot him. George might now be a sociopath. When he became one might be debatable. Had he not had a gun when he encountered Trayvon he might be dead. Had he not encountered Trayvon that night there would almost definitely been another Trayvon victim. Maybe just a victim of a minor theft by an almost minor person. But minor persons can beat the apCray out of an adult and minor persons need to be reined in. Which gets us to mommy dearest of Trayvon, who is all over the media as often as she can get there. She needs to be sterilized.
If you live in a rough neighborhood you might appreciate someone looking out for you in your old age while some punk is looking in your window. If you don’t appreciate a watchful person then you are a dumb schmuck. We should all watch out for each other.
Z’s wifeypoo was on the media the other night and I could not believe her rants. Both she and Z could lose some weight but that is neither here nor there. Kind of like stand my ground laws. Neither here not there when it comes to other schmucks abusing it perhaps. From the evidence of the Trayvon case, well presented on television, Z was correct in approaching the punk, correct in shooting the punk when punk was pounding his head in the ground. Trayvon’s mom, Crump, and the other howling rats would do well to find another way to capitalize on things besides the dead punk. The mom made him and Crump feeds off of him.
Mike and Carol summed it up….
Do you think he’s too bad to go to the service? He’d be dealt with a little more differently…. But maybe he is a coward after all….
George Zimmerman is a poor excuse for a human being. The only solid relationship he has in life is with the love of his life, his guns. He will kill again if he is not stopped.
Ross,
We can respect the verdict and still criticize it.
Not a fan of Zimmerman at all, but “two wrongs don’t equal a right”. This touches on a major abusive practice by some (not all) prosecutors and police on the local, state and federal levels. While we should criticize Zimmerman, we also shouldn’t give a blank check to authorities either and ignore their abusive practices.
Congress and state legislatures “prescribe” the precise punishment for the precise violation of laws (statutes). Judges or juries interpret those laws (passed by a legislature) and determine whether there is guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” in criminal cases or a lower standard of “preponderance of evidence” in civil cases.
It is NOT the duty or authority of prosecutors and cops to “dish out punishment” not prescribed by law/statute and within the jurisdiction of the Judicial Branch (courts) – not the Executive Branch (prosecutors/police).
From OJ to Bradley Manning to Zimmerman – we try these “suspects” (meaning doubt) in the press and media – then disregard the verdict by the jury. Or in the Manning case, an Executive Branch agency tortures a suspect (dishes out punishment) BEFORE the suspect receives a trial or verdict in court.
Even if a prosecutor or cop was justified in punishment, harassment, etc. in a single case – in our judicial system of legal precedence – a single case can affect thousands or millions of other suspects (depending on the hierarchy of the court). A precedent from last month can affect a case today in any court in the USA.
When a jury renders a verdict, everyone should respect the jury decision. Like OJ it appears the prosecutors and cops committed crimes of defamation and harassing citizens (under color of law). If they eventually catch the suspect using illegal surveillance and tactics – nobody holds them accountable for their legal tactics under the Exclusionary Rule and it is extremely hard to catch corrupt prosecutors and police due to lack of oversight (not stereotyping all officials).
Again these abusive precedents affect thousands or millions of other suspects that may be innocent – it’s not about a single case! Prosecutors and cops should be held accountable also for abusive practices.
leejcaroll,
I think you summed it up although it may be a little of both.
I am waiting for those who said Zimmerman was not guilty to make an apology. The scenario I laid out during the trial is the most reasonable one which is that Martin told Z to f**k off when he confronted him. Zimmerman most likely did not take kindly to that, and grabbed Martin by the arm as he was leaving. Martin then turned and either hit or shoved Zimmerman, causing him to fall backwards and hit his head, which is how he got the scratches on his head. As I asked during the trial, if Z was getting his head pounded into concrete, WHERE was the goose egg on his head? Turns out that Zimmerman was NOT on the concrete, but on the grass when he shot Martin. So even assuming Martin was able to get one lick on Zimmerman, his head was hitting grass. The screaming as we now all know, was Martin when he saw the gun in Zimmerman’s hand. Case closed. Zimmerman is a murderer.
Seems to me either he feels he has a free pass since he got one for killing Trayvon Martin so he feels he can get away with anything, or he is seeking punishment for the killing of Martin. Either way, he is someone who maybe should not be on the streets- a danger to others (and maybe self)
A classic piece of evidence for this:
(Sociopathy vs. Psychopathy, cf. The Case of James Fallon). Zimmerman may have passed through the realm of the sociopath into the world of the psychopath.
With a little help from his “friends”, the stand your ground law, and the criminal justice system.
Sooner or later someone is going to die as a result.
Mike S:
With a capital “B,” it seems Mike.
Alas Poor George we are coming to know you far too well and sometimes Karma is just a b*tch.