Curmie Goes Contrarian (again): Don't Blame the Jury

Curmie is about to break with personal tradition and just rant. The key word here, of course, is “just.” Curmie rants a lot, but this time there are no links to news sources or other blogs, because you, Gentle Reader, either already know the relevant facts or don’t care.

It’s been well under 24 hours since the verdict in this month’s Trial of the Century, but everyone and his great-aunt Tillie has by now weighed in on the George Zimmerman acquittal. Most of Curmie’s left-leaning friends (which is to say most—not all—of Curmie’s friends) have opined about “justice” and the “racist society” and similar high-sounding but ultimately hollow catch-phrases.

No one—correction: none of the principals—looks good in this case. Curmie’s netpal Jack Marshall over at Ethics Alarms has repeatedly called this an “ethics train wreck”; sometimes Jack errs on the side of understatement. (I promised you no links—you are adept with net browsers, Gentle Reader: employ one at your discretion.) Trayvon Martin was not the angelic youth he was portrayed as being. His girlfriend lied before changing her story (or, possibly, told the truth and then lied because it was more efficacious to do so). Martin’s parents politicized the case, suggesting with little evidence that the lack of prosecutorial vigor was purely based on race, and far too many politicians—up to and including the POTUS—rose to that bait.

The police who first investigated the case glanced at a dead teenager and released his admitted killer after a few perfunctory questions, failed to conduct an appropriate investigation, and generally screwed up at every conceivable opportunity. Their stupidity, sloth, and general lack of commitment may or may not have been grounded in racism. There are racist cops. But not every case involving people of different races—or religions, or sexes, or whatever—is specifically about that difference. And racism is only one of many forms of stupidity.

The media incompetently and quite likely intentionally distorted the case—remember when the doctored tape of Zimmerman’s call to the police made it seem like he volunteered information about Martin’s race, when in fact he was responding to a question? There are other examples, but that one, to me, was the most egregious.

The DA’s office dithered, punted, and was ultimately over-ruled by authorities who, it could be readily and credibly be argued, were at least as interested in advancing either their own political careers or at least their political agendas. The prosecution in the actual trial appears to have been roughly akin to that in the O.J. Simpson trial: utterly incompetent. (I say “appears to be” because, frankly, I do not share CNN’s obsession with this case. I’d look at news reports suggesting that the prosecution had lost ground on a particular day, but, frankly, there are a lot more important things in the world than whether one guy in Florida “gets away with murder.”) Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it: it’s an emblem for a larger problem. I’m not arguing that point. But comparisons to Emmett Till and Medgar Evers? Give me a damned break.

On the other side, there are the idiotic post-trial pronouncements by the lead defense attorney that Zimmerman wouldn’t have been prosecuted had he been black. Even if true (and I doubt it), this is in an utterly irresponsible thing to say, one which aggravates an already tense situation with no concomitant upside unless we think of lawyerly narcissism as a good thing.

All of which leads us to George Zimmerman. Was the death of Trayvon Martin directly attributable to his actions? Definitely. Could this situation have been avoided if Zimmerman weren’t such a jerk? Yep. Did Zimmerman’s actions stem from some combination of racism, arrogance, paranoia, and self-entitlement rather than conscientiousness? Almost certainly. Did he profile Martin, stalk him, precipitate the confrontation, and aggravate the situation on numerous occasions when he could have released rather than increased the pressure? Again, almost certainly.

OK, now the big questions. Is George Zimmerman morally and ethically responsible for the death of Trayvon Martin? I think so, yes. Is he legally, under Florida law, guilty of a felony? Probably. And the distance between “probably” and “yes” is known as “reasonable doubt.”

The cops were inept. The DA’s office was nearly as bad. The prosecution couldn’t convict a roast beef sandwich of containing meat. But the jury? From where I sit, they got it right. (Side note: when I wrote about the Casey Anthony trial—you can look that one up, too, Gentle Reader—I said I’d never question an acquittal. I meant it.) The foundations of the criminal justice system are the presumption of innocence and the abiding belief that it is better to free the guilty than to convict the innocent. Is George Zimmerman “innocent”? Nope. Is he “not guilty”? Yes. Yes, he is: legally, at least.

The howls of my friends are largely about “justice” for Trayvon Martin. He certainly deserves it, but his chance for that disappeared over a year ago, with the bumbling of every authority figure involved. To suggest that the verdict yesterday confirms anything is silly. The acquittal was simply the result of the jury’s doing the job they were charged to do. The legitimate resentment of those who believe that Martin was denied justice is properly channeled elsewhere. George Zimmerman deserves justice, too, simply by being a human being. He will probably—à la OJ—face a civil rights charge and a civil suit. Chances are, with a lower burden of proof in the latter, he won’t escape scot free. Does that constitute justice? No, but it’s as good as we’re going to get. And that is not an indictment of the system.

Bill Cosby Cuts through the Clutter

It may be a little ironic that I'm the one saying this, but I really do think it’s kind of problematic that entertainers seem to have a more thoroughgoing understanding of the world than the so-called pundits do. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert aren’t watched by so many people just because they’re funny: they’re also a more reliable source of information than most journalists are, especially to those with enough of an understanding of humor to readily differentiate between objective fact-telling and comedic exaggeration.

To these gentlemen, I would add the name of Bill Cosby, whose recent comments on the Trayvon Martin case are as cogent as they are measured. No, I don’t agree with him all the time (what fun would that be?), but Mr. Cosby, unlike a number of other celebrities from Spike Lee on the left to Ted Nugent on the right, is almost always worth listening to. His remarks on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Candy Crowley seem to me to cut to the heart of the issue:

When a person has a gun, sometimes their mind clicks, that this thing… will win arguments and straighten people out, and then in the wrong hands, in the wrong mind, it’s death….

You’ve got to protect yourself in your own home. But I also believe that when you tell me that you’re going to protect the neighborhood that I live in, I don’t want you to have a gun. I want you to be able to see something, report it, and get out of the way…. I don’t want you to get hurt. And I don’t want you to hurt anyone….

What is solved by saying “he’s a racist; that’s why he shot the boy”? …. It doesn’t make any difference if he’s racist or not racist: if he’s scared to death, and not a racist, it’s still a confrontational provoking of something….

I used to have gun. The policeman who okayed it said to me, “Mr. Cosby, when you pull this trigger, you can’t call it back.”

It’s not entirely clear whether Cosby is merely mouthing pedestrian liberal platitudes about gun control. Even if he is, he’s raised the level of discourse on the Martin/Zimmerman case considerably. But he just might be concentrating his attention (and therefore ours) on a more specific issue: the notion that those entrusted with our protection ought not to make us less safe.

The idea of a neighborhood watch, at least in the truest sense, is virtually an inherent good. People who actually live in the area come to know who belongs and who doesn’t, and they’ll have a particular interest in maintaining order. But strap a gun onto an otherwise model citizen, and there’s a good chance he’s going to go all Junior G-Man on you.

I talked last time about the alarming and precipitous decline in the importance of the police and quasi-police officers employing pepper spray irresponsibly. What is shocking here is the increased availability of this stuff to low-level (and presumably relatively untrained) personnel, not that the underlings are likely to abuse what little authority they have: that part is entirely predictable. It’s the same phenomenon that feeds the self-importance of small-town cops: call it the Barney Fife Syndrome.

It may be that George Zimmerman is a racist, but the two central pieces of evidence that he might be are unconvincing at best. Silly me, I believed the tape of Zimmerman’s 911 call released by the media was… you know… real. It turns out to have been manipulated by some unethical jerk of a producer, whether out of political motives tied to ends-justifies-the-means thinking or simply a desire to make the story “sexier,” independent of its veracity.

Seriously, if you believe the “a mistake, not a purposeful act” argument employed by “sources,” please leave this blog immediately. This is fare intended for those with IQs above room temperature. NBC, this go-‘round’s sanctuary of mendacious pseudo-journalism, fired the “veteran producer” involved, but of course never identified the culprit so we have no real assurance other than the word of the people whose truth-telling is specifically under question that a). s/he was really fired or b). s/he won’t be promptly hired by somebody else. Anyway, the transcript of the real, i.e., unedited, tape shows that Zimmerman identified Martin as black only after being asked the suspect’s race by the police dispatcher.

Similarly, it wasn’t Zimmerman who made a big deal out of the fact that Martin was wearing a hoodie: no, that would be Geraldo Rivera, to whom neither truth nor the common weal have ever mattered nearly as much as, well, Geraldo Rivera. A more self-important grand-standing douchebag has yet to have trod the planet. The point here is that Zimmerman’s reference to what Martin was wearing, like the racial description, comes only after a prompt by the police.

It may be, as the anvil chorus on the left has intoned virtually incessantly, that Zimmerman was treated differently than would have been the case had the races of the two principals been reversed. It does not strain the brain overmuch to imagine that cops and district attorneys in a small southern town might (not to say did) inappropriately factor race into their thinking. But even if that’s true, it’s not Zimmerman’s fault. Was he really supposed to demand to be arrested for actions he apparently didn’t think were criminal, just because the guy with a bullet in him had a little more melanin than Zimmerman himself?

More to the point, however, is Cosby’s point: it doesn’t matter. Zimmerman may or may not be a racist, may or may not have thought himself at risk, may or may not have perceived Martin as a threat based (exclusively, largely, partially…) on the basis of race. But a couple of things are clear: if Zimmerman had listened to the dispatcher and not followed Martin, the latter would still be alive and the former would like his life right now a whole lot more. And if Zimmerman were unarmed, the chances are he’d have stayed put and waited for the cops to show up. Also, of course, it’s a lot harder to shoot someone if you don’t have a weapon.

I’ll leave it to others to cite statistics and to wax rhetorical about the ALEC-driven “Stand Your Ground” law that (wait for it…) may or may not have contributed to the tragic events in Florida. Nor am I interested in debating the intricacies of gun control legislation. Did George Zimmerman have a legal right to carry a gun? Yes. When all the facts are in, might we (meaning all of us but the hopeless ideologues) agree that he did nothing illegal according to the laws of the jurisdiction? Yes. Even in the absence of such consensus, might a “not guilty” verdict be appropriate on the basis of reasonable doubt? Yes. Was it a good idea to have an apparently untrained, slightly paranoid, self-important yahoo carrying a loaded gun through the streets of his neighborhood? Why, no. No, it wasn’t.