Zimmerman: Can he get a fair trial?

Finally, “a victory for social justice,” said Joan Walsh in Salon.com. Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey’s decision last week to charge George Zimmerman with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in February was long overdue, given the damning circumstances of the case. Zimmerman pursued the unarmed, black 17-year-old because he thought Martin was “up to no good”—and then wound up shooting him in the chest. The local police in Sanford should have arrested Zimmerman on the spot, but decided that he had exercised his right to self-defense under the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law. “I would like to say it’s a relief” that Zimmerman is behind bars, said Jelani Cobb in TheDailyBeast.com. But the fact that his arrest took 46 days, “and only came after a public uproar,” shows how hard it still is for blacks to get justice in this country.

Actually, the case against Zimmerman is “stunningly weak,” said Andrew McCarthy in NationalReview.com. Under Florida law, second-degree murder requires the killer to have shown “depraved indifference to human life.” But prosecutor Corey’s affidavit offers no real evidence to refute Zimmerman’s story, which is that he fired only when an angry Martin attacked him. A cynic might conclude that she charged Zimmerman with murder just “to bask in the mob’s adulation,” knowing she’s likely to lose the case at trial. Zimmerman might even be convicted, said Mark Hemingway in WeeklyStandard.com, especially given the media’s poisoning of the jury pool with its bias. As this story turned into a national cause célèbre, the media edited Zimmerman’s 911 call to make him sound like a racist, and ignored photographic evidence of Zimmerman’s own injuries. So how does he get a fair trial?

The prosecutor’s affidavit may be short on detail, said David French in NationalReview.com, but what’s there is enough to “vindicate those who called for Zimmerman’s arrest.” Martin told his girlfriend on a cellphone call that he was going to run away from a guy pursuing him. The screams of “Help!” on the 911 tape, the prosecutor says, belonged to Martin. If evidence indicates that Zimmerman initiated the confrontation, as the prosecutor suggests, no jury will let him off. With so much racial politics tied to the case, said George Jonas in NationalPost.com, “a fair trial is one thing Zimmerman isn’t going to get.” But to have no trial at all in this explosive case would be unfair to Trayvon Martin and his family, and “perhaps unfair to justice, too.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up