How far you go in life depends on
you being tender with the young,
compassionate with the aged,
sympathetic with the striving and
tolerant of the weak and the strong.
Because someday in life
you will have been all of these.
George Washington Carver
B37, B29, and the Zimmerman Verdict
No, I'm nor discussing a game of Bingo. These were symbolic designations assigned to Zimmerman trial jurors to protect their real identities. I was thinking of writing a one-off post on this topic, but I have 2 other one-offs in progress, and I wanted to address the issue earlier than later.
It is not my intent to write about the Zimmerman trial. But to a certain extent, anyone who has ever been the target of an unprovoked physical assault may understand, although not necessarily agree with the nature of ,his response. When I was in high school, I was bullied by a bigger, taller fellow USAF brat Mike. (Don't ask me to explain how bullies pick their victims; I was one of the glasses-wearing geeks, which probably made me a natural target.) It was like his punching me on the head was on his daily to-do list. I don't think I ever told my folks. He usually did it after the school day. I would sometimes jump off at an earlier bus stop, but he would always manage to chase me down and deliver his blow.
Then one day I was waiting outside of school for the school bus, and I never saw Mike coming. He punched me on the side of the head near my ear, and it made me angry as hell; I lost whatever fear or intimidation of him I had and connected with a solid blow to his face. Mike was totally stunned as he wiped the blood trickling down from his nose on his fingers, looking at it. His younger minions urged him to let me have it, but it was clear that circumstances had changed: I was no longer afraid of him, and it was no longer sadistic fun for him. And the bullying stopped.
What does this have to do with Zimmerman? I don't know what I would have done in Zimmerman's place; he says there was a struggle for his weapon. I would like to think that I would have given Martin a warning without shooting to get off me and leave. But if I thought that there was a chance that he could disarm me and use the weapon against me, I would have done whatever it took to defend myself. We are not talking about having an hour to deliberate one's actions; it's likely a split second. I also am not sure that he had time to aim and shoot; one of the key points I stressed in past commentaries is that he shot once--not multiple times to ensure he killed him. I'm sure that he realized that shooting the weapon would wound Martin, but he seemed actually surprised that Martin had died.
There were a lot of the things about the trial that as a non-lawyer has me shaking my head in bewilderment. I have read that the judge would not allow the jury to hear that Martin had had a pattern of getting into fights. I understand the point about wanting to judge this incident on its own merits--but here's the point: IT WASN'T MARTIN ON TRIAL; IT WAS ZIMMERMAN. If we were discussing the prosecution of Martin on the charge of criminal assault and battery, it would be a different matter, But keep in mind that the prosecution was ludicrously attempting to argue that Martin was the one calling for help and was getting beaten up by the shorter, pudgier man. The fact that Martin had a history of getting in fights and Zimmerman didn't was something that the defense should have been allowed to present.
I don't know if the jurors have subsequently learned of evidence the judge did not allow to be presented, and I have to be frank here that I have not listened to the full interviews. But my patience snapped when I saw a CNN alert float by my inbox, nearly 2 weeks after the verdict saying that B29 believed that Zimmerman got away with murder. I realized that jury members are aware that there is a lynch mob mentality on the Zimmerman case, and jury members may want to distance themselves from Zimmerman and bow before the god of political correctness, but I personally think by grabbing their 15 minutes of fame, these jury members have dishonored our judicial system. They are certainly entitled to their personal opinions, but saying stuff of the nature that they knew Zimmerman was guilty but they couldn't prove it is like pouring gasoline on a fire
There have been chasms of misinformation around, like that Zimmerman was told to cease or desist or stand down the pursuit of Martin: in fact, he was told "you don't need to do that sir" in the same way that an accountant might tell me I don't need meal receipts to claim per diem or for petty cash transactions. It's not like the accountant ordered me not to submit. A common sense interpretation of what the dispatcher said is: "Zimmerman, you've done your due diligence; the ball is now in our court." I can only speculate that since Martin was in the process of moving to an unknown destination, Zimmerman was trying to track him for the police.
I knew when 4 jurors had distanced themselves from B37's earlier interview, that one juror did not join them (the news report I read didn't identify the jurors by id), and at least one Democratic website identified the missing juror as B29. We also knew on the first jury ballot, one of the jurors had voted for the second-degree murder charge. I give the two jurors props for standing by their verdicts, but those weren't the headlines coming out of the interviews; I'm sure they knew the verdict wasn't popular
The big point is that this should never have gone to trial; there never was credible evidence Zimmerman shot Martin for any reason beyond self-defense. DOJ inappropriately got involved behind the scene (i.e., rallies), the local authorities declined to prosecute because of insufficient evidence. The governor got involved. This was a corruption of our justice system; it was manipulated for political purposes.
I've made it clear that I am not a fan of Zimmerman. A young man is dead. Zimmerman exercised bad judgment, as did Trayvon Martin. It's senseless tragedy. I understand why people want to hold someone, anyone responsible. I read the other day a 13-year-old boy was practicing pro wrestling moves on his 5-year-old half-sister and killed her. He's been charged with second-degree murder. I don't think he intended to kill his little sister; I always wanted children of my own, and I can only imagine the anguish of a father whom finds himself losing up to 2 children from the same incident.
A sad postscript to the Zimmerman saga: Zimmerman recently helped rescue a family of 4 from an overturned SUV, but the family recently backed out of a news conference for fears of getting targeted by the anti-Zimmerman zealots. Note that there were multiple independent witnesses of the incident, but the zealots are claiming the rescue was staged to rehabilitate Zimmerman's image. How pathetic are these zealots?
Kevin Williamson, "Bring on the Draconian Cuts", Thumbs UP
This post isn't very long or detailed, but it discusses a classic example of the dysfunction in Washington DC. To be fair, the House can't do big things with the Senate and White House controlled by big-spending populist demagogues. They end up with minuscule cuts in domestic programs, in this case nibbling at the Department of Energy expenditures and regulation--and no doubt draw histrionic responses from Senate Majority Leader Reid or Obama, with vows of vetoes. The way I feel is as long as these political hacks are going to bitch, make it worthwhile--like eliminate the Dept. of Energy. Williamson does a good job identifying my point of view:
The people who receive grants and other financial benefits under those programs will howl, and — more important — those who earn their living staffing those programs will fight to the death to avoid the hunt for productive employment in the real economy. That is why spending reductions on those kinds of programs are never really enough: You have to eliminate the program entirely.
Obligatory reminder: None of this matters very much [relative to the $3.7T federal budget] without entitlement reform and controls on defense spending...The best course of action would be to turn the department’s defense functions over to Defense and its research functions over to the National Science Foundation and to zero out most of the rest. That’s what real fiscal reform would look like.D'accord.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Henry Payne and Townhall |
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups Redux
The Beatles, "Strawberry Fields Forever"
