George Zimmerman NOT GUILTY
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George Zimmerman, 29, the Florida man charged with 2d Degree Murder for shooting and killing Trayvon Martin, 17, has been found NOT GUILTY by a jury of 6 women at a Seminole County, Florida courthouse.
George Michael Zimmerman was born on October 5, 1983, in Manassas, Virginia, and is the son of Gladys (née Mesa) Zimmerman, who was born in Peru, and Robert Zimmerman, Sr., a retired Virginia magistrate. He was raised Catholic, in a family that his father has described as “multiracial;” his father is a white American of German descent and his mother is Peruvian with some black ancestry through her Afro-Peruvian maternal grandfather. Zimmerman’s voter registration record lists him as Hispanic and a registered Democrat.
Zimmerman’s height is reportedly 5′7″ (1.70 m); and his weight is recorded as being 185 lb (84 kg) on his Seminole County Sheriff’s Office Inmate Booking Information dated April 11, 2012, the date of his arrest. Zimmerman’s height is shown as 5′8″ (1.73 m); and his weight at 200 lb (91 kg) on the Sanford Police Department Offense Report for February 26, 2012, the night of the shooting.
In 2009, Zimmerman had moved with his wife to The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida, a multi-ethnic gated community, where the shooting occurred. At the time of the shooting, he was employed as an insurance underwriter and was in his final semester at Seminole State College for an associate degree in Criminal Justice.In one of his interviews with police he stated his goal was to become a judge.
In 2005, Zimmerman was charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest, after shoving an officer while a friend of Zimmerman’s was being questioned about underage drinking. The charges were reduced, then dropped when Zimmerman entered a pre-trial diversion program. Also in 2005, Zimmerman’s ex-fiance filed a restraining order against him, alleging domestic violence. Zimmerman requested a reciprocal restraining order. Both orders were granted. The incidents were raised by prosecutors at Zimmerman’s initial bond hearing. The judge described the incidents as “run of the mill” and “somewhat mild” and rejected the prosecution’s claim that the incidents demonstrated that Zimmerman was violent or a threat to the community.
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Social media is all Zimmerman/Martin all the time I think. Most are emotional comments without any serious underpinnings. It’s all about race of course, as it always is, and it’s about those fucking Skittles. What if the kid had been holding a pack of condoms or an ounce of weed? I doubt we would have heard much about that….Our fixation on race is tiring and fills us all with a sad and lazy despair.
I think that James hit the nail on the head. This became a political football. This was a screw up from the beginning and it is going to send all the wrong messages. At the beginning the police chief and the District Attorney at the time made a snap judgement without sufficient investigation that it was self defense and they were not going any further. They were not even going to submit it to a grand jury for consideration. This started the outcry of racism and there lie the second set of screw ups. While I do not blame Martin’s mother and father for wanting a trial they, their attorney, and the media entourage started getting into doing the investigation instead of just demanding a more thorough investigation from the state. The one witness who could have shed some light on the initial contact was contaminated by the Martin family and thus, in addition to the fact that she wasn’t the brightest bulb in Florida, she was confused by her own different statements if not actually coached to bend the truth.
My hat is off to the defense team on the other hand. Self defense is an affirmative defense, meaning that Zimmerman had to put forth proof of self defense. In this case the defense attorneys were able to do that without Zimmerman having to take the stand which is usually next to impossible.
My take on the entire thing was that Zimmerman was, in some manner responsible for Martin’s death for the simple reason that he disobeyed not only the police dispatcher’s instructions to stop following Martin, he also disobeyed the instructions given to neighborhood watches everywhere and specifically to him as the neighborhood watch captain to not engage a suspicious person.
The danger here is that a precedent may have been set in Florida for the future with this “stand your ground” law and the “carry laws” regarding fire arms. People in large neighborhoods may not know everyone that live there or their visitors. Plus there are numerous cop wanna be’s. This tragedy may well be more and more frequent.
Perhaps if the police dispatcher had been more firm in the order to “not follow” Martin he would not have played “cops and robbers.”
From the distance of another continent, it appears Zimmerman was a cop wanna-be and really was seizing an opportunity to fulfill that fantasy life.
As far as what really happened, I doubt anyone will ever know. The incident has been politicized to the extent that, as always, people are going to believe what they want to believe. Even if facts were available, they wouldn’t change that.
The evidence shows that Zimmerman didn’t follow Martin after the dispatcher said “we don’t need you to do that.” When I say evidence this is Zimmerman’s own account, which was presented to the jury and apparently believed given the outcome.
…and so it should be. A terrible tragedy yes, but not murder. We need to reexamine our laws with regard to guns. If Zimmerman hadn’t been allowed to carry one no one would have died that rainy night.
Here! Here!