Trayvon Martin: Reality, Race, The Law, and Human Nature!
Some might ask, "why is there so much concern about the so called Trayvon Martin murder?" and "does this story deserve so much media coverage?" Many will ask whether race should really be an issue. The answers will vary, but the public so far has not grown tired of the story and the debates which have arisen because of it.
Reality dictates that despite all precautions the paths of persons will intersect and at time collide resulting in injury and even death. Trayvon Martin was walking alone with no intention of having contact with anyone. George Zimmerman was by his own admission had every intention of following and confronting Trayvon. The result was the death of Trayvon Martin!
Click on the folowing to hear the 911 call George Zimmerman made: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOpGAOXL5Uk and www.orlandosentinel.com/.../911-call:-yelling-&-gunshot-heard-in-
Race was more than likely a motivating force which caused George Zimmerman to view Trayvon Martin as a Black male who as he put it was up to no good. Of course he will deny being a racist, but who would not deny it under any circumstances.
When we listen to prior 911 call made by George Zimmerman we hear him always say that the persons he claims is up to no good or attempting to commit a crime is a young Black male. Now this might be true, but is not a reason to believe that every Black male whom he does not know is a criminal. Even if Trayvon did not walk directly to his destination does not give Zimmerman who was an unemployed, wanna be cop, self appointed Watch Captain the right to approach Trayvon.
Those who have sat before cameras and given interviews to defend Zimmerman, including his so called lawyers have never even seen him face to face. They are trying to place seeds of doubt and images in the minds of potential jurors and the public.
Now his so called lawyers say he has not contacted nor returned their calls, emails, and text messages. He seems to have a pattern of behavior which indicates non-compliance, disregard for rules, and lack of self control.
Human Nature dictates that if anyone of us was in George Zimmerman's place we would say and do anything to get out of peril, jeopardy, and doom's way. We would try to avoid being convicted of Murder at all cost.
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| Al Sharpton and Trayvon's Parents |
Angela Corey, Special Prosecutor
Trayvon Martin & George Zimmerman
Site of Trayvon's murder
George Zimmerman was booked into the Seminole County Jail in Sanford, Fla., on Wednesday evening on second-degree murder charges in the death of Trayvon Martin.
Special prosecutor Angela Corey announced earlier in the day that she would charge Zimmerman, who shot Martin on Feb. 26. Gov. Rick Scott had appointed her to take over after another prosecutor withdrew from the case, which became a cause celebre for civil rights activists and a flash point for race relations in the 21st century.
Martin, 17, was black; Zimmerman, 28, has a white father and a Latina mother.
Martin was walking back to the home of his father's fiancee in a gated Sanford neighborhood. He had gone to a convenience store for Skittles and an iced tea.
Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, called police to report Martin as a suspicious person and followed him. A fight ensued and Zimmerman shot Martin to death, claiming self-defense. Sanford police refused to arrest him.
On Wednesday night, the Orlando Sentinel reported that Zimmerman had arrived at the jail in Sanford.
In her news conference earlier Wednesday, Corey said Zimmerman had turned himself in, but she refused to say where he was "for his safety as well as everyone's safety."
RELATED:
Trayvon Martin family thanks God for charges against Zimmerman
Trayvon Martin case: George Zimmerman faces second-degree murder charges
George Zimmerman booked into jail in Trayvon Martin killing
George Zimmerman's booking
photo on second-degree murder charges in the death of Trayvon Martin.
(Sanford Police / Associated Press / April 11, 2012)
George Zimmerman was booked into the Seminole County Jail in Sanford, Fla., on Wednesday evening on second-degree murder charges in the death of Trayvon Martin.
Special prosecutor Angela Corey announced earlier in the day that she would charge Zimmerman, who shot Martin on Feb. 26. Gov. Rick Scott had appointed her to take over after another prosecutor withdrew from the case, which became a cause celebre for civil rights activists and a flash point for race relations in the 21st century.
Martin, 17, was black; Zimmerman, 28, has a white father and a Latina mother.
Martin was walking back to the home of his father's fiancee in a gated Sanford neighborhood. He had gone to a convenience store for Skittles and an iced tea.
Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, called police to report Martin as a suspicious person and followed him. A fight ensued and Zimmerman shot Martin to death, claiming self-defense. Sanford police refused to arrest him.
On Wednesday night, the Orlando Sentinel reported that Zimmerman had arrived at the jail in Sanford.
In her news conference earlier Wednesday, Corey said Zimmerman had turned himself in, but she refused to say where he was "for his safety as well as everyone's safety."
RELATED:
Trayvon Martin family thanks God for charges against Zimmerman
Trayvon Martin case: George Zimmerman faces second-degree murder charges
George Zimmerman, now in custody, could face life in prison
Related Content
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- Complete coverage of the Trayvon Martin case
- Tough-minded prosecutor in spotlight on Trayvon Martin case
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Read Angela Corey's speech from the news conference
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Florida's laws on second-degree murder
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Read the capias issued for George Zimmerman
WEB VOTE
Special prosecutor Angela Corey charged George
Zimmerman with second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin. The
right call?
Your vote has been counted, thank you for voting.
By Toluse Olorunnipa, Erika Bolstad and Frances Robles
frobles@MiamiHerald.com
JACKSONVILLE --
After 45 days, one lawsuit, dozens of rallies, cries from
thousands of protesters, more than two million petition signatures and
countless media reports, the neighborhood watchman who shot Miami
Gardens teenager Trayvon Martin was criminally charged Wednesday,
capping a public outcry unmatched in recent memory.
The man who went free the night he shot the 17-year-old unarmed high school junior in a gated community in Sanford now faces the possibility of life in prison.
George Zimmerman, 28, was charged with second-degree murder, a first-degree felony — a far more serious charge than the manslaughter arrest most experts were predicting. The decision to file the charge was made by special prosecutor Angela Corey, the Jacksonville-based state attorney for Duval, Clay and Nassau counties, who vowed to fight a self-defense claim and insisted that she did not bow to public pressure.
Calling Trayvon’s parents “sweet,” she referred to Trayvon for the first time in a way other law enforcement officers so far had not: as a “victim.” When she first met with the boy’s parents, she said, she began her meeting in prayer.
“We did not come to this decision lightly,” said Corey, who was assigned the case by Gov. Rick Scott less than three weeks ago. “We do not prosecute by public pressure or by petition.”
Zimmerman, who turned himself in, is being held without bond and is expected to appear in court Thursday in Seminole County court for a bond hearing.
“Anyone facing a second-degree murder charge is scared,” said Zimmerman’s new attorney, Mark O’Mara. “He’s concerned about getting a fair trial and a fair presentation.”
The charge came a month after the police department in Sanford declined to arrest Zimmerman, saying his claim of self defense was backed up by physical evidence and witness statements. That decision by Sanford Police spawned a national movement that made a martyr of a suspended high school junior whose name is now trademarked and known around the world.
The prosecutor’s decision followed weeks of nationwide protests, which were marked by student walk-outs in South Florida and throngs of marchers wearing hoodies — as Trayvon was wearing the night he died — in cities from New York to Seattle. While for some the case symbolized racial injustice — Trayvon was black; Zimmerman is a white Hispanic — for others it became a glaring example of the media’s rush to judgment and willingness to try a case in the newsroom instead of a courtroom.
A case that galvanized nation also divided it. Gun advocates, white separatist groups and other conservative commentators supported Zimmerman’s right to defend himself and criticized African-American activists, accusing them of sowing racial strife by claiming Trayvon was a victim of racial profiling.
Corey said race played no role in the decision to charge Zimmerman.
“We only know one category as prosecutors, and that’s a ‘V.’ It’s not a ‘B,’ it’s not a ‘W,’ it’s not an ‘H.’ It’s ‘V,’ for victim,” she said. “That’s who we work tirelessly for. And that’s all we know, is justice for our victims.”
But critics say the prosecutor’s zeal to quell critics may have gone too far.
The murder charge is “political prostitution,” said Cheney Mason, the criminal defense attorney who successfully defended last year’s high profile trial of accused child-killer Casey Anthony. “Now I don’t have all the facts — no one does — but you look at what we know of the case, and it looks like the prosecutor bowed to other pressures.”
Former Miami U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey suggested Corey might not stick with the second-degree murder charge through trial. A jury could, under some circumstances, toss the second-degree murder charge and convict of a lesser charge, such as manslaughter, he said.
To prove Zimmerman was guilty of second-degree murder, Corey will have to show Zimmerman acted with a “depraved mind” when he shot Trayvon. “This is an aggressive charge,” Coffey said. “And there are times when an aggressive charge gives more incentive for the defendant to seek a plea. The vast majority of cases don’t go to trial and end in a plea.”
Zimmerman is still being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division. In a speech at a conference in Washington, D.C., led by Rev. Al Sharpton, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said a hate crime would be tough to prove.
Trayvon’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, in Washington for that conference, said they were pleased with the charges.
“They took a look at the evidence and they decided that was the charge,” Fulton said. “We’re not the experts; they’re the experts. So we’re putting our faith in them.”
Her voice shaking, she told reporters all she ever wanted was an arrest.
“I say thank you. Thank you, Lord, thank you, Jesus,” she said. “I just want to speak from my heart to your heart, because a heart has no color. It’s not black, it’s not white, it’s red.”
Sharpton, who used his national television and radio audiences to help rouse the public, insisted that the charges only came after the people hit the streets.
“Had there not been pressure, there would not have been a second look” at the case, he said.
Corey declined to discuss in detail how the investigation was carried out, but her statements shed some light on how the prosecution team reached the decision on a second-degree murder charge. She said the decision was made last week, and prosecutors used the arrest warrant an investigator had sought early in the case.
Her investigators made several trips to the scene of the shooting, retrieving evidence from Sanford police and re-interviewing witnesses in the neighborhood.
“A lot of the witnesses had already made statements in public even before we took over the case,” she said. “A thorough review of all of the statements was done.”
Last month, Corey told The Herald that her investigators would be looking at a wide range of evidence, including the gun used by Zimmerman and the clothes he was wearing the night of the shooting. She said 911 tapes — in which someone is heard screaming for help before the fatal gunshot — would be “critical” and would be analyzed.
The Sanford Police and Zimmerman’s former attorneys had said that when all the evidence was made public — including unedited 911 calls — the decision to release Zimmerman after the shooting would be better understood. But Corey apparently found enough evidence to believe the state’s Stand Your Ground law did not apply in this case.
“If Stand Your Ground becomes an issue, we fight it,” she said.
The controversial law eliminated a citizen’s duty to retreat when faced with the reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm. The controversy that exploded after the shooting has put the future of the hotly debated law in doubt.
“We have to change that law,” said Benjamin Crump, the attorney for Trayvon’s parents. “Think about Trayvon Martin, how this might never have happened had we not had those things in place. We never would have had to go 44 days to start simple justice.”
Trayvon died Feb. 26 after he was returning to the home where he was staying from 7-Eleven, where he bought Skittles and iced tea. While walking back from the store to the townhouse he was visiting at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, Zimmerman, the gated community’s watch captain, spotted him and found him suspicious.
There had been recent burglaries, Trayvon was walking slow, “looking about,” and appeared to be on drugs, Zimmerman told a police operator.
Zimmerman, a married man who worked in the mortgage and insurance industries while studying at Seminole State College, had called police to report a variety of crimes 46 times in eight years. In the past year, he had reported black men looking “suspicious” on four prior occasions.
The watch captain’s four-minute call that night would be played hundreds of times on national media and scrutinized to its finest detail on social networking sites. In it, Zimmerman was heard huffing and puffing as he got out of his truck to tail Trayvon and figure out where he went, because the teen had taken off running.
The police operator told Zimmerman he did not need to follow him, and Zimmerman muttered profanities lamenting how the bad guys “always get away.”
Zimmerman later told police that, after the operator told him not to follow Trayvon, he headed back to his truck and that’s when the teenager came up from behind him. The two exchanged words and Trayvon punched Zimmerman in the face, breaking his nose, Zimmerman’s former attorneys and family have said.
A scuffle ensued, and Zimmerman reached for his licensed Kel Tek 9 mm semiautomatic handgun from the holster on his waist and fired once, hitting Travyon in the chest.
The Sanford Police Department immediately came under fire for its handling of the investigation, as witnesses said detectives performed cursory interviews to support the set of facts they were accepting as true: that Zimmerman had committed a justifiable homicide.
The accounts from witnesses were mixed, although they largely agreed that they all assumed that the person they heard screaming for help was the one who had been shot. Zimmerman claimed those cries were his unanswered calls for help, and Sanford police believed him.
“This matter is now in the hands of the judicial system and I am confident justice will prevail,” Gov. Scott said in a statement Wednesday. “As the process continues, it is critical that we be patient and allow the proceedings to move forward in a fair and transparent manner. I thank State Attorney Angela Corey for her diligence in conducting a thorough investigation. We will all continue to look for answers to the Trayvon Martin tragedy.”
Miami Herald staff writer Marc Caputo contributed to this report.
The man who went free the night he shot the 17-year-old unarmed high school junior in a gated community in Sanford now faces the possibility of life in prison.
George Zimmerman, 28, was charged with second-degree murder, a first-degree felony — a far more serious charge than the manslaughter arrest most experts were predicting. The decision to file the charge was made by special prosecutor Angela Corey, the Jacksonville-based state attorney for Duval, Clay and Nassau counties, who vowed to fight a self-defense claim and insisted that she did not bow to public pressure.
Calling Trayvon’s parents “sweet,” she referred to Trayvon for the first time in a way other law enforcement officers so far had not: as a “victim.” When she first met with the boy’s parents, she said, she began her meeting in prayer.
“We did not come to this decision lightly,” said Corey, who was assigned the case by Gov. Rick Scott less than three weeks ago. “We do not prosecute by public pressure or by petition.”
Zimmerman, who turned himself in, is being held without bond and is expected to appear in court Thursday in Seminole County court for a bond hearing.
“Anyone facing a second-degree murder charge is scared,” said Zimmerman’s new attorney, Mark O’Mara. “He’s concerned about getting a fair trial and a fair presentation.”
The charge came a month after the police department in Sanford declined to arrest Zimmerman, saying his claim of self defense was backed up by physical evidence and witness statements. That decision by Sanford Police spawned a national movement that made a martyr of a suspended high school junior whose name is now trademarked and known around the world.
The prosecutor’s decision followed weeks of nationwide protests, which were marked by student walk-outs in South Florida and throngs of marchers wearing hoodies — as Trayvon was wearing the night he died — in cities from New York to Seattle. While for some the case symbolized racial injustice — Trayvon was black; Zimmerman is a white Hispanic — for others it became a glaring example of the media’s rush to judgment and willingness to try a case in the newsroom instead of a courtroom.
A case that galvanized nation also divided it. Gun advocates, white separatist groups and other conservative commentators supported Zimmerman’s right to defend himself and criticized African-American activists, accusing them of sowing racial strife by claiming Trayvon was a victim of racial profiling.
Corey said race played no role in the decision to charge Zimmerman.
“We only know one category as prosecutors, and that’s a ‘V.’ It’s not a ‘B,’ it’s not a ‘W,’ it’s not an ‘H.’ It’s ‘V,’ for victim,” she said. “That’s who we work tirelessly for. And that’s all we know, is justice for our victims.”
But critics say the prosecutor’s zeal to quell critics may have gone too far.
The murder charge is “political prostitution,” said Cheney Mason, the criminal defense attorney who successfully defended last year’s high profile trial of accused child-killer Casey Anthony. “Now I don’t have all the facts — no one does — but you look at what we know of the case, and it looks like the prosecutor bowed to other pressures.”
Former Miami U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey suggested Corey might not stick with the second-degree murder charge through trial. A jury could, under some circumstances, toss the second-degree murder charge and convict of a lesser charge, such as manslaughter, he said.
To prove Zimmerman was guilty of second-degree murder, Corey will have to show Zimmerman acted with a “depraved mind” when he shot Trayvon. “This is an aggressive charge,” Coffey said. “And there are times when an aggressive charge gives more incentive for the defendant to seek a plea. The vast majority of cases don’t go to trial and end in a plea.”
Zimmerman is still being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division. In a speech at a conference in Washington, D.C., led by Rev. Al Sharpton, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said a hate crime would be tough to prove.
Trayvon’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, in Washington for that conference, said they were pleased with the charges.
“They took a look at the evidence and they decided that was the charge,” Fulton said. “We’re not the experts; they’re the experts. So we’re putting our faith in them.”
Her voice shaking, she told reporters all she ever wanted was an arrest.
“I say thank you. Thank you, Lord, thank you, Jesus,” she said. “I just want to speak from my heart to your heart, because a heart has no color. It’s not black, it’s not white, it’s red.”
Sharpton, who used his national television and radio audiences to help rouse the public, insisted that the charges only came after the people hit the streets.
“Had there not been pressure, there would not have been a second look” at the case, he said.
Corey declined to discuss in detail how the investigation was carried out, but her statements shed some light on how the prosecution team reached the decision on a second-degree murder charge. She said the decision was made last week, and prosecutors used the arrest warrant an investigator had sought early in the case.
Her investigators made several trips to the scene of the shooting, retrieving evidence from Sanford police and re-interviewing witnesses in the neighborhood.
“A lot of the witnesses had already made statements in public even before we took over the case,” she said. “A thorough review of all of the statements was done.”
Last month, Corey told The Herald that her investigators would be looking at a wide range of evidence, including the gun used by Zimmerman and the clothes he was wearing the night of the shooting. She said 911 tapes — in which someone is heard screaming for help before the fatal gunshot — would be “critical” and would be analyzed.
The Sanford Police and Zimmerman’s former attorneys had said that when all the evidence was made public — including unedited 911 calls — the decision to release Zimmerman after the shooting would be better understood. But Corey apparently found enough evidence to believe the state’s Stand Your Ground law did not apply in this case.
“If Stand Your Ground becomes an issue, we fight it,” she said.
The controversial law eliminated a citizen’s duty to retreat when faced with the reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm. The controversy that exploded after the shooting has put the future of the hotly debated law in doubt.
“We have to change that law,” said Benjamin Crump, the attorney for Trayvon’s parents. “Think about Trayvon Martin, how this might never have happened had we not had those things in place. We never would have had to go 44 days to start simple justice.”
Trayvon died Feb. 26 after he was returning to the home where he was staying from 7-Eleven, where he bought Skittles and iced tea. While walking back from the store to the townhouse he was visiting at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, Zimmerman, the gated community’s watch captain, spotted him and found him suspicious.
There had been recent burglaries, Trayvon was walking slow, “looking about,” and appeared to be on drugs, Zimmerman told a police operator.
Zimmerman, a married man who worked in the mortgage and insurance industries while studying at Seminole State College, had called police to report a variety of crimes 46 times in eight years. In the past year, he had reported black men looking “suspicious” on four prior occasions.
The watch captain’s four-minute call that night would be played hundreds of times on national media and scrutinized to its finest detail on social networking sites. In it, Zimmerman was heard huffing and puffing as he got out of his truck to tail Trayvon and figure out where he went, because the teen had taken off running.
The police operator told Zimmerman he did not need to follow him, and Zimmerman muttered profanities lamenting how the bad guys “always get away.”
Zimmerman later told police that, after the operator told him not to follow Trayvon, he headed back to his truck and that’s when the teenager came up from behind him. The two exchanged words and Trayvon punched Zimmerman in the face, breaking his nose, Zimmerman’s former attorneys and family have said.
A scuffle ensued, and Zimmerman reached for his licensed Kel Tek 9 mm semiautomatic handgun from the holster on his waist and fired once, hitting Travyon in the chest.
The Sanford Police Department immediately came under fire for its handling of the investigation, as witnesses said detectives performed cursory interviews to support the set of facts they were accepting as true: that Zimmerman had committed a justifiable homicide.
The accounts from witnesses were mixed, although they largely agreed that they all assumed that the person they heard screaming for help was the one who had been shot. Zimmerman claimed those cries were his unanswered calls for help, and Sanford police believed him.
“This matter is now in the hands of the judicial system and I am confident justice will prevail,” Gov. Scott said in a statement Wednesday. “As the process continues, it is critical that we be patient and allow the proceedings to move forward in a fair and transparent manner. I thank State Attorney Angela Corey for her diligence in conducting a thorough investigation. We will all continue to look for answers to the Trayvon Martin tragedy.”
Miami Herald staff writer Marc Caputo contributed to this report.
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