Getting a fair trial for George Zimmerman may be wishful thinking…
Since George Zimmerman was first brought into custody yesterday, aspersitions have been cast should his case actually go to trial (there is at present some doubt whether this may even be the case) whether he will actually get one.
Whether we are loathe to admit it or not, George Zimmerman if he does end up going to trial (after all he’d been free for these last 40 days since the night of the shooting) lives in the state of Florida coincidentally where the crime was committed and where other infamous cases have been tried in the past. If there is one thing one can say about the state of Florida is it’s reputation for the torpid and the unpredicatable precedes it.
Take the fact that Mr Zimmerman was only taken into custody only after a public campaign forced the hands of officials. Although it was clearly understood that Mr Zimmerman had shot dead Trayvon Martin, it was held at the time by police who released him, that Florida’s ‘stand your ground ‘ legal ordinance essentially shielded him from the consequences of his actions.
As long as it could be demonstrated that Mr Zimmerman was acting from a point of self preservation (which suddenly has begun to take wider meaning) it will be difficult for the state to show he acted otherwise. But that is where the gravy train for Mr Zimmerman stops, as the reality is that his reputation and the collating of data, evidence and opinions has become so mirred that there well may be no one in the state of Florida who does not have a detached, influenced point of view on the case- which is what frankly scares Mr Zimmerman.
Offered Mark O’Mara, Mr Zimmerman’s new attorney as his client was brought in this afternoon to hear charges read against him:
“He is a client who has a lot of hatred focused on him. I’m hoping the hatred settles down … he has the right to his own safety and the case being tried before a judge and jury,”
Of course what makes the case even more interesting is the fact that if the state is to get a guilty verdict, they are going to have to prove that Mr Zimmerman behaved with a depraved mind and with intention to cause bodily harm, mortal or not. What they will also have to prove is that he acted with malice and hate, something that it seems many have already begun to believe is the living incarnate of Mr Zimmerman’s character.
What’s contentious is whethr Mr Zimmerman had behaved with racial discrimination in mind. Something not lost on the Martin family who have been able to mobilize the state to their cause. For the sad truth may well be that Mr Zimmerman would perhaps not be sitting where he is today had it been a white boy who had passed the streets that evening. Which underscores the notion, is Mr Zimmerman being sent to trial because of what many to perceive to be a maladjusted appreciation of class and race structure or simply because he killed a boy, the color of his skin never having once entered his consciense.
Perhaps though if we are to get a clearer perspective of what is at stake it may be pertinent to grasp what Casey Anthony‘s lawyer Cheney Mason has to say on the matter:
miamiherald: “It’s political prostitution,” Mason said. “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.
“The fact is there is lots of racial bigotry in this case,” Mason said. “And a lot of it is coming from the side of Trayvon Martin’s family. I can understand why his family is upset. They lost a child. But they weren’t at the crime scene. None of us was.”
Mason said Corey is too zealous of a prosecutor.
“This is a person who wanted to put a 12-year-old boy as an adult for murder. It’s just too much,” Mason said.
Either way, in a state with a history of politicizing legal precedent (stand your ground being one of them) and the presidency in 2000 being brought to trial in the state of Florida may not necessarily turn out the best situation that Mr Zimmerman could have hoped for, but then again, had he shot Trayvon Martin in another state, his preface that he was only enacting the stand your ground precedent could just as quickly have been thrown out the front door the very first day….
George Zimmerman trial: May now have his case dropped.
