Why do people defend george zimmerman

You see him reaching for a gun. You lunge at him to stop him from getting it, and your weight pushes him to the ground with you on top. Your position on top as you struggle does not mean you are the aggressor.

But this is all speculation. People cannot and should not be convicted on speculation. George Zimmerman was not proven guilty of either murder or manslaughter, and the jury, after some deliberation, reached the right result. If there is anything to celebrate about the trial, this is it. The system worked.

Some might argue, as Alan Dershowitz has, that the system did not work; that the case should not have been tried in the first place, and that George Zimmerman was punished by the process regardless of the outcome. Zimmerman certainly suffered from the process, as any acquitted criminal defendant does, and Dershowitz has a point, but I disagree.

By the standards of cases prosecutors regularly bring, this is far from the worst in terms of evidential strength and the likelihood of conviction Half the jury voted to convict on the first ballot. Moreover, the prosecution did not anticipate that on the eve of trial their potentially most persuasive evidence, the forensic testimony that it was Martin who was calling for help just before the shot was fired, would be barred by the judge.

Although this decision too appears correct, prosecutors have often been allowed to present shaky forensic evidence. If in retrospect the verdict acquitting Zimmerman was correct, the decision to try Zimmerman also had substantial virtues. Even if there are some who do not accept the verdict, trying Zimmerman enhanced legitimacy.

Binder The trial also highlights a fundamental flaw in stand your ground laws. If there was not enough evidence to prove Zimmerman guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, there was also insufficient evidence to prove him innocent.

That an unjustified homicide was not proved does not mean the homicide was justified. The case turned, as criminal cases often do, on the allocation of the burden of proof, an allocation that the defense emphasized in its closing argument.

On the facts as we know them either Zimmerman or Martin could have been the first aggressor. If a fight ensued in which each party attacked the other, the law appears to authorize each to use force, including deadly force, to prevent the assault the other. It is hard to come up with any policy justification for a law which not only authorizes either of two fighters to use deadly violence but also encourages it by overturning prior law that imposed a duty to retreat if retreat was possible.

Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. The story that George Zimmerman told about his fight with Trayvon Martin, the one that yesterday persuaded a jury to acquit him of second-degree murder and manslaughter, never had anything to do with the right to stand your ground when attacked in a public place.

Knocked down and pinned to the ground by Martin, Zimmerman would not have had an opportunity to escape as Martin hit him and knocked his head against the concrete. The initial decision not to arrest Zimmerman, former Sanford, Florida, Police Chief Bill Lee said last week as paraphrased by CNN , "had nothing to do with Florida's controversial 'Stand Your Ground' law" because "from an investigative standpoint, it was purely a matter of self-defense.

During his rebuttal on Friday, prosecutor John Guy declared, "This case is not about standing your ground. If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

The language here is interesting. It says that making a claim of self-defense grants immunity from arrest. It then adds exception for probable cause, which is the standard by which police make an arrest anyway. It then finishes by noting that should the court find the that the claimant is immune to prosecution, they can recover from the state all expenses.

I'm not clear on all of this because the language is so tangled. But my reading is that the pre-trial hearing is where such an immunity from from prosecution determination would be made. If immunity is found, then the state is on the hook for all the claimants bills.

I don't see anything here that excludes people arguing that they could not retreat like Zimmerman from such a hearing. But the jury found no compelling evidence that he did not act in accordance with the law. Research suggests that we find it aversive to recognize failures within our own system. In this case, both lawmakers and citizens alike need to try to overcome this predilection, because recognizing that a law is unfair is the first step to fixing it.

In this case, the facts are that George Zimmerman is not guilty, at least in a legal sense. Blog contributor.