Not Guilty

View 781 Saturday, July 13, 2013

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/13/george-zimmerman-found-not-guilty/2514163/

It wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Zimmerman had the mass of the media against him, and the threat of pillage and riots hung over the case. That is still possible. George Zimmerman Not Guilty: Florida City Braces For Riots

 Zimmerman verdict sparks worry of riots

 Rioting Feared Now That George Zimmerman Has Been Found Not …

And of course Preparing for Riots After Zimmerman Verdict Is Racial Fear Mongering

Now as I write this I see http://rashaentertainment.com/riots-underway-in-miami-after-not-guilty-verdict-in-george-zimmerman-trial/ but no indication of whether the police were prepared or not.

 

That. it turns out, was a false report.  It looked pretty tame on the video. 

Previously

Ex-Chicago Cop: Zimmerman Acquittal to Cause Race Riots

Social unrest will “dwarf the Rodney King and the Martin Luther King riots”

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
June 28, 2013

Following a number of tweets making threats to kill white people if George Zimmerman is acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin, a former Chicago police officer warns that the outcome of the case could spark race riots in cities across America.

It’s now bed time in Los Angeles, and we’ll know in the morning I suppose. I am told that it is racist to expect riots, and we have seen that it is racist to prepare for them.

We have this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBtSN7-zoj0 but it’s a pretty tame scene compared to what happened after the Rodney King verdicts.

 

We have apparently escaped what happened in Los Angeles when white truck drivers were pulled from their big trucks and beaten and many stores were looted and burned.  Perhaps we have a restoration of sanity. 

Of course the verdict was to be expected given that the initial investigation did not result in charges against Zimmerman. The prosecutors charged with winning the case didn’t want to make the charge. One assumes that is because they didn’t think they could win the case, although there were also charges of racism influencing the prosecutor’s office. A special prosecutor from another county was then directed to charge Zimmerman. The new team put on a brave face and tried their best to win, but they started from a bad position.

The media were mostly in favor of convicting Zimmerman of something. In Los Angeles many talk show hosts openly stated that Zimmerman was guilty and deserved severe punishment. At the last minute the prosecution decided to allow a lesser verdict of manslaughter; given the use of a gun, this cold have resulted in thirty years imprisonment. There was even speculation about child endangerment (also with a gun) but that came to nothing. This could have been interpreted as desperation on the part of the prosecution.

Zimmerman, meanwhile, was designated as a “white Hispanic”, the first and only member of that racial group I have ever heard of. And despite the clear language of the Constitution about double jeopardy, there are already plans to find new ways to prosecute Zimmerman. There may be interesting times ahead.

Or perhaps not. It is still possible that sanity will prevail.

But what really happened in the Zimmerman case? All we can say for certain is that the prosecution could not convince a jury that whatever it was, it did not rise to as criminal act. A seventeen year old youth was killed in a situation in which he had as much right to be present as did Mr. Zimmerman. There are mixed stories of how that came about. There was enormous pressure on the jury to convict – some riot threats were made well before the jury was selected, and if we are aware of those threats in Los Angeles it’s a more than fair assumption that all of Florida has heard them. There are a number of precautions taken to protect the jury from retaliation by those who find the verdict monstrous; the jurors must have been aware of some of this. Nevertheless they convicted Zimmerman of nothing.

Over time the case will be tried again and again on line, in books, in documentary films, all with one or another slant; but in the end we know about as much tonight as we will ever know about what really happened.

And that is enough for tonight. We will know more in the morning.