The Zimmerman Trial: Just One More All-or-Nothing Moment for Our Nation’s Media
with Jim Geraghty
July 15, 2013
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that so many of our fellow citizens are choosing sides on Team Trayvon or Team Zimmerman, and insisting that the only form of “justice” would be the verdict that they prefer.
Why must we pick a side? Why is there this compulsion to declare one side is the “good guy” here? Keep in mind, everything Mark Steyn is saying here is right, that a criminal-justice system, terrified of public opinion, threw a slew of implausible charges against the defendant, while a slew of loud voices in the media and in government tried to shoehorn murky events into a simplistic narrative that inflames racial tensions.
Everyone remembers the president’s comment, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” But another bit of faux-insightful blather the president said that day is even more irksome, hisdeclaration, “All of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen.”
Er, no, not really. We figure out how something like this happens with a police investigation and trial. It doesn’t require “all of us” to investigate, and we certainly won’t find useful court-admissible evidence within our souls.
Chances are, you’ve never even met anyone involved in this case. Chances are, there’s absolutely nothing you could have done that would have changed events that night. So no, you don’t really have to look into your soul. It’s not your fault.
Obama’s post-verdict statement offered more of the same:
I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son. And as we do, we should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities. We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis. We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin.
But even if we look at everything that was said and presented in this trial, and like the jury, we conclude Zimmerman did not commit second-degree murder, and in fact acted in self-defense . . . that doesn’t mean we have to lionize him. Being anti-racial-demagoguery doesn’t necessarily mean we have to be pro-Zimmerman. Part of Zimmerman’s defense was to insist he was not capable of defending himself in a physical altercation. Not merely not that good at fighting, his former trainer said he could barely throw a punch:
Jurors were presented an unflattering assessment of Zimmerman’s physical abilities this week: Soft. Unathletic.
Days after testimony by a state witness that Zimmerman had been training in mixed-martial-arts, the defense called on Zimmerman’s trainer to counter the notion that he was a capable fighter.
“He’s just soft, physically soft,” said Adam Pollock, of Kokopelli’s Gym and Training Center in Longwood.
The trainer said Zimmerman started out at a 0.5 in grappling, advancing only to a 1 or 1.5 out of 10.
The trainer added Zimmerman “didn’t know how to effectively punch.”
That’s a rather strange condition for a neighborhood-watch guy, right? If you know that you’re likely to lose a physical confrontation, wouldn’t you do everything possible to avoid one — i.e, not follow someone you think is up to no good? If you know that your only recourse if someone tries to harm you is to pull out a gun, wouldn’t you try to avoid that confrontation?
A court has ruled Zimmerman’s not guilty of intentional murder. He appears to be guilty of bad judgment.
Indeed, we have good reason to complain that the media anointed Trayvon Martin the embodiment of youthful innocence, relentlessly depicting him with old photos that made him appear much younger than he was when the confrontation occurred. Some evidence points to Martin not being the saintly portrait of innocence depicted in the Hollister-shirt photo — marijuana use, suspension from school — but again, nobody deserves to die over an evening altercation. But let’s also stipulate no 17-year-old deserves to get shot dead, before their life has even really begun. We’ll never know if Martin would have gone on to become a gang member or a success story, rising above a broken home and troubled youth. His death is a tragedy, and Zimmerman pulled the trigger and caused it.
Again, without proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman didn’t act in self-defense, that doesn’t add up to second-degree murder. (Some jurisdictions have different types of self-defense, and some have a category called “involuntary manslaughter” — most often occurring when one person punches another and ends up killing them by causing a brain hemorrhage.) By pulling the trigger, Zimmerman knew he would be doing harm to Martin, but he was not necessarily intending to kill.
