The Crux

Monday 15 July 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

I don’t have a dog in the Zimmerman fight other than the rule of law be followed. And the rule of law is clear: the prosecution must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in order for the jury to find a defendant accused of a crime guilty. The prosecution in the Zimmerman case didn’t even come close. That this case was used as a vehicle for much larger racial issues is a travesty, and reveals that many people have no interest in the rule of law. This case was decided in public just as soon as it was learned that the victim was black, and the shooter white Hispanic. Jonathan Turley at USA Today:

With the verdict, the Zimmerman case entered the realm of legal mythology — a tale told by different groups in radically different ways for different meanings. Fax machines were activated with solicitations and sound bites long ago programmed for this moment. The legal standards long ago seemed to be lost to the social symbolism of the case.

Criminal cases make for perfect and often dangerous vehicles for social expression. They allow longstanding social and racial issues to be personified in villains and victims. We simplify facts and characters — discarding those facts that do not fit our narrative. We pile meanings on the outcome that soon make the actual murder secondary to the message. Zimmerman and Martin became proxies in our national debate over race. There was little patience or need for the niceties of rules of proof and adjudication.

[. . .]

Ultimately, it was the case and not the prosecutors that were weak.

[. . .]

A juror could not simply assume Zimmerman was the aggressor. Zimmerman was largely consistent in his accounts and his account was consistent with some witnesses. After 38 prosecution witnesses, there was nothing more than a call for the jury to assume the worst facts against Zimmerman without any objective piece of evidence. That is the opposite of the standard of a presumption of innocence in a criminal trial.

Some people feel that Zimmerman is guilty without any proof whatsoever as to what happened that night, choosing to believe a narrative for which there is no objective proof whatsoever. That is not how we decide guilt in a system that respects the rule of law and not the rule of man. We don’t adjudicate guilt because we feel like he’s guilty. The state had a job, and they didn’t meet their burden. That some people wish to to blame the one legal mechanism, the state having the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, that keeps even more people from being jailed (particular those in the black community who already have an massive over-representation in America’s overly vast prison system), is flabbergasting but not necessarily surprising. Many legal experts argued that there wasn’t even enough evidence to bring the case to trial. That the prosecution wasn’t able to prove guilt in court should surprise no one.

2013-07-15  »  madlibertarianguy