Yes, Zimmerman should sue Angela Corey for defamation

The New Neo Posted on by

[See addenda below, as well.]

Not for anything that happened during the trial itself, of course. She gets immunity for that.

But the minute I heard that Corey had given a post-trial interview to the media in which she called Zimmerman a murderer, I knew this was (and I hate to use this overworked word, but sometimes it’s really appropriate) unprecedented. Prosecutors just don’t do that after acquittals. It shows disrespect for the system they serve, and it is a defamation of a person who is now officially Not Guilty.

Alan Dershowitz has been harshly (but correctly) critical of Corey since she drew up a misleading and deceptive affidavit against Zimmerman back in 2012 in order to start the ball rolling towards the trial, bypassing the usual grand jury process. Now Dershowitz has more to say, and he’s not the only one:

Outrage is growing over the jaw-dropping statement by Florida state prosecutor Angela Corey that George Zimmerman, acquitted of murder and manslaughter in the death of Trayvon Martin, is still a “murderer.”

Renowned civil-rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz told “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV that Zimmerman has reason to launch a defamation of character case against Corey.

“Clearly he is somebody who was acquitted by a jury on the grounds of self-defense and she shouldn’t be going around second-guessing the jury verdict and calling him a murderer,” the veteran Harvard Law professor said.

“He probably has a defamation action against her. She has no immunity as a prosecutor for appearing on television and if I were his lawyer I would think seriously about bringing a defamation lawsuit against her.”

On an interview taped after Zimmerman’s acquittal Saturday and airing Monday night on CNN’s Headline News program “HLN After Dark,” Corey is asked for a word that comes to mind for the former neighborhood-watch volunteer.

“Murderer,” she says after several seconds of silence.

Other noted legal experts also expressed their disgust at Corey’s remark, agreeing with Dershowitz that it could spur legal action by Zimmerman.

“That is shockingly inappropriate, unethical conduct by a prosecutor. And frankly, she might very well be sued for it ”” and properly so,” noted criminal attorney and CNN legal analyst Paul Callan told Steve Malzberg.

“Prosecutors get immunity when they’re acting within the scope of their employment as prosecutors. But appearing on a TV show doing a word association game is not going to give her immunity. Now that’s really stunning.”

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said the “murderer” crack was “disgraceful ”¦ a reprehensible thing to do.”

Once Corey is a private citizen again—which I’d like to see, because she ought to be removed from office and disbarred for her misrepresentations on the affidavit—then she can say anything she wants.

[ADDENDUM: Much more here, this time for prosecutor de la Rionda:

In an interview with ABC, Bernie de la Rionda suggests when a defendant doesn’t take the stand there is something wrong with the defendant and that he must be a coward. This is absurd, and the presumption of innocence in this country is part of the bedrock of the criminal justice system. It’s outrageous that a prosecutor would do that. And think about it: have you ever seen a prosecutor suggest such a thing? It never happens.

Angela Corey says, “Nobody just gets a gun out and shoots, even trained police officers. When they’re on the ground, with a suspect on top of them, they can’t get their guns out that quickly.” I thought the evidence was that Zimmerman was being beaten for about 45 seconds prior to firing his weapon. One witness, for example, talked about Martin doing a “ground pound,” repeatedly punching Zimmerman while straddling him…

Prosecutor John Guy said he thinks there was a struggle and that Martin saw the gun “and was backing up.” No evidence was presented in court that Martin backed up. Guy just makes this up from nothing. It’s unconvincing, and it’s disingenuous in that it contributes to the appearance the prosecutors are simply butthurt and that there is no ethical or moral limitation on what they will do or say when going after someone and/or trying to save their own skins. They will stop at nothing. And recall there was evidence presented in court Martin reached for the gun (Zimmerman’s recorded statements). There was also evidence Martin had the opportunity to go for the gun (during the “ground pound”).

I’ve never seen behavior like this. I expect it from civil lawyers, but not people with the backing of the state when someone’s life and freedom are on the line.

These people are running wild, crossing lines all over, violating conventions of public behavior that have been in place for a long time. And although I don’t want to blame everything on Obama and/or Holder, I can’t help but notice they have set the tone for such transgressions and do not respect old limits for what a chief executive and the attorney general should do and say and comment on, limits that have usually been respected by presidents from both parties. The fish rots from the head.]

[ADDENDUM II: I found this comment at Ace’s, which I think is spot on (unfortunately):

What they are doing is inciting the mob to murder. They are openly and overtly saying that a vicious, racist murderer has been allowed to go free. It’s an invite to vigilantism, and they f-ing KNOW it.

I actually don’t think it will work in terms of riots, although it certainly could help cause an incident or two or three. Some such incidents have already been reported to have occurred, but on a piecemeal basis and a small scale.

Zimmerman has a cause of action against Corey and perhaps the others. But this is bigger than Zimmerman. They are undermining the system they have been charged with upholding. They should all be fired and disbarred. I don’t know the procedure for firing, though. If it’s up to Rick Scott, fagettaboutit.

Corey was elected, so she might have to be impeached, which I doubt will happen—unless the mechanism would be disbarment, which I believe is ordinarily done by the state bar association. I have no idea what the Florida Bar Association’s position would be on her behavior, although I know what I think it should be.]

What do Steven Pagones, Kareem Brunner and George Zimmerman have in common?

The New Neo Posted on by

Why, Al Sharpton, that’s who.

I was previously unfamiliar with many of the details in the story at the above link; please read the whole thing.

Who among the three suffered the most at the hands of Sharpton?

For Zimmerman, it’s yet to be seen. He might have paid with a very long (perhaps even lifelong) prison sentence, but so far he’s a free man. And unless Obama/Holder decide to pursue him with further legal action of the federal nature, the most he has to fear now are those who might want to attack him illegally, whipped to rage by hatemonger Sharpton and so many others.

As for Pagones, he did rather well after the Brawley case, going on to have a pretty good career and even becoming New York’s Assistant Attorney General. He also managed to win a lawsuit against Sharpton and his cronies for defamation (Sharpton’s supporters paid up, because Sharpton refused to).

But it was Brunner (whom I had never heard of until today) who paid the highest price. I would call him one of those quiet heroes. He was a security guard at Freddy’s, a store in Harlem that Sharpton and others of like mind stirred up hatred against in 1995 [emphasis mine]:

Small black-owned businesses like Sikhulu Shange’s Record Shack were being pressured out by rising rents. In their place came larger, better capitalized, mainly white and Asian businesses.

Every political leader or street cop in Harlem knew this story, and should have been aware that serious problems would arise. Community activists who wanted to protest the eviction of black business owners had a responsibility not to let their legitimate complaints turn into a racial vendetta against non-black merchants. Yet almost all of them targeted the white-owned clothing store [Freddy’s, which was not only white-owned but Jewish-owned] as the culprit in the Record Shack’s eviction, ignoring the fact that the building’s owner, a black church, was the more important player.

In response, former street vendor Roland Smith set Freddy’s on fire and did some shooting, too, killing seven people—including security guard Brunner—and himself. But before his death Brunner had filed an affidavit, describing:

…harassment by protesters picketing the store…[and being] called a “cracker lover” and a “traitor” to his race. The Freddy’s affidavits describe a poisonous atmosphere, in which protesters shrieked about “bloodsucking Jews” and threatened to burn the store.

Traitor to Brunner’s race? And what race might that be? Why, Brunner was black.

Note, also, that word “cracker.”

[NOTE: In addition to Zimmerman’s planned lawsuit against NBC which that station so richly deserves, I’d like to see him sue Sharpton for defamation. Not that Sharpton will ever pay; but let his supporters have to pony up again.]

Honor, shame, Zimmerman, and Martin

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Kyndyll” asks:

I have noticed over the last week or so that a noticeable percentage of the group of the people who disagree with Zimmerman being acquitted…seem to be arguing from a perspective which views physical violence as acceptable or even desirable unless a weapon is involved. I have begun to consistently see variations of this viewpoint in enough places to see it as a body of thought on this subject. Usually, it features the ideas:
1) Hitting people is a perfectly reasonable response to a non-physical confrontation, ie someone watching you, or asking you what you’re doing or following you briefly
2) If you do these things, you have “started” a fight and while the other party is within their right to beat you, you are not allowed to use lethal force to defend yourself

I have noticed a consistent anti-gun viewpoint that tends to accompany this thought, but it comes with a bizarre pro-violence attitude that I have not typically noticed with most anti-gun people.

Honestly, I am not sure where this has come from. I’ve seen people lambaste Zimmerman as a weakling (not the word they used) and not a “man” because he was losing the fight.

…Do these people live in a dystopian movie? Where is this anti-gun/pro-beat the snot out of someone who looks at you sideways mindset come from?

Excellent question, and I’ll take a stab (oops!) at it.

First of all, do not expect internal consistency in the arguments of the left. But the pattern here seems to be to defend the rights of groups labeled as aggrieved minorities to use violence as they see fit against groups labeled as bigoted and exploitative majorities. That was why it was so important to label Zimmerman a white Hispanic, once they discovered he was part-Hispanic.

If the situation were reversed, I’m not at all sure a white person in Martin’s position who began to beat up a black person in Zimmerman’s position would be receiving so much support for starting a fight.

But there’s more going on, too, IMHO. There is a tradition that has only become more extreme in recent years in certain subcultures, of which the black underclass is one highly prominent example, to consider insults to some idea of one’s “honor” to be fighting offenses. Even looking at a person funny or “dissing” him is an opportunity for attack and for proving one’s manhood, if a person sees his honor as besmirched or disrespected. Could “following” be interpreted that way? Would Martin have seen Zimmerman as some punk (“creepy-ass cracker”) cramping his style—how dare he?

But even if Trayvon was following those codes, why would his white liberal supporters be doing so? I doubt they actually would be in their private lives, for the most part. But if you combine the first principle (“the oppressed are allowed to be aggressive and violent, and it’s all the white oppressors’ fault”—which by the way is pretty much the same argument such people use to justify Palestinian and other Arab Islamicist terrorism, although in that case the “white oppressors” are the Jews) with a second principle—the semi-glorification of violence, through popular culture such as rap music and otherwise, in response to rather simple provocations that could be interpreted as an insult to honor and/or manhood and an invitation to prove one’s toughness—then you have the toxic combination.

[NOTE: See also this previous post of mine.]

“Gun violence” and the Zimmerman case

The New Neo Posted on by

Post-Zimmerman-acquittal, we are hearing extremely predictable cries from President Obama and the liberal world that the case should be used to motivate a continued fight against “gun violence.”

But the only gun violence demonstrated here was the right to use one in bona fide self defense when suddenly attacked and overpowered and in fear for one’s life. Of course, facts like that have never mattered to many of those with an anti-gun agenda. They will bend the facts to their needs.

And believe me, those same liberals, especially if they are public figures themselves, will retain their own right to either own guns for self-defense or to hire security guards who carry them. It’s only poor peons (half-white-half-Hispanic-peons?) like George Zimmerman who shouldn’t be allowed to do so. He would have been more of hero to them, no doubt, if Trayvon Martin had beaten his head long enough to kill him or to cause brain damage—although actually, if that had happened, Zimmerman’s plight would almost certainly have been ignored by those same liberals.

The only person in the Zimmerman-Martin duo who appears to have been enamored of guns and their potential for violence may have actually been Martin, although he did not carry one at the time of the killing. Why do I say that? For this reason:

Don’t sit on a hot stove till the antigun crowd spotlights that.

[NOTE: The above video should start playing at minute 23:16. If for some reason it won’t play properly for you (every now and then it wouldn’t play for me), just go to You Tube and start watching it there at 23:16.]

The day after: some thoughts on the Zimmerman trial

The New Neo Posted on by

Just a few random thoughts on this case:

—The Zimmerman case has often been discussed as dealing with issues of race. And of course it does, although primarily because of racemongers who have stirred up that aspect of it for their own purposes.

I don’t think it actually had all that much to do with race for Zimmerman. One of the most important issues in the case, though, was that of self-defense. If Zimmerman had been found guilty, it would have been a very ominous sign for the doctrine of self-defense, and would perhaps have set us on a road (or been an indication that we were already set on a road) similar to that of Britain, where the concept of self-defense has been more or less gutted.

—Have you noticed how, after the prosecution kept calling Martin a “child” during the trial and especially in its closing argument, the use of the word to describe the 17-year-old Martin has escalated tremendously around the MSM? It’s “child” this and “child” that, said in the most solemn tones. Sometimes “frightened child.”

I’ve called this case a tragedy (for the reasons I have purposely used that word, please see this). I am not making light of the taking of the life of a 17-year-old for whatever reason. But Martin—and most 17-year-olds—was no “child.” In fact, had he committed a crime (and he apparently did in this case, assault and battery) and lived to be charged with it, there is a very good chance he would have been charged as an adult. To watch people on TV solemnly intoning “child” is to see their blatant and unapologetic propaganda at work.

—I really admire the defense attorneys in this case. Something about their demeanor seems incredibly smart and thoughtful, as well as compassionate. I very much enjoyed their post-trial press conference. West didn’t pull his punches, whereas O’Mara was the contemplative, almost Mr. Rogers-like one who nevertheless had some very sharp words about the media’s role in the case.

I didn’t watch all that much of the trial itself, but instead relied on Andrew Branca’s great summaries at Legal Insurrection as well as watching some of the video. But I did see much of O’Mara’s final speech to the jury live and was highly impressed. He’s exactly the kind of lawyer who made me want to go to law school, the kind that does in fact exist and has always motivated me to defend lawyers when people bash them in generalities. Yes, of course, I know what those people are referring to when they diss lawyers. But there are more lawyers such as O’Mara than one might think.

This article about O’Mara, written when he first came onto the Zimmerman case over a year ago, turns out to have been spot on—even the Atticus Finch comparison. O’Mara’s website reads, “Helping good people through difficult times.” It turns out that’s not false advertising.

O’Mara has an interesting combination specialty: criminal law and family law. Those were the two fields of law (along with jurisprudence) that most interested me when I was in school. In fact, they were pretty much the only areas of law that interested me. But early on I realized I didn’t have a lawyer’s temperament. O’Mara does. During his post-verdict press conference, he said something that highlighted that fact for me, and as a person who got a law degree but did not practice law I understood what he meant. I don’t have the exact text of his remarks, but when asked what was the best part of the trial for him (after answering it was the moment he heard “not guilty”), he added something like this:

It’s a trial. It’s where we [trial lawyers] live. It’s like a surgeon in surgery. It’s where you want to be.

It’s certainly not where most people would feel at ease or want to be. It was never where I wanted to be, I discovered, although certain things about law and even trial law really appeal to me. But I’m very glad there are people like O’Mara who do belong there.

Zimmerman: not guilty

The New Neo Posted on by

They just announced the verdict: not guilty.

I am stunned and pleased. Justice has been served. My cynicism—which had continued throughout this case—turned out to be incorrect, which makes me very happy.

Of course, Zimmerman is a marked man. But still, this is the best possible result. There will be no appeals; the legal part of the case is over.

It will be interesting—to say the least—to see what the reaction will be. I am extremely relieved, though. If this has been an ordeal even for us as observers, how exponentially greater must have been the ordeal for all those who were more deeply and personally involved, from the moment the situation escalated to the tragic point where Trayvon Martin was killed and George Zimmerman ended up standing trial for his murder.

[ADDENDUM: Not Twelve Angry Men, but Six Courageous Women.

Listening to Angela Corey speak right now, her statement seemed decent enough at this point, quite conciliatory and non-inflammatory. Certainly unlike her earlier rabble-rousing.]

[ADDENDUM II: I take it back a bit about Corey; the prosecutors (and Corey) have now been going on about how it is that Zimmerman was really guilty. Tough. But I suppose that’s par for the course and to be expected. They can’t do anything now about the verdict, thanks to double jeopardy and the fact that a prosecution can’t appeal.

I’m looking forward to hearing what the defense has to say. They did a good job, and along with Zimmerman must have been sweating bullets these past couple of days.]

[ADDENDUM III: Defense attorney Don West says, “I’m thrilled that this jury kept this tragedy from becoming a travesty.”

Defense attorney Mark O’Mara closes the question period by excoriating the press for their earlier treatment of Zimmerman.]

Trying to read the jury’s mind[s]

The New Neo Posted on by

In the comments section of today’s post on the Zimmerman trial, I noticed some discussion of the significance of the jury’s request this evening for clarification on the definition of manslaughter.

First of all, I think that juries are inscrutable and unpredictable. So all bets are off with juries.

That said, though, I have never thought there was much of a chance for an acquittal in this case, although I also think the case is so weak that it should never have been brought—and if brought, I think that the judge should have thrown it out for lack of evidence after the prosecution had finished its presentation.

But the best result I had ever hoped for—at least that I thought had a realistic chance of actually happening—was a hung jury. I still think that is a possibility, although I have been fearing that Zimmerman will instead be found guilty of manslaughter despite the strength of the self-defense argument against it.

However, I don’t think that, as some people have suggested, the fact that the jury has asked for clarification of the definition of manslaughter necessarily means that they have rejected the possibility of self-defense, although of course it’s certainly possible. One reason I say that is that the jurors might just be going down the judge’s list in order, and I’m under the impression that manslaughter came after murder on that list but before self-defense. The second reason that they might want to decide on manslaughter first, without having taken up the question of self-defense, is that the question of whether Zimmerman committed manslaughter seems easier to decide than whether or not to find him not guilty of manslaughter because he acted in self-defense. So if the jurors looked at manslaughter first and were to decide there was no manslaughter in the first place, they wouldn’t even need to consider the more complex question of self-defense.

In the comments to my earlier post, “Oldflyer” mentions another concern:

I wonder how these women will feel if they convict GZ for manslaughter and then find that the sentence is exactly the same as for 2nd degree Murder? Thirty years in prison, or until Martin’s avengers catch him alone.

And “carl in atlanta” adds:

These jurors may think they’d be doing a GZ a big favor by returning a manslaughter verdict. No doubt they believe the penalty will be much, much less. After all, drunk drivers and enraged spouses get convicted of manslaughter all the time and they seem to get relatively light sentences…

If these jurors convict him of manslaughter, most of them are going to be in for the shock of their lives.

Agreed. Jurors are purposely kept from knowing the penalties for the crimes for which they might convict the accused because the penalties are supposed to be a separate issue from, and irrelevant to, whether that person is guilty and whether the necessary elements of a crime are present. The idea is that knowing the penalties would taint the jurors’ thought process in terms of deciding guilt and non-guilt. But the process is just as tainted if the jury doesn’t know the penalties, because in the real world people often make these decisions about guilt in difficult cases in part based on a weighing how serious the crimes under consideration are and how much of a price the accused might pay if convicted of one crimes versus the other. It would be better if they had the correct information rather than just speculating, wouldn’t it?

I have seen a number of documentaries about criminal cases in which members of the jury who convicted someone found out afterwards that the penalty was much much different (either much lighter or much heavier, depending on the case) than they had assumed while deliberating. They tended to be angry and distraught about the ignorance in which they had been purposely kept, although I don’t know how common these feelings are. In addition, if they found out after the fact that evidence they thought would have been crucial had been kept from them during the trial and deliberations, and would have affected their decision one way or the other, they likewise tended to be extremely distressed when they found out (in the Zimmerman case, I could see this happening if and when the jury learns about the Martin cell phone evidence that was excluded, for example).

In some cases, it haunts certain jurors for the rest of their lives. I have seen interviews with some in which, decades later, they are still in tears about a decision they thought they made that in retrospect they thought was too harsh or too lenient, one that they said would have gone differently if only they had known the full situation. Sometimes jurors have required therapy to try to deal with their own feelings of guilt and/or anger. Sometimes they have appeared before parole boards years later to ask that the convicted person be released if the juror thought the sentence was unjustly harsh.

Down a street of molasses

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a song by my man Richard Thompson (lyrics here), featuring his characteristic beauty and bitterness:

Those lines “in the dream I’m running/down a street of molasses/in the dream my feet gain no ground” seem an odd but effective image, like getting caught in sticky mud or tarpaper. But it also made me think of something that happened in Boston in 1919, an event I’d be surprised if Thompson has ever heard about. In fact, I’d even be surprised if most of you have ever heard of it:

The Boston Molasses Disaster, also known as the Great Molasses Flood and the Great Boston Molasses Tragedy, occurred on January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. A large molasses storage tank burst, and a wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 mph (56 km/h), killing 21 and injuring 150. The event has entered local folklore, and some residents claim that on hot summer days, the area still smells of molasses…

At about 12:30 in the afternoon near Keany Square, at 529 Commercial Street, a huge molasses tank 50 ft (15 m) tall, 90 ft (27 m) in diameter and containing as much as 2,300,000 US gal (8,700 m3) collapsed. Witnesses stated that as it collapsed, there was a loud rumbling sound, like a machine gun as the rivets shot out of the tank, and that the ground shook as if a train were passing by.

The collapse unleashed an immense wave of molasses between 8 and 15 ft (2.5 and 4.5 m) high, moving at 35 mph (56 km/h), and exerting a pressure of 2 ton/ft² (200 kPa). The molasses wave was of sufficient force to damage the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway’s Atlantic Avenue structure and tip a railroad car momentarily off the tracks. Nearby, buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Several blocks were flooded to a depth of 2 to 3 feet (60 to 90 cm). As described by author Stephen Puleo:

“Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form ”” whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was… Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings ”” men and women ”” suffered likewise.”

The Boston Globe reported that people “were picked up by a rush of air and hurled many feet.” Others had debris hurled at them from the rush of sweet-smelling air. A truck was picked up and hurled into Boston Harbor. Approximately 150 were injured; 21 people and several horses were killed ”” some were crushed and drowned by the molasses. The wounded included people, horses, and dogs; coughing fits became one of the most common ailments after the initial blast.

It’s one of those things that initially sounds like a joke, but most definitely is not.

Snowden and Greenwald: bombshell or bluster?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve already written plenty about Snowden and Greenwald. But since they’ve recently insinuated themselves into the news in a potentially interesting manner, here we go again.

According to Greenwald:

Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who first published the documents Snowden leaked, said in a newspaper interview published on Saturday that the U.S. government should be careful in its pursuit of the former computer analyst.

“Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had,” Greenwald said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro with the Argentinean daily La Nacion.

“The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare.”

Aren’t they the brave duo.

I’m not sure whether I believe Greenwald or not. But notice that he is not alleging that this supposedly bombshell information Snowden possesses indicates any wrongdoing or overreach by the US government. Nor does it appear to necessarily involve invasions of the privacy of US citizens. The only hint the article (or Greenwald) makes at the content seems to be this:

Greenwald said in his interview with La Nacion that documents Snowden has tucked away in different parts of the world detail which U.S. spy programs capture transmissions in Latin America and how they work.

I would like to see Snowden arrested under the Espionage Act (I’ve written here and elsewhere about the ways in which he’s already violated it). But since he seems to be out of range right now, what about interrogating Greenwald, who although living outside the country now is a US citizen and does not (yet) appear to be on the run?

In this previous post I wrote about why I think that Greenwald is not protected from prosecution, either, even though he is a journalist.

If what Greenwald says is true (and I am by no means certain he is not guilty of quite a bit of hyperbole), and this information really threatens US security big time and is about to fall into the hands of countries that wish us harm, doesn’t it behoove us to find out more? After all, Greenwald is in possession of the information, too, not just Snowden. Should Greenwald and Snowden be allowed to hold the US hostage because they possess sensitive material obtained illegally, material that in this case does not even appear to involve wrongdoing on the part of the US? Is this not espionage on their part?

And remember, Snowden does not have to have actually publicized the sensitive information, he merely has to have taken it illegally. Although Greenwald is less liable if he hasn’t yet publicized it (since he didn’t take it himself), the Snowden timeline nevertheless indicates that Greenwald may have facilitated, aided, and abetted him in the taking.

Again, for those of you who still think that Snowden’s a hero because he exposed details of the NSA domestic information-gathering programs (cellphones and the like), that doesn’t appear to be the information we’re talking about here, although Greenwald has been coy enough to not say exactly what we are talking about.

The Zimmerman case: the deliberations of a jury of his “peers”

The New Neo Posted on by

We don’t know what the Zimmerman jury will decide, but I have long felt apprehensive about both this jury’s size and its makeup (all women).

I have little doubt that the first factor—the jury’s small size (6) is responsible for the second, the unity of gender. Had it been a jury of twelve, there would have been much more likelihood that some men would have made it into the group.

Is this a jury of Zimmerman’s “peers”? “Peers” doesn’t mean the jury has to match the defendant exactly in the demographic sense; we don’t need six Hispanic/white men in their twenties to try him. Apparently, it is enough that there were men in the jury pool from which the jurors were chosen; it is that pool that must represent a cross-section of the community in the ethnicity, age, and gender sense.

And indeed there were men in the jury pool; we know that because two of the four alternate jurors are men. But they don’t get a vote in the verdict decision. The women who do have certain characteristics that are troubling, too, such as this about juror B-51:

When asked if Zimmerman did something wrong by following Martin instead of waiting for police, she said: “Yeah, I guess he did do something wrong.”

There also this, from juror B-37:

During the last round of questioning, she said she had an issue with the type of weapons people are allowed to carry. She also thought weapons’ training was inadequate for people seeking permits. “It should become harder,” she said.

Finally, we have this:

One of the women, the youngest, says she used the shooting in Sanford, Fla., as an example to her two adolescent kids not to go out at night.

Will any of this matter in the end? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. What we know does matter is the ability of these six jurors to listen to evidence, evaluate it, and then apply the law to it in a fair manner.

In this they were not helped by prosecutor John Guy who said, as part of his closing summation:

I don’t have any charts or timelines. I’m asking you to use your heart.

That charge of Guy’s makes a mockery of our system of justice, and it’s hard to believe it isn’t specifically tailored to the characteristics of women vs. men, or at least the general stereotypes that are not true of all women but are arguably true of more of them than of men. It’s not all that unusual for a defense lawyer to make such an appeal, but for the prosecution to do so seems highly unusual and more importantly it violates the prosecution’s duty to present overwhelming evidence of guilt and call on reason rather than emotion in the deciding (“beyond a reasonable doubt”).

And why didn’t Guy have “any charts or timelines”? It wasn’t because he has an anti-chart/timeline fetish. It wasn’t even because he didn’t think the jurors should bother their pretty little heads about it. It was because he was unable to use the facts available to draw up a chart or timeline that favored the prosecution.

Are women actually more ruled by emotion than logic? Darned if I know, although from my own observations of human nature, I suspect it is more common among them, although men are far from immune to the problem.

I saw a comment somewhere that the OJ jury was composed of all women. So I checked, and although that was not true, it is true that although that jury consisted of twelve people, only two of them were men.

There were other interesting anomalies about that jury’s composition: it was composed of 9 blacks, 1 Hispanic, and 2 whites; there were 2 college graduates, 9 high school graduates, and 1 with no diploma; all were Democrats; “None regularly read a newspaper, but eight regularly watch[ed] tabloid TV shows…five reported that they or another family member had had a negative experience with the police…nine thought that Simpson was less likely to be a murderer because he was a professional athlete.”

The OJ jury differed rather greatly from the jury pool from which they had been selected. The pool’s racial composition, for example, was “40% white, 28% black, 17% Hispanic, and 15% Asian.” The final jury was quite different.

One of the inexplicable decisions the OJ prosecution made was to file the case in LA rather than Santa Monica, where the crime had occurred. I have no idea why they did this, but it probably determined the outcome of the trial:

The racial composition of the jury was strongly influenced by the decision of the prosecution to file the Simpson case in downtown Los Angeles rather than–as is usually the case– in the judicial district where the crime occurred– in this case, Santa Monica. Had the case be filed in Santa Monica, the Simpson jury would have been mostly white instead of, as was the case, mostly African-American. With poll data showing that most whites believed Simpson to be guilty and most blacks believing him to be not guilty, the decision to file the case in Santa Monica may have been the biggest mistake the prosecution made. Vincent Bugliosi, the celebrated prosecutor in the Charles Manson case, said the mistake “dwarfed anything the defense did.”

I have been unable so far to find any description of the choices each side has made in the Zimmerman case during the jury selection phase, except that the prosecution unsuccessfully challenged the seating of a couple of the women who ultimately ended up being part of this jury.

At any rate, whoever they are, it’s in their hands now. The length of deliberations so far indicates to me that they are either seriously considering a guilty verdict or might ultimately end up a hung jury. It argues against not guilty as a possibility, although I certainly wouldn’t count that out because jury decisions are notoriously difficult to predict.

Closing arguments in the Zimmerman case

The New Neo Posted on by

Demagoguery versus rationality.

Appeals to raw emotion versus appeals to reason and logic.

The prosecution versus the defense in the Zimmerman case.

I’ve watched a few excerpts of the arguments in the case, but have relied for the most part on summaries such as this one at Legal Insurrection.

So, which will approach will the six ladies of the jury buy? I have no idea, but I know which one I think should prevail, although that hardly means it will prevail. I continue to fear it will not, and that the power of demagoguery will outshout it.

[NOTE: As for why there are only six jury members in this case, it’s legal in Florida for non-capital cases, although I think it’s a terrible idea when such serious charges and possible penalties are involved. Six people can convict much more readily than twelve because it is easier for them to agree, and a jury of six therefore removes some of the protection for innocent defendants as compared to a jury of twelve.

What’s more, although I don’t know whether there are legal grounds to challenge it, it just seems wrong that this jury is composed of all women. Are women less likely to buy a claim of self-defense? It seems to me that’s possible.]