Not Guilty

Trayvon Martin is dead. George Zimmerman, his killer, has been found Not Guilty.

This verdict does not mean that he didn't do it; he agrees that he shot the kid. It does not mean "Innocent" --or, as his attorney would have it, "Completely Innocent." It does not even mean that he bears no responsibility for Martin's death. It just means that, under the applicable law, he could not be proven legally culpable; he could not be found to have committed Second-Degree Murder, or Manslaughter.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, a few stone lighter than when he boldly took up the case of Tawana Brawley a couple of decades ago, disgracing himself in the process, of course has to step forward and demand a federal investigation. The Justice Department must assure one and all that it is looking into the matter. There must be demonstrations. All this is routine; it's fine.

And most reasonable people can pooh-pooh the defense attorney's assertion that Martin was, in fact armed, because there was a concrete sidewalk available to him. Which of us is not so armed?

We can almost certainly agree that, had Zimmerman not had a gun, there would probably have been no confrontation. We can wonder why a neighborhood "volunteer" --in a gated community, no less!-- has a need to carry a gun. Maybe it's because, without one, he would not have pursued so diligently the "ground" that Florida law allows him to "stand."

This was a sad, unnecessary affair. Zimmerman, if he has a conscience, will carry a burden to his own grave. Florida's (and, evidently, a couple dozen other states') "Stand Your Ground" laws are retrograde acknowledgements of a certain American macho mindset, best relegated to fat guys in Barca-Loungers on a Football Sunday, that asserts physical dominance as the emblem of manliness. Every society has its knuckle-draggers; only a few, such as our own, spends time and resources catering to them.

But I am tired of the growing tendency in this country to not let things be. Zimmerman was found Not Guilty. That should be an end of it. We can lament the verdict; but unless we heard all the evidence that was presented in court (not teed up for a good long Big Bertha drive by one "side" or the other in the press), we really have no right to an opinion. That's why we have juries. And to say that the verdict represented a miscarriage of justice is to say that the jurors were biased to the point of being willing to let a murderer go free. Not only is there no evidence of this; it's highly unlikely.

And I am tired of hearing, every time someone disagrees with a verdict, that now we should have another trial, based on substantially the same facts, to find a slightly different crime, such as a civil rights violation. That smacks of double jeopardy to me; and if there was a time in our history when it was necessary because of the systemic racism that ruled the law-enforcement system of some of our states, that time is past. What ever happened to the notion that we'd rather let a hundred criminals go free than convict one innocent man? A rational view would have to take into account that, absent a confession or some overwhelming eyewitness testimony --there was, clearly, neither--, a jury would have little choice but to entertain a reasonable doubt.

I don't like the fact that Trayvon Martin was killed. I don't like the gun laws. I don't like the notion of a citizen "deputized" by --who? someone or other-- to carry a weapon and be given the feeling that he's an important cog in the law-enforcement system. There are a lot of things I don't like; and I am sure that there are daily miscarriages of justice in the land, for lots of reasons.

And if I don't like these things, really, really a lot, then I am free to protest, to organize, to try and pass better laws or repeal bad ones. There's a process, folks. We've gone through it. Not Guilty means It's Over.

What's for dinner?