Posted on 04/17/2012 11:27:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Trayvon Martin’s shooter has a new lawyer. Mansfield Frazier hopes he’s advising his client to take a plea, since a protracted murder trial is the last thing we need.
As George Zimmerman faces murder charges for shooting Trayvon Martin, it’s worth asking if America is in danger of facing Rodney King, Part II?
That’s what I see down the tracks: If this case goes all the way to trial, it’s a train wreck waiting to happen. The time is now for strong hands to take the helm and steady the ship of state—not to mention our national racial, political and legal discourse. The paramount concern has to be to avert a large-scale racial calamity.
As Touré recently wrote, if sane adults are not careful, deliberate and measured in the handling of the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman affair, a dark time could descend upon America.
Look what’s already festering on the streets of Sanford, Florida. On the one hand we’ve got the three stooges of the New Black Panther Party running around Sanford, spouting off crazy ideas and becoming a total embarrassment to more thoughtful and reasoning blacks who simply want justice. On the other we’ve got the equally clownish neo-Nazis, goose-stepping around on their self-appointed mission to protect the white race. In this environment it wouldn’t take much to ignite the racial power keg we’re sitting on. One false or ill-conceived move in this case could allow the loony inmates—not Zimmerman’s current neighbors, but those who are imprisoned by their long-simmering racial hatreds—to fan the incendiary flames of bigotry into full-blown conflagrations of violence across the land.
As someone who watched the King riots unfold from a Los Angeles motel window (and sometimes from the balcony, when we weren’t too afraid to venture out), I’m here to tell you it was a nightmarish time. Thick, acrid black smoke from hundreds of fires hung over the L.A. basin for days as young, armed blacks and Hispanics roared around in open convertibles and jeeps, wearing bandannas and brandishing all sorts of weaponry. We could hear gunfire both in the distance and nearby. Stores that hadn’t been set on fire the first day were looted by the second, and by the third day TV stations were warning of an impending food shortage. A body lay in the gutter on Crenshaw Boulevard for the better part of two days before National Guard troops removed it.
We don’t want to go back there. Fortunately Zimmerman’s new attorney, Mark O’Mara, appears to comprehend the broader implications and potential danger of the situation, and seems well qualified to negotiate a fair outcome for his client, and indeed for the rest of us. He has the calm demeanor of a law professor, and speaks in measured, but not calculating, terms. His first comments seemed designed not to convince anyone of his client’s innocence, but rather to take the heated rhetoric down a few notches. He cautioned that everyone should allow the justice system to work.
So what would a fair outcome look like? To my mind, the government offers Zimmerman a plea deal that has him back on the street within this decade, and he accepts it quietly. That seems like a conclusion most reasonable Americans could live with. Of course, no matter how long or short any sentence may be, there will be those who disagree, some vehemently.
If O’Mara were successful in brokering such a resolution, he should be viewed as nothing less than a savior. A protracted murder trial of George Zimmerman is the last thing this country needs right now. America can only dodge so many racial bullets, and a not-guilty verdict in this case could very easily turn the racial cold war into a very hot one.
Of course, for such a plea scenario to work, Zimmerman will need to listen more to O’Mara than to any of the other voices clamoring for a piece of him. He’s in isolation right now, presumably for his own safety, but a side benefit is that it keeps the more rabid right-wingers from getting inside his head and convincing him to take the case to trial, based on the belief that no matter what the evidence shows, in Florida at least one juror will never vote to convict. Unfortunately, this reasoning is not crazy. The South, after all, is still the South.
But after a few weeks of isolation and the counsel of O’Mara, Zimmerman may decide going to trial isn’t in his best interest. If O’Mara is as savvy as he seems, he will probably inform his client of the stark legal facts: The state overcharged him with murder 2 for two reasons: it’s a bargaining chip to force him to accept a lesser charge, and a means to keep him locked up pretrial. The way the legal system is designed, it’s difficult for someone being held in custody to win acquittal. Even if he went to trial and managed to get a hung jury, the state would surely retry him (multiple times, if necessary), until they get a conviction or he’s spent more time in the county lockup than he would have spent in prison if he’d just pleaded guilty in the first place. And even if he were acquitted, let’s not forget the specter of a federal indictment being handed down.
In all of this, the upcoming bail hearing is key: If the judge doesn’t grant bail, Zimmerman had better start listening real intently to his lawyer.
The wild card is his father, Robert, who has so far sounded like a knee-jerk far-right ideologue. In an interview he said, "I never foresaw so much hate coming from the president, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP," and this was before Obama said anything about the case! It will be virtually impossible to keep Robert Zimmerman away from his son, which means he’ll have ample opportunity to whisper Stand Your Ground rhetoric into his ear, possibly ginning up Zimmerman’s courage and convincing him to go to trial in spite of the danger of being convicted.
We all need to pray that Mark O’Mara is successful in bringing about a fair outcome for his client, for justice, and, more important, for America.
“The response to the Rodney King riots was way too weak.”
True, but at that loss ratio (many more blacks than others killed) the rest of America can do this all day.
“They have no idea of what awaits them if they come out of their neighborhoods to ours.”
Sure they do; it wasn’t their gang-bangers buying up all those guns since Obama’s election. That is why they rarely venture out of their neighborhoods; here in northern NJ they merely raid along the frontiers.
I keep hearing that this case is proof we still have a race problem in America, with the speaker usually meaning that whites are still racist...but when was the last time anyone trembled in fear at the thought of whites rioting over a simple court verdict?
I think this may already be a given, but if the obvious racists can do this to Zimmerman and the court, then they can campaign to do it everywhere.
And in light of the DOJ statistics showing that whites are the victims of crime perpetrated by blacks far in excess than the reverse, there WILL be another “Zimmerman” elsewhere.
To my mind, the government offers Zimmerman a plea deal that has him back on the street within this decade, and he accepts it quietly. That seems like a conclusion most reasonable Americans could live with. Of course, no matter how long or short any sentence may be, there will be those who disagree, some vehemently.
I didn’t get any farther in this thread than this sentence before I saw red. Give me a break... They want Mr. Zimmerman to throw away a decade or more of his life just so that the MSM and the Race-Panderers can say, “See! He was guilty! Of something anyways...”
They would find it was not be Reginald Denny types facing them.
I love Koreans. Great food, friendly people, AK-47s when you need them.....
Yep, absolutely no interest in justice. It’s all about revenge.
Well, maybe it is time to let the riots happen and get it over with. But, don’t let them be the only ones who riot this time. Give back in kind.
Chase Farrakahn and his black kittens all the way into the sea. It would just pollute the beaches though; there are some things even crabs and other bottom feeders won’t eat.
Yours is the thought for the day.
Perhaps that is the problem, the government knows who it can push around without fear.
I have just one question. What happened to the skittles and Iced tea?
I haven’t seen any of that and I know the MSMerde would have covered it thoroughly, it is their kind of story. There are less neo-Nazis around than there are people in a Flash Mob savaging a store, or maybe than a Baltimore Mob watching a tourist get mugged, robbed and stripped.
Last I heard, Sandford authorities said there were no neo-Nazis doing anything there. More media hype?
Um...returned to the store they were stolen from?
Bring it.
Let them riot ... then shoot them down like the rabid dogs they (rioters) are, and leave their bodies to rot in the streets.
“We all need to pray that Mark O’Mara is successful in bringing about a fair outcome for his client, for justice, and, more important, for America.”
Unfortunately for the idiot author, Zimmerman’s attorney represents Zimmerman. If somehow he tries to weigh the interests of anyone else over those of his client he should be disbarred.
Zimmerman will walk and there will be untold numbers of Reginald Denny reenactments (that’s the only likely parallel to the LA riots) as whites are massacred by blacks as targets of opportunity.
I was in LA during the riots. They only stopped because rioters burned down the post office and then realized that they couldn’t get their checks.
The “Korean Grocers Militia” is the only useful object lesson here. You can’t save yourself or your property if you are not willing to kill rioters that threaten you or your property.
Why would an innocent man take a plea?
After stoking the flames, the race baiters are worried about riots?
They should have thought of that before starting their racial onslaught.
There will be riots at anything less than him getting 10-to-life. Zimmerman might as well go for broke, as any sort of plea deal that says it was not self-defense will open him and his family up to endless lawsuits.
One thing about negotiating: when everything you are willing to offer will still not make the other side happy, you might as well offer nothing at all.
Some black leaders are starting to see that if there are widespread riots, the net effect will be white America turning against black America, and Obama will lose in November. If the Great Racial Healer presided over some of the biggest riots in decades, then what's the point of having him?
I guessed that the author was either black or a liberal or both.
“So what would a fair outcome look like? To my mind, the government offers Zimmerman a plea deal that has him back on the street within this decade, and he accepts it quietly. That seems like a conclusion most reasonable Americans could live with.”
Plea deal...this guy insane. The only plea deal Zimmerman should make is FU to the media and these asses whom believe he should commit harikari to please our 13th amendment citizens.
The maggots don't understand just how completely sick of their racist shite whitey has become.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.