Free Republic

As I travel the country, many people tell me they wish they had been on the jury in the criminal trial of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. I tell them that although they did not have a vote in those proceedings, they do have a vote in establishing Trayvon’s legacy. This vote, your vote, will be historic. It starts when you sign the Change.org petition by Trayvon’s family to amend “stand-your-ground” laws in 21 of the 31 states where they are on the books. It continues when you cast your vote in the 2014 midterm elections and each election...

The death of Trayvon Martin was an avoidable tragedy, and some of the things that happened following the incident are also avoidable if we heed to the lessons learned by two of Sanford’s top cops.Born and raised in Sanford (Fla.), former Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee was in his position 11 months when the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman occurred. Leveraging his three decades of law enforcement experience, Chief Lee was at the helm of a department with budget woes. Two months before the Zimmerman/Martin incident occurred, Lee had hired another law enforcement veteran with 30...

The National Bar Association will hold a news conference Monday in South Florida to discuss legal issues surrounding the George Zimmerman trial and the implications of the stand-your-ground law. Trayvon Martin's parents, along with their attorney, Benjamin Crump, association President John E. Page and religious leaders will attend the news conference. . . . "The verdict," Page said in a statement. "says an unarmed college-bound Black teen can be profiled, stalked, confronted and killed by an armed neighborhood watchman with hollow tip point bullets.

Part 5—The history of Professor Cobb's fake fact: The Zimmerman verdict was rendered on Saturday evening, July 13. Two nights later, America’s most discerning citizens gathered before their TV machines. They watched the PBS NewsHour, their country’s most erudite news program. Not for them the screeching and yelling found on those cable news channels! But uh-oh! Those discerning citizens were soon told this by one of their nation’s professors: WOODRUFF (7/15/13): Well, to you, Jelani Cobb, on that point about whether race was clearly a part of this trial. We know the judge said at the outset that the attorneys...

Ten days since the six female jurors rendered a "not guilty" verdict in the highly divisive George Zimmerman trial, the topic of race remains as polarizing as any in America. With a live studio audience hanging on every word, this evening guest host Donny Deutsch asked a very provocative question: "Am I racist?" Filling in for Piers Morgan, the television personality and "Today" show contributor had begun his inquiry by admitting that if he were to see a young, African-American male in a hoodie walking down his street, he would pause. Deutsch noted that such an occurrence would be out...

More evidence is emerging linking one of the principal organizers of Trayvon Martin protests to the attorneys for the Martin family, Benjamin Crump and Daryl Parks. WND found the organizer, Vanessa Baden, was listed as working for Crump’s and Parks’ firm on the Martin case. Further, Baden has described Crump and Parks as her “mentors” who “showed me that there was a lot more that we need to be fighting for.” Baden is the coordinator for Dream Defenders, an activist group that has been leading Martin protests since the onset. Dream Defenders was behind the protests that blockaded the Sanford...

Protesters chanted, “I am Trayvon” following the George Zimmerman verdict. Now many continue to identify as Trayvon. This is a completely foreign notion to me. Do these people actually feel they are a deceased 17-year old black male? They have taken on an identity that is being pushed by race-baiters like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Ben Crump and Barrack Hussein Obama. They take solace that if they are Trayvon then they are sons of Obama. This is a collectivist mind set. They are part of the Justice for Trayvon Movement. In the coming days, I think that we will read...

Thanks to the media’s habit of showing beatific, outdated photos of Trayvon Martin, many Americans who only casually followed the trial of George Zimmerman incorrectly believed him to have been younger than he actually was at the time of his death. In a Friday interview, Zimmerman’s lead defense attorney, Mark O’Mara admitted that he was one of them. Speaking with CNN correspondent Martin Savidge, O’Mara denounced what he called a “wonderfully created and crafted public relations campaign” by the attorney for Martin’s family, Benjamin Crump and his allies. According to O’Mara, had they not injected a racial element into the...

“We will respect the rule of law. And we won’t do what George Zimmerman did when he got out of his car, profiled and pursued Trayvon and took the law into his own hands. We won’t resort to vigilante justice. We will let vengeance be unto God.” Those words said to me by Martin family lawyer Benjamin Crump during an interview in February with full agreement by Sybrina Fulton (Trayvon’s mother) take on special resonance tonight, when a jury of six women found George Zimmerman the killer of Fulton’s son, Trayvon Martin, was not guilty. Not guilty of second-degree murder,...

The main lawyer representing the family of Trayvon Martin in the George Zimmerman murder trial said on Saturday that it was “offensive” that defense attorney Mark O’Mara had launched personal attacks on him in an interview with CNN. “It’s somewhat offensive when you think about personal attacks,” the lawyer, Benjamin Crump, told CNN in an interview. “I have never personally attacked attorney Mark O’Mara or any other lawyers in this matter.” In an interview aired earlier on Saturday, O’Mara said his client would have never been on trial if he had not been “victimized” by Crump and other Martin family...

In response to George Zimmerman's legal defense team calling for a motion on a "Stand Your Ground" hearing, Trayvon Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump released the following statement: "Let it be clear on the record, that we feel confident that the unjustified killing of Trayvon Benjamin Martin should and will be decided by a jury. Many of the legal architects of the Stand Your Ground law have already opined that it does not apply in this case. A grown man cannot profile and pursue an unarmed child, shoot him in the heart, and then claim stand your ground. We believe...

Trayvon Martin's parents visited East St. Louis on Friday to share the lessons they've learned from their son's death and to urge young people to put down the guns and pick up some books. Trayvon's father, Tracy Martin, who grew up in East St. Louis, and his mother, Sybrina Fulton, attended a Stop the Violence rally Friday at the North End Missionary Baptist Church. The church's capacity was 750, but the crowd filled the sanctuary and spilled outside. Benjamin Crump, the attorney for Trayvon's family, stirred the packed church by asking them to repeat after him loud enough so Trayvon...

The last images of Trayvon Martin before he was killed show him at the counter at a Sanford 7-Eleven as he buys Skittles and an iced tea. Another newly released photo shows a yellow tarp covering his body just a short distance from the house he was walking back to on Feb. 26. George Zimmerman’s doctor says his nose likely was broken in their encounter, and more photos show Zimmerman’s face and head up close on the night he shot Martin, which he says he did in self-defense. The public viewing of these images, while clearly permissible under Florida law,...

On his show Wednesday night, Bill O’Reilly returned to the Trayvon Martin case — in light of ABC News’ report that medical records support George Zimmerman‘s account of scalp injuries and a broken nose. O’Reilly emphasized — as he has in the past — that the case should not be tried on television. He brought in Martin family’s attorney, Benjamin Crump, to discuss. Obviously, O’Reilly said, this new evidence points to a confrontation between Martin and Zimmerman. Furthermore, all the pundits who were quick to place guilt on Zimmerman, he said, are now being challenged by the medical report. Crump...

In response to the Sanford City Council's refusal to accept the resignation of much the much maligned Chief of Police, Benjamin Crump, one of the attorneys for the family of Trayvon Martin said, "If Chief Bill Lee recognized that his resignation would help start the healing process in Sanford, city leadership should have accepted it in an effort to move the city forward" What is utterly mind numbing about this statement is that it was Benjamin Crump who opened the festering wound in Sanford. Crump caused the damage, and now he wants Lee to resign so the healing process can...

The fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last month by a neighborhood-watch volunteer was a sickening and — unless new facts come to light — unjustified loss of an innocent life. Unless Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, had reason to believe that Martin was armed, shooting him was a grossly disproportionate response to a fistfight, even leaving aside the fact that Zimmerman had initiated the encounter. If such a shooting is justified under Florida’s broad self-defense law, that law has licensed violence that goes far beyond legitimate self-defense. Every American shares the despair of Martin’s family over this heartbreaking tragedy...