Posted on 07/03/2013 2:47:08 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Two weeks into the George Zimmerman trial the debate has intensified over whether Florida state prosecutor Angela “tough on Crime” Corey and her team is helping or hurting their case against Zimmerman with their witnesses. The string of witnesses has offered a mixed bag of both damning and corroborative testimony against and for George Zimmerman that has been more than enough to the send a red flag up. Though George Zimmerman is not a police officer being prosecuted for misconduct, he’s the closest thing to it without a badge. And that conferred on him some of the same perks that cops tried for misconduct get in hyper racially charged cases where the victims such as Trayvon Martin are young African-American or Hispanics.
The two biggest are the top flight defense attorneys that defend police officers or those with some legal standing. They routinely twist and turn prosecution witnesses and their testimony inside out. They use a storehouse of techniques from subtly playing on racial stereotypes to dredging up the often checkered personal histories of prosecution witnesses to impugn their character,George-Zimmerman-and-Trayvon-Martin veracity, and integrity. This template has been employed with near textbook lethal efficiency by Zimmerman’s defense attorneys.
The far bigger perk, though, for defendants such as George Zimmerman are often the prosecutors. They are loath to bring charges against police officers or those that have close ties with the police that are accused of misconduct. More than a decade ago the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in its landmark study,” Who’s Guarding the Guardians,” of the conduct of police and prosecutors in civil rights cases, told exactly why. It cited the traditionally close relationship between district or county attorneys and police officers, who usually work together to prosecute criminals, the difficulties they have in convincing grand juries and trial juries that a police officer did not merely make an understandable mistake, but committed a crime; and the lack of information about cases that could be prosecuted or systems for reviewing possibly prosecutable cases.
These hurdles were plainly evident in the moments after Martin was gunned down. George Zimmerman was not arrested, his statements largely were accepted without corroboration, and photos after the fact of his alleged injuries at the hands of Martin were widely distributed, and the leaks about Martin’s alleged bad behavior while silent about Zimmerman’s run-ins with the law. Then there was the initial decision by Sanford police officials in consort with local prosecutors not to file charges against Zimmerman.
The testimony of the first prosecution witnesses stirred the controversy. One virtually fingered Martin as the aggressor. And one Sanford police officer strongly hinted that he thought Zimmerman was telling the truth about his version of the confrontation with Martin and that an audiotape of the police dispatcher call seemed to support it. Another one tried to shoot down the notion that Trayvon Martin was racially profiled by Zimmerman. Prosecutors hammered both on their statements and got them to partially back away from them. One was so prejudicial in favor of Zimmerman that the judge even ruled that it could not be admitted. But the jury still heard the officer’s supportive words of Zimmerman.
The way around the often ingrained reluctance of local prosecutors to prosecute cops or individuals such as George Zimmerman or prosecute tepidly has been to appoint a special prosecutor supposedly who can be independent, objective, and with no close ties to law enforcement or those close to law enforcement in a city or county where the cops have been accused of misconduct. That’s why Corey was chosen to prosecute Zimmerman. But the U.S. Civil Rights Commission noted that the appointment of a special prosecutor does not guarantee that police officers accused of wrongdoing will be prosecuted and ultimately punished.
In many cases, the special prosecutor is another county or district attorney selected from a neighboring jurisdiction that may be subject to the same biases and partiality as the original prosecutor. The Commission cites numerous examples where special prosecutors have been appointed in high profile cases to eliminate real or perceived bias by local prosecutors for the defendants yet the prosecution has still failed to get a conviction.
The conventional wisdom is that a hard line law and order prosecutor such as Corey will pull out all stops to nail a George Zimmerman. But the mish mash testimony from the prosecution witnesses against him can’t be casually dismissed when there’s the ever present danger that jurors can interpret confused testimony from prosecution witnesses to mean that it has not proven its case against a defendant beyond the high standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.
The job of Zimmerman’s defense attorneys is to create just enough doubt to win acquittal or at the worst play for a hung jury. The absolute disastrous thing that can happen in these cases is for the prosecution to do anything that can be construed by jurors as aiding and abetting the defense. This is even more imperative in a touchy, polarizing, high profile, racially charged trial.
The prosecution needs its best A game to insure a conviction in these type cases. Without second guessing the George Zimmerman’s prosecution’s choice of witnesses and testimony or trial outcome, the jury as always in these cases is out on how well the prosecution does its job.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new ebook is America on Trial: The Slaying of Trayvon Martin (Amazon). He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network.
Self-defense law
Conceal carry law
Gun laws
Guns in general
They are anti-gun on principle and they are woefully ignorant of reality.
Zimmerman’s father? Wasn’t his son Trayvon? Just pointing out that you meant to say Trayvon’s father.
I think you meant to say that anyway.
yeah sorry trayvon’s father. i’ve had to catch switching prosecution and defense too.
It'd be really good to have a timeline of all of those within 2 degrees of separation of those who knew St. Tray.
To continue to assert he is dead "assumes facts not in evidence". Were *I* a member of the jury (and no, I'm not), I would have absolutely no choice but to acquit, at this juncture, whether I thought Mr. Zimmerman to be guilty, or not (and for the record, no, I don't think he's guilty), strictly because of this. Can you say jaw-droppingly stupid, boys and girls? I knew you could!
the infowarrior
Note the important slant in the bad this author is too blind to see. He assigns Martin the title “victim” not “perp”. Libturds demanded a trial to determine whether Martin deserved this moniker but they refuse to wait for the verdict to do so. No Justice, No Peace.
Yeah, but apparently, the left wants justice to be doled out according to the ‘shade of dark’ of the perps’s skin color. Compared to TM, GZ loses, don’t ya see. Much lighter. So he’s automatically the guilty one in the altercation. That’s how “”leftie justice”” now works in the Obamanation.
It looks like he had a partial removal and then a new tat over the old tat. The old tat was apparently a Crips gang symbol.
“Should” walk free is quite different from “will” walk free. Never undestimate the ability of a jury to show their collective stupidity. Much less their collective bias, fear and feelings of self-preservation.
In a perfect world, GZ would have never been charged. This is, however, anything but a perfect world.
thx
The real problem isn’t the prosecutors or the witnesses. It’s simply the facts. The race hustlers have tried to make the facts into something that didn’t happen. And the scrutiny of a trial has revealed that basic flaw.
The left’s main lie all along has been that GZ was “told” (or ordered) not to follow TM by police. They still stick by that lie, despite sworn testimony that shows otherwise. All they care about is the end result of GZ either being behind bars or dead. And if he ends up behind bars, he will end up dead unless kept in solitary confinement. A “fit” punishment, to the left, for someone that dared to try to keep his neighborhood safe, that volunteered his free time to help minorities, and who dared to defend his own life from a thug who jumped him.
Huh?
You stated that Trayvon Martin was the son of George Zimmerman’s father.
I was unaware of that familial relationship.
yeah i got mixed up. about a billion others mentioned it. trayvon’s dad said it wasn’t trayvon screaming when they played the 911 call to him.
all good points.
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