I'm so happy.

[MoonRiver]

I really feared that Trayvon and his family would never see justice. Now I have a lot of hope, not just for this family but for the country. Of course nothing will be certain until the trial, but I sense a serious attempt on the part of FL's justice system to make sure they correct this terrible wrong. Maybe Trayvon's legacy will be helping to end racial profiling and giving all American citizens equal access to justice. Anyway, tonight I feel a sense of peace that I haven't had from the time this travesty occurred.

[loudsue]

1. I hope you're right, MoonRiver. I can't believe that in 2012

we are STILL having this argument. Or that all of the hate and stupidity that this country has been subjected to with the "stupid and hateful is IN" crowd. If Zimmerman really does face justice for this, it will be a big step in the right direction.

[MoonRiver]

6. I can't believe we are dealing with this either.

I also can't believe that the Rethugs are trying to outlaw BIRTH CONTROL. All this really IS America in 2012.

[arthritisR_US]

2. I too am happy he has been charged and I

hope justice is served! k&r

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, MoonRiver.

[MoonRiver]

5. Somehow this seems so important. An innocent child, like many I worked with in the public schools,

gunned down for no rational reason. I just can't get my head around the idea that this outrage would go unpunished. I do have hope now that it won't.

[Uncle Joe]

10. People need to broaden their minds and I hope

this case helps to bring that about.

We need to get over this superficial fear and hate bullshit.

I just don't see any justifiable reason for what happened to Trayvon.

[HipChick]

4. It won't end racial profiling...

[MH1]

7. Don't have your heart set on a conviction.

I think Zimmerman was in the wrong and did a terrible thing. But whether he can be convicted in a fair trial is a wholely separate question. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing: "better for 10 guilty men to go free than one innocent be wrongly convicted".*

As one of the guys on MSNBC said tonight, if he somehow gets off, particularly if it's due to the Stand Your Ground law, hopefully people will turn their anger to getting rid of that bad law.




* I do NOT think Zimmerman is "innocent" - I think he'd be one of the 10 in that saying. But this could be a difficult case for the prosecution to prove within the law.

[Yo_Mama]

15. I think that if the charge is murder in the second degree

The prosecutor has some evidence to back it up.

You never can tell what a jury will do, but we all know much, much less about the evidence than the prosecutors now do.

I don't think she'd let her team get out too far ahead of the evidence, because it opens an avenue of defense. I thought all along that Zimmerman's story wasn't very plausible, and I think they have something to show it's not true.

Let the process go on. My hunch is that eventually he'll get to plead to manslaughter, but not if their evidence is good enough. She really is known to be a hard-core prosecutor.
http://www.unf.edu/uploadedFiles/aa/coas/ccj/faculty/Hallett_No_Peace_Dividend_for_Duval.pdf

This is really pretty characteristic of her, and she generally builds a strong case.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/10/justice/florida-teen-shooting-prosecutor/index.html

If they don't have a strong case but they do have a case, then the strategy might be to get him to agree to a plea for a longer jail term than he might get at trial. But my hunch is that she has evidence and that this is going to trial.

Regardless of what you think of an attack-dog prosecutor such as Corey (read the study), the fact is that she's good at putting people in jail for long terms.

And the other undeniable fact of the case is that the cops got Zimmerman to talk big time. On the record, apparently. They got him to be very detailed about what happened. That gives the prosecutors a lot of ways to find discrepancies and show that he was not telling the truth (if indeed he was not). It was really a good job; if Zimmerman is lying the prosecutors ought to be able to produce evidence that shows it. And that's the key to winning a trial like this - if the prosecutor has hours of tapes of someone talking on the record to the police, then the prosecutor just has to show "hey, this wasn't true, and that wasn't true" - and then look the jury in the eyes and ask if they believe ANY of the accused's testimony. And given the circumstances, they probably won't.

Martin was just a kid, the facts show that he didn't initiate the whole sequence of events, and if she can go to trial and show that Zimmerman was lying to the cops, the jury's not going to be friendly to him.

And then again, it may be as simple as the fact that the forensics show that the gunshot was fired too far away to be consistent with being fired in a clinch.

[MH1]

16. Thanks for that analysis. It does seem hopeful.

I guess I just want to leave myself some room so that I'm not too pissed off if he manages to get off.

The whole thing kind of stuns me: that an adult can shoot a kid under these circumstances and not even be arrested right off. I really think that if it weren't for the public outcry, this guy would have gotten away with it. I'm all for presumption of innocence, but when things look so strongly a certain way, you have to try the case. If things come out in trial that show he can't be fairly convicted, fine, but at least there was an investigation and trial.

I do hope that he is rightfully convicted of at least manslaughter, because if it turns out there were extenuating circumstances that made it 'justifiable' in the eyes of the court, those extenuating circumstances will be completely forgotten by the next yahoo who gets a jones to go play vigilante. And then we'll just see more of this shit.

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. Justice IS a trial, in this case...not the result of the trial

It has to be clear to people who do what Zimmerman did that they will have to answer for it in open court, and won't be able to simply smooth it over with the local police departments. That is the measure of justice here. The charge is the justice. The charge is the moment that the black, teenage, male life of Trayvon Martin becomes as important as any other life in these United States. The charge is the chilling effect that says you don't get to shoot black folks and say you were scared. That's not how it works. You don't get to kill unarmed children and suggest they looked suspicious because they were black and wearing a hoodie in the night. That's not how it works. That's the justice in this case. The charge says you have to answer for such actions in public, before your peers, that a black life is protected from arbitrary violence just like any other life. That's the justice in this case.

[got root]

9. i will not be satisfied until he is sentenced for 2nd degree murder

we have a long history of letting whites get away with killing blacks.

[MoonRiver]

11. Agreed, but

somehow I believe, not this time. Call it woman's intuition.

[got root]

12. i really hope your right, but this case has so many political implications as well i.e. SYG

that i am still very concerned.

[Zax2me]

13. I don't see it quite as black and white.

And I don't mean race.
I mean that one mans actions and one incident is not a reflection of our society as whole or this country.
So I can't have 'a lot of hope' for this country because I didn't lose it over this one incident.
Just like I don't lose it when someone black murders someone who is white.

[nashville_brook]

14. agreed -- this has given me hope, too.