JUSTICE SERVED?

In the Interest of Mob Appeasement

By Greg ‘Gadfly’ Doyle

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
July 14, 2013

Having spent many years in law enforcement and being familiar with the threshold required to convict anyone of a homicide, I had wondered from the very beginning why the defendant, George Zimmerman, had been put on trial. After word of the shooting was picked up by media outlets, Herculean efforts were made by the press to portray the shooting incident as an armed White racist indiscriminately gunning down an unarmed Black teenager. Yet it appeared to me, from the photographic evidence gathered by the Sanford police, that Mr. Zimmerman had been assaulted, and his wounds were not self-inflicted. In other words, the photos of George Zimmerman's broken nose and bloodied head inferred that he was in the midst of a pummeling by someone, when he fired that fatal shot. And that is a justifiable homicide by definition.

And had the prosecutor not been under pressure by a scurrilous press, militant agitators within the Black community, and a rush to judgment by the federal Department of Justice, most likely the shooting case would have remained un-prosecutable by reasonable legal standards as “self-defense,” regardless of the Florida statute concerning “Stand Your Ground.” In my estimation, the only explanation for the Zimmerman case to go forward was not via “public outcry,” but rather in the interest of mob appeasement. Thankfully, an angry mob is not a jury. Yet even before the dust had cleared from the jury verdict of “not guilty,” organized protests were occurring in major cities across the country. Why?

Whatever the motive for protest, I cannot help but wonder why one man's constitutional rights had to be dragged into the streets and trampled under foot by a mob. So the State held a trial to appease that mob. A jury heard all the testimony, reviewed the evidence, and did not believe that the State of Florida proved that an unjustifiable homicide had occurred. The jury found George Zimmerman “Not Guilty.” According to our Constitution and the rule of law, justice was served.

Though the verdict vindicated George Zimmerman, the mob will never be appeased; not as long as “street justice” (i.e., thuggery) takes precedent over the rule of law. Most folks were not thrilled with the verdict in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, or with the Casey Anthony acquittal. But the rule of law is very clear that if the State fails to prove its case, the defendant walks and justice is served.

We must be wary of anything we see, hear, or read in the press these days. Our media has proven itself quite duplicitous, culpable, and unreliable time and again. Now if we can only get the mob to embrace that concept and move on.