If you thought I have been anchored to the TV the past two weeks watching the Zimmerman trial, you’d be mistaken. I have caught some glimpses of the trial and mostly the disgraceful banter that passes for punditry and legal analysis after the fact, mainly because my wife has been enraptured by the case.
But I have found the parts I have viewed familiar, dull and surprisingly unsophisticated. I did catch the prosecution’s use of force expert, laughed a bit when the defense carved him, and then moved on.
Truth is, I found this quote on the legal blog, “Simple Justice,” that I think sums up my feelings: “Many criminal defense lawyers studiously ignore cases that catch the public’s attention. They just aren’t that legally interesting, even if the facts or issues give rise to popular passion. And so it’s been for the trial of George Zimmerman for murder 2º in the killing of Trayvon Martin.”
While I’m no lawyer, I do not find this case that compelling. Of all of the national cases, I have never watched more than tiny bits from any of them. I have gone back over the OJ Simpson case but only to try to understand how badly the prosecution blundered.
The real truth is that this case really is nothing special. From what I have seen and read, it is nothing compared to what I have seen in Yolo County, cases that no one has bothered to cover.
I admit I do have my panties in a wad still that the local media somehow thinks the better story is the third lawsuit against Sheriff Ed Prieto rather than the conduct of his deputies under the color of law. The fact that two deputies are shown to have either lied or made serious errors on searches, to the point where a judge has to strongly rebuke them and throw out the case, is somehow not news.
The fact that the law firm of Johnny Griffin seems to have a vendetta against the sheriff and has filed his third lawsuit, one of which was already dismissed on summary judgment, is news. The last two lawsuits are, in fact, so similar that whole portions seem to have been lifted from one and placed into the other.
Even people who are generally critical of the sheriff aren’t buying it.
The next “big” case in Davis is a particularly salacious one in which Nicholas Bowen, 61 and a branch manager for the California Department of Public Health, was arrested on Wednesday as he photographed 30-year-old Wenyi Xu as she disrobed, exposing herself to juveniles as they rode past her location on bicycles.
Media coverage of trials focuses on the salacious and the shocking, and this case has all of the elements, particularly as some of the facts become known.
One of the things we found is that we are often the only people in the room bearing witness to what goes on in the courthouse, far from the glare of the media spotlight.
As the details come out about the brutal double stabbing by a Davis teenager, the region will be riveted to the trial and every detail that comes out. While that seems to have every element of a senseless and shocking crime that has already rocked Davis from its foundations, and probably will do so even more when all of the details slowly leak out over the next few years as we go through the preliminary hearing and get to the trial, there are some equally gruesome cases that get no attention.
It still baffles my mind that the Billy Wolfington murder did not get more attention. After all, Mr. Wolfington was at the center of the controversy that did trigger regional news coverage – the first gang injunction that was eventually thrown out by the appellate court because the DA only notified Mr. Wolfington and no one else of the injunction.
Mr. Wolfington stabbed his victim more than 14 times, and probably closer to 20.
So why did Mr. Wolfington get little coverage? The murder of Oliver Northup and his wife occurred in Davis, a city unaccustomed to violent crime, much less murder. That fact made the murder news even before we knew who the victims were.
On the other hand, Mr. Wolfington’s victim was stabbed in a low-rent motel in West Sacramento, he was an obscure 29-year-old African-American, and if he was not outright homeless, he lived his life near the streets.
Most of our most interesting trials were cases that never drew media coverage anywhere else until after the verdicts and the DA sent in their one-sided media releases, if they happened to get a conviction.
One of the most interesting and disturbing trials was that of four teenage minors and a young adult who were on trial for assault. They were held in custody for over a year awaiting trial and when they ended the trial, the jury failed to convict on the core counts. Two of the defendants walked, and two of them ended up with lesser convictions and being remanded to juvenile court.
The case was once again depicted as a gang case, but the jury found no evidence that it was a gang crime.
The trial was most notable for one of the foremost memory experts who ended testifying that the identification procedure was poorly performed. The victim had defendants walked up to him in cuffs, the lighting was such that he was unable to clearly identify his perpetrators and the result was that most of the kids ended up being acquitted.
We have seen travesties of justice, such as the Asian family who had their homes raided by swarms of police and SWAT in a multijurisdictional drug raid, only to find 1.5 grams of meth. The family was arrested, facing gang and drug charges, but the jury could not convict most of them.
We covered the murder trial of Jesus Solis, where the victim blurted out in court asking where the shooter was, not recognizing the defendant as the shooter.
None of these cases were covered. We have seen people’s lives turned upside down, we have seen a bevy of charges for relatively minor acts, and yet most of what people see on the evening news and in the newspaper are the salacious and attention-grabbing cases.
We have covered a number of attempted murder cases, where the claims simply did not hold up.
The only thing that makes the Zimmerman case and Florida law interesting is that in California, you can claim “imperfect self-defense.” In California, imperfect self-defense gets you voluntary manslaughter rather than murder.
According to jury instructions on imperfect self-defense, the defendant has to have actually believed he or she was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily injury and to have believed that immediate use of deadly force was necessary, but one of these beliefs was ultimately unreasonable.
As “Simple Justice” notes, “While it may be that Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense, that he feared his life to be so endangered as to allow him to lawfully kill another person, isn’t entirely persuasive, there is strong support for his claim that he was in fear, even if he overreacted.”
The judge made the interesting call by allowing the jury to convict of voluntary manslaughter “if it isn’t convinced that the defendant acted out of ‘ill will, hatred, spite, or evil intent.’ “
That may be a reasonable landing spot for the jury in this case. Florida may have different consequences with “stand your ground” laws, but one of the key points in a self-defense trial that I have seen is that you cannot precipitate or escalate an incident and then claim self-defense.
In other words, if I get into your face, you punch me, I cannot then pull out a gun and claim self-defense, because I triggered the incident.
In the end, it is a tragedy that Trayvon Martin was killed at such a young age. I think we need to reexamine some things in the wake of this incident, but I don’t see this as compelling as others might.
A lot of politics ended up getting stuffed into this case from the start.
However, my main problem with this case is the media coverage of it. People who should know better end up saying a lot of foolish things once the camera comes on.
In the end, I recall the lyrics to the 1980s song by former Eagles member Don Henley, who said in the course of lambasting the news media in his song Dirty Laundry, “We all know that Crap is King, Give us dirty laundry.”
—David M. Greenwald reporting
My View: Zimmerman goes free. There was more than enough reasonable doubt shown by the defense. The cuts and marks to Zimmerman’s nose and the back of his head plus the fact that a witness testified that Trayvon was on top of him using what looked like MMA ground and pound tactics gives Zimmerman enough wiggle room to say he felt his life was threatened so he had to shoot also gets him off of any manslaughter charge.
I think it would be more accurate to say that in your view Zimmerman should go free. You have to weigh what you just wrote against a number of factors including the fact that a young man was killed at Zimmerman’s hands, I think a jury is going to be reluctant even if they see the case in as simple terms as you do, to set him free entirely. That’s based on my experience with juries. Frankly I have seen stronger cases for self-defense go against the defendant because of that factor.
Granted, one never knows how a jury might rule, take the OJ and Caylee Anthony trials. But being that the only eye witness corroborated Zimmerman’s story I really don’t see how a jury can look past that. We shall know soon.
“I did catch the prosecution’s use of force expert, laughed a bit when the defense carved him, and then moved on.”
David….I think that you got the prosecution and defense reversed in this statement.
My guess?…. a conviction on manslaughter which calls for up to 30 years. My guess is about 8-10 with the possibility of him getting out in 3-5.
The jury will convict Zimmerman on manslaughter to avoid riots.
Zimmerman is certainly guilty of having used bad judgement; even if he is acquitted on charges of murder and manslaughter.
When I was about Zimmerman’s age, between finishing grad school and getting an engineering job, I worked for two months as a security patrol at an outdoor shopping mall near UC Santa Barbara. I was unarmed, and though I knew something about firearms and firearm safety; there is no way I would have even considered carrying a firearm on patrol, without extensive training (like police training) in how to responsibly patrol as an armed guard, and also more training in firearms–I wasn’t interested in a career as an armed guard, so I never got this training (I found an engineering job instead). Seems to me Zimmerman should have sought extensive professional training, including certification, before considering carrying a firearm on neighborhood watch patrol (Perhaps he was emboldened to get out of his car because he had a firearm; perhaps emboldened to confront Travon because he had the firearm; but ultimately did not have the training to handle the resulting conflict situation without escalation, and the tragic result occurred.)
newsflash…..all-white jury found Zimmerman NOT GUILTY of any crime…pretty amazing but we have all sadly seen this before.. Is the next episode in Federal Court as a civil-rights issue,namely the 17 yo boy’s civil right to live.
[quote]Fla. mom gets 20 years for firing warning shots ([url]http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57433184/fla-mom-gets-20-years-for-firing-warning-shots/[/url])
A Florida woman who fired warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville had said the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law should apply to her because she was defending herself against her allegedly abusive husband when she fired warning shots inside her home in August 2010. She told police it was to escape a brutal beating by her husband, against whom she had already taken out a protective order.[/quote]
Read the first post, someone got it right.
If you had watched any of the trial or followed it in the news you would know that Zimmerman could not be ruled guilty by the evidence that was put forward unless of course you weren’t a fair minded person.
Good article David. I missed it somehow.
[i]Many criminal defense lawyers studiously ignore cases that catch the public’s attention.[/I]
Also, many DAs, and especially those in states where the governor can fire them and replace them, pursue cases for political reasons.