The undisputed facts of the case are these:
- Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin.
- Zimmerman was acting alone, thereby making him a vigilante, not a neighborhood watch captain.
- Zimmerman was following Martin, a pedestrian, in his van.
- Zimmerman was armed. Martin was carrying skittles and a drink.
- Zimmerman was told by the police not to follow Martin.
- A 911 call by Martin exists.
- Zimmerman uttered “coons” not “goons.”
- Martin was in no way obligated to tell Zimmerman what he was doing, where he was going, and why he was in the neighborhood.
- Zimmerman did not seek medical treatment after he killed Martin.
- Martin was drug tested while Zimmerman was not.
- A background check was run on Martin, while one was not run on Zimmerman.
- Martin was tagged for three days as a “John Doe” notwithstanding the fact that the Sandford police had Martin’s cell phone and other identifying information.
- There is more than enough probable cause to have permitted Sanford police to arrest Zimmerman.
- Zimmerman remains unarrested and uncharged.
- Zimmerman remains armed.
- Zimmerman claims, through his distasteful surrogate Joe Oliver, that he has “lost” his life just like Martin.
- Unfounded allegations of marijuana possession are completely irrelevant to the case at bar and any and all attempts to defame Martin’s character is unconscionable and rooted in structural/historical racism and white supremacy.
From Salon.com:
If Zimmerman was indeed hurt in a scuffle with Martin – and news reports suggest he was bloody and bruised, with head lacerations that came from Martin pounding his skull into the sidewalk – why are there no photos? Why wasn’t Zimmerman taken to a hospital? The fact remains: An unarmed teenager was shot dead, and the man who shot him faced no rigorous interrogation. Can anyone believe that if the circumstances were reversed, and the young black man was the shooter, he’d have walked away without at minimum a meticulous collection of evidence? It’s hard to imagine he’d have walked away at all. The police were entirely too quick to believe Zimmerman had to shoot the boy in self-defense.
Also Monday we learned that Martin had been suspended from school because officials found an empty baggie that once held marijuana (that’s after Geraldo Rivera told us he brought on his own death by wearing a hoodie). Wow. A teenager might have smoked weed. Stop the presses. There is indeed something outrageous about that story – and it’s the fact that Martin was suspended for having merely an empty bag that once held weed under Miami’s “zero-tolerance” drug policy. I happen to think marijuana should be decriminalized, and I also believe schools have gone too far with their “zero tolerance” rules. This was a young man described as an A and B student who “majored in cheerfulness.” He had no known arrest record. It’s not too much to say that Trayvon Martin would still be alive if he hadn’t been suspended; he only visited Sanford in the first place because he was out of school.
And what does Martin’s suspension have to do with this case, anyway? That and other details are now being selectively released by Sanford Police, whose early reports about what happened were noteworthy for their factlessness. Why are police helping impeach the character of Trayvon Martin, while selectively confirming details that suggest he was the aggressor? (That wasn’t the worst attempt to smear Martin, by the way. Michelle Malkin’s website Twitchy posted a photo it claimed was Martin in saggy pants, giving the finger — and later was forced to admit it wasn’t Martin. It’s still making the rounds on conservative and white supremacist sites, anyway.)
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