Associated Press and Penn Live: Arrest George Zimmerman for Killing Trayvon Martin, the Law be Damned! Let Zimmerman Prove His Innocence

in Court!
 
Trayvon Martin, l, and George Zimmerman
 
By Nicholas Stix

An anonymous AP staffer has written a reportorial—an editorial disguised as a news report—demanding that neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman, 28, be railroaded for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, 17, on February 26, in a gated community in Sanford, Florida.

The piece doesn’t even feign balance. According to its anonymous author, outside of the Sanford, Florida, Police Department, everyone in the world—layman and expert alike—believes that George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin, and that he even violated Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law.

Here’s the money quote.

Florida is among 21 states with a "Stand Your Ground Law," which gives people wide latitude to use deadly force rather than retreat during a fight. The Florida law lets police on the scene decide whether they believe the self-defense claim.

• Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett signed Pennsylvania's version last year.

In many cases, the officers make an arrest and leave it to the courts to work out whether the deadly force is justified. In this case, however, police have said they are confident they did the right thing by not charging Zimmerman.

That’s illegal! You can’t arrest anyone who, as far as you know, has broken no laws, and “leave it to the courts to work out”! That turns the presumption of innocence upside down, and leaves it to someone who has broken no laws to “prove his innocence,” which is exactly what the supporters of the Duke Rape Hoax pulled against the three falsely accused white Duke students.
* * *
Trayvon Martin's shooting death by neighborhood watch captain in Florida ignites debates, marches
By Anonymous
Thursday, March 22, 2012, 2:31 PM
Associated Press/Penn Live

The parents of a black teenager shot to death by a Hispanic neighborhood watch captain in Florida told demonstrators in New York they will keep fighting to get justice for their son.

"My son did not deserve to die," Tracy Martin said yesterday after thanking the hundreds of people who participated in a march in the teenager's memory, a sign of growing outrage over the shooting. Demonstrators chanting "we want arrests" converged on Manhattan's Union Square for the Million Hoodie March.
 

“Trayvon Martin, in an undated file family photo” [a very old family photo]
 

Martin's son, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, was killed Feb. 26, in Sanford, Fla. He was returning to a gated community in the city after buying candy at a convenience store. He was unarmed and was wearing a hooded sweat shirt, called a hoodie.

The neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, has not been charged in the shooting. Zimmerman has said the teen attacked him and he shot him in self-defense.

The Florida shooting has ignited a furor against the police department of the Orlando suburb of 53,500 people, prompting rallies and a protest in Gov. Rick Scott's office on Tuesday.

Florida is among 21 states with a "Stand Your Ground Law," which gives people wide latitude to use deadly force rather than retreat during a fight. The Florida law lets police on the scene decide whether they believe the self-defense claim.

• Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett signed Pennsylvania's version last year.

In many cases, the officers make an arrest and leave it to the courts to work out whether the deadly force is justified. [That’s illegal! You can’t arrest anyone who, as far as you know, has broken no laws, and “leave it to the courts to work out”! That turns the presumption of innocence upside down, and leaves it to someone who has broken no laws to “prove his innocence,” which is exactly what the supporters of the Duke Rape Hoax pulled against the three falsely accused white Duke students.] In this case, however, police have said they are confident they did the right thing by not charging Zimmerman.

The teenager was black. Police say Zimmerman is white; his family says he's Hispanic. The shooting's racial overtones have sparked a national outcry and debate over whether the shooting was warranted. And like in many self-defense cases, two sides of the story have emerged.

Zimmerman told police he was attacked by Martin after he had given up chasing the boy and he was returning to his truck. He had a bloody nose and blood on the back of his head, according to police. Martin's family questions Zimmerman's story, and believes if their races were reversed, there is no doubt a black shooter would be jailed, even if he claimed self-defense.

"They are making it look like Zimmerman is the victim and their son is in the grave," said Benjamin Crump, attorney for Martin's parents. "It's about equal justice."
 

Trayvon Martin's parent's Tracy Martin, left, and Sybrina Fulton, center, during the Million Hoodie March in Union Square Wednesday, March 21, 2012 in New York. A few hundred people marched [rioted] in New York City in memory of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager shot to death by a Hispanic neighborhood watch captain in Florida. The teenager was unarmed and was wearing a hoodie./(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
 

The Justice Department and FBI have opened a civil rights investigation, and the local prosecutor has convened a grand jury April 10 to determine whether to charge Zimmerman.

In recent days, information surrounding the teen's death has been coming out, including 911 calls and an account from his family's lawyer of a conversation he had with his girlfriend in the moments before his death.

In a statement released Wednesday, Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee insisted his officers were "prohibited from making an arrest based on the facts and circumstances they had at the time," including physical evidence that supported Zimmerman's self-defense claim.

"The Sanford Police Department has conducted a complete and fair investigation of this incident," Lee said, adding that it's now up to prosecutors to determine whether to bring charges.

'Stand Your Ground' law

Under the National Rifle Association-backed Florida law passed in 2005, Florida, unlike most other states, grants immunity from prosecution or arrest to suspects who successfully invoke the "stand your ground" claim. And if a suspect is arrested and charged, a judge can throw out the case well before trial based on a self-defense claim. ["National Rifle Association-backed"? when do the MSM tell you that a law was backed by left-wing groups?]

Still, it's not enough for Zimmerman or anyone involved in a confrontation to simply claim innocence based on no duty to retreat, said Fordham University law professor Nicholas Johnson. "By the Florida law, he is not relieved of the traditional and basic requirement of showing that he fairly perceived an imminent deadly threat," Johnson said.

Crump, the Martin family attorney, said the teenager weighed about 140 pounds and was carrying a bag of Skittles and a can of ice tea he had bought at a nearby convenience store when Zimmerman began following him in his sport utility vehicle. Zimmerman, meanwhile, weighs around 200 pounds and was armed with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun, which he had a permit to legally carry.

"So the facts that have come out that I have become aware of, would tend to indicate he should not be granted immunity," Roger Weeden, an Orlando defense attorney closely following the case, said of Zimmerman.

Some state lawmakers are already questioning whether the law should be revisited.
State Sen. Chris Smith, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat, said he is preparing a bill that would not allow a self-defense claim in cases where the shooter appeared to provoke the victim. That could have be a factor in the Martin case, where 911 calls and other evidence shows that Zimmerman was following the teenager in his vehicle and approached him aggressively despite specific instructions from police to back off.

Neighborhood Watch

Criminal justice experts say police departments and watch groups need to make sure volunteers do not take matters into their own hands.

“First thing: You do not engage. Once you see anything, a suspicious activity, you call the number that the police department has given you,” said Chris Tutko, director of the Neighborhood Watch program at the National Sheriffs’ Association, which launched the neighborhood watch concept 40 years ago as a response to rising crime.

Tutko said he was flabbergasted to learn about a watch captain’s shooting of Martin.

Tutko said it’s highly unusual, and highly discouraged, for a neighborhood watch to be armed.

“You do not carry a weapon during neighborhood watch,” he said flatly. “If you carry a weapon, you’re going to pull it.”

Tens of thousands of watches have been formed across the United States over the decades. Some patrol gritty urban neighborhoods where volunteers walk a beat; others monitor sparsely populated areas with houses that are miles apart.

Regardless of location, the message from law enforcement is always the same: Do not intervene. Do not try to be a hero. Leave the crime-fighting to the police.

“We don’t want to see somebody taking the law into their own hands,” said Philadelphia police Sgt. Dennis Rosenbaum.
 

[Previously, on the Trayvon Martin case, at WEJB/NSU:

“Sanford, Florida: Black ‘Little Boy,’Trayvon Martin 17, Beat White ‘Vigilante’ George Zimmerman Bloody; Zimmerman Shot Martin Dead; Now Black WFTV ‘Reporter,’ Daralene Jones, Black Supremacists, and White Aunt Jemima Earwitness Demand That Zimmerman be Arrested”;

“Trayvon Martin: ABC ‘News’ Gets on Bandwagon, Acting as Martin’s Family Mouthpiece; Family Lawyer Refuses to Release All Information about Teen’s Last Phone Call to Girlfriend, but Insists That It Requires That George Zimmerman be Arrested ‘Right Now’”;

“Arrest First, Investigate Later: Press Conference by Lawyer Benjamin Crump, of Trayvon Martin’s Family, Seeks Through Violation of Due Process… to Railroad George Zimmerman”;

“News Coverage of the Trayvon Martin Case Keeps Getting Worse: New York Daily News Passes Off ABC News Hearsay as ‘Interview,’ While Changing the Hearsay!”;

“USA Today: ‘In wake of black teen Trayvon Martin's death, USA is soul-searching’; McPaper Invokes Jena 6, Quotes Al Sharpton, Self-Described ‘ThugNiggaIntellectual’ Mark Neal, and Jena Attacker Theo Shaw as Moral Authorities”;

“Why the Secret ‘Interview’ with Trayvon Martin’s Secret Girlfriend is Bogus, and His Alleged Last Cell Phone Call is Insignificant”;

“Another Trayvon Martin Supporter: Florida Atlantic U. Hate Crime Attacker Jonatha Carr Had Just been Interviewed about the Jena Six/Nuremberg-Style Rally She’s been Organizing; CBS12 News Tries to Rationalize Her Crimes”; and

“Trayvon Martin’s Parents Attend New York City Riot Held on Their Behalf.”]