Who killed Trayvon Martin? An honest discussion of race and crime

Earlier this week on July 16, Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the NAACP convention in Orlando in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict. In the speech, Holder said that the “tragedy provides yet another opportunity for our nation to speak honestly – and openly – about the complicated and emotionally-charged issues that this case has raised.” In truth, the national conversation about the killing of Trayvon Martin has been anything but honest. 

George Zimmerman admits that he shot and killed Trayvon Martin. Even though Zimmerman pulled the trigger to fire the shot that ultimately killed Martin, he was not the only cause of Martin’s death. There seems to be plenty of blame to go around.

As noted in Examiner, Zimmerman, a registered Democrat, lived in a racially mixed neighborhood. In fact, Martin’s father’s girlfriend lived in the same neighborhood. It is unlikely that Zimmerman would have thought the mere presence of a black teenager would be alarming unless he was acting suspiciously. The Daily Caller reported in April 2012 that Zimmerman was one of few people in Sanford who pushed for justice in 2010 when the son of a white police officer beat a black man.

It seems likely that there is more to the case than the media narrative of a racist neighborhood watch captain killing an innocent black teenager. In many accidents, investigators point to a chain of events that lead up to the final incident. If any of the events that link together to cause the accident had not occurred the accident chain might have been broken. In the case of Trayvon Martin, there are several links in the chain.

The most obvious link in the chain is the string of burglaries that occurred in George Zimmerman’s neighborhood prior to his encounter with Trayvon Martin. According to CNN, there were at least eight burglaries within the previous 14 months. CNN notes that witnesses reported black males were responsible in three to four of the incidents while the other four had no witnesses or suspects. One resident said that George Zimmerman had called to alert police to a burglary in progress at his home on Feb. 2. Zimmerman’s call noted that the burglar in this case was also a black man.

According to the FBI, blacks represent 28 percent of arrests in the United States even though they make up only 13 percent of the population according to the Census Bureau. This means that they commit a disproportionate number of crimes compared to other demographic groups. Half of all murder arrests and more than half of robbery arrests are blacks. Thirty-one percent of burglary arrests are blacks. The statistics are even higher for juvenile arrests. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks are “disproportionately represented among both homicide victims and offenders.”

None of this means that every black person should be automatically suspected of criminal behavior. However, it does show that if a black teenager is acting strangely and looking into houses as Zimmerman alleges, investigating further is not unreasonable. The very purpose for the existence of a neighborhood watch is to be alert for suspicious activity regardless of race.

The question is why crime and incarceration rates among blacks are so much higher than their share of the total population. The answer can likely be found in the destruction of the black family. Data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows that 67 percent of black children live in single-parent households. This is a far greater rate than for other races. Seventy-two percent of black children are born to unwed mothers according to NBC News.

The link between single-parent families and risky behaviors of children is well established. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, especially when the absent parent is the father, children are much more likely to become sexually active, use drugs, and have increased risk of juvenile delinquency.

The underlying truths represented by these statistics may have shaped Trayvon Martin’s young life. Martin’s step-mother, Alicia Stanley, raised him for 14 years until she and Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, divorced. Trayvon apparently changed after the divorce. In a CNN interview, Stanley said that he wasn’t a “thug” and that language like “creepy-ass cracker” was not used their home. Stanley said that she did not believe that race was a factor in the shooting.

Nevertheless, New York Times reported that, after the shooting, pictures and text messages found on Trayvon’s cell phone included guns, drugs, fighting and the fact that he had been kicked out of his mother’s house. One picture apparently shows Martin smoking marijuana, which has been shown to cause aggression, anxiety and paranoia. The Daily Mail reports that Trayvon was suspended from school three times in the months before his death. Reasons for the suspensions were possession of a burglary tool and jewelry, truancy, and possession of marijuana paraphernalia. Twitter messages refer to Trayvon hitting a bus driver. (Martin’s complete tweets can be viewed here.) ABC News also reported that Martin’s autopsy showed THC, the drug found in marijuana, in his blood.

In one eerily prescient exchange of text messages, reported in the Miami Herald, a friend asked Trayvon “so you just turning into a lil hoodlum [?]” and then warned “Boy don’t get one planted in ya chest.” Three months later, Trayvon was dead.

There were many links in the chain that led to Trayvon Martin’s death. George Zimmerman’s ill-considered decision to follow the teen is only the most obvious. Directly related to Zimmerman’s paranoia was the spate of burglaries that local police either could not or would not solve. The “broken windows” theory of policing holds that prosecution of small crimes can prevent larger, more violent crimes. In this case, if the police had solved the string of burglaries, they might have prevented an assault and killing. Likewise, if Trayvon’s parents and school administrators had reacted more strongly to the warning signs in his academic career, he might have been “scared straight.”

The biggest and most difficult link to break is the destruction of the black family. Trayvon Martin’s problems may have stemmed from the divorce of his father and step-mother. Like many children of divorce, Martin seems to have begun having trouble at school, become involved with drugs, and finally graduated to violence. Eyewitness testimony, reported by ABC News, supports Zimmerman’s story that he was pinned by Martin and screamed for help. If Martin had returned to his father’s girlfriend’s home rather than turning to confront Zimmerman, regardless of who threw the first punch, he would be alive today. His anger, resulting from anger at his parents’ divorce and compounded by drug use, may have played a role in his decision not to walk away.

Bill Cosby is one of the few black leaders who is willing to speak frankly about the problems facing the black community. In a 2011 interview with the Christian Post, Cosby decried the rise in single-parent families and the “media that romanticizes criminal behavior, things that a person will say against women, profanity, being gangster, having multiple children with multiple men and women and not wanting to is prevalent.”

The way to prevent more Trayvon Martins is not banning stand-your-ground laws, guns or hoodies. Preventing the deaths of more young black men and women starts with repairing the damage to the black family, a much more difficult task than demonizing George Zimmerman. Perhaps that is why so many choose to ignore the problem.

Originally published as Atlanta Conservative Examiner

The system worked for George Zimmerman

Although many Americans are upset about the not guilty verdict handed down by the jury for George Zimmerman, the case is actually proof that the judicial system still works and is not controlled by politicians and interest groups. George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black man, on February 26, 2012. Although the circumstances of the killing were uncertain, many in the media rushed to judgment and fanned the flames of race almost immediately.

Media reports immediately claimed that Zimmerman was a racist who shot Martin because he was a black man who was walking in Zimmerman’s neighborhood. As Examiner reported at the time, Zimmerman’s neighborhood was racially mixed and had suffered a large number of burglaries in the months leading up to the shooting. Martin was staying at his father’s girlfriend’s house, which was in the same gated community where Zimmerman lived. Logically, Zimmerman would not have been shocked to see a black man in his neighborhood.

The only evidence that the shooting was racially motivated seems to be the color of the men’s skin and a telephone call that Zimmerman made to the Sanford police while he was following Martin. Originally described as a 911 call, Zimmerman actually called the police department’s nonemergency line. A recording of the call was edited by NBC’s Today Show to make Zimmerman appear racist.

According to Reuters, NBC deleted several seconds of the call to make it appear that Zimmerman initially volunteered information about Martin’s race. In reality, Zimmerman only mentioned that Martin was black when queried by police. An NBC producer was fired over the incident and George Zimmerman is suing the company. The complete transcript of the call is available on Document Cloud.

Zimmerman does not dispute that he followed Martin, but says that Martin confronted him and began assaulting him after he began to return to his truck after getting out to look for a street sign. No one knows for sure what happened because there were no witnesses to the start of the fight.

In a July 2013 CNN interview, Sanford police chief Bill Lee said that there was no probable cause to arrest Zimmerman on the night of the shooting because the evidence supported Zimmerman’s story. One investigator did favor arresting Zimmerman for manslaughter, but Lee says that the evidence did not even support that charge and that an arrest would have violated Zimmerman’s Fourth Amendment rights. Lee said that the investigation was “taken away from us.” The mayor released the telephone tapes before the investigation was completed and Gov. Rick Scott appointed a special prosecutor in the case less than a month after the killing. Lee said that he was pressured by city officials to arrest Zimmerman, even without evidence of a crime, to placate the public. Around the same time, President Obama made a statement that, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Lee’s department presented a capias request to the state attorney to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to arrest Zimmerman, but was removed from the investigation before the request was answered.

The facts in the case must be judged on their own merit. The facts do not include sensational, and often erroneous, media reports. The skin color of the victim and his accused murderer are not relevant to the question of whether Trayvon Martin’s killing was justified. There is an old saying that “justice is blind.” Justice should also be colorblind.

The accumulated weight of hundreds of years of repression and discrimination of blacks cannot be placed upon George Zimmerman’s shoulders. Zimmerman is responsible for his own behavior and no one else’s. The banished institution of slavery was not on trial in Florida. Neither was the separate-but-(not quite) equal system of “Jim Crow” laws. In 1923, white mobs killed at least six blacks and destroyed most of the black town of Rosewood, Florida. George Zimmerman was not part of that mob. America has checkered past when it comes to race relations, but America was not on trial.

Many of Zimmerman’s critics are angry about the fact that he shot an unarmed man. Florida’s self-defense law does not require that an assailant be armed for someone to defend themselves with a gun. According to a survey by CNN, “nearly all states allow use of deadly force to protect yourself inside your home, based on the Castle doctrine,” a concept that dates back to Roman times. At least 33 other states have expanded the right self-defense to homes, offices and other areas as well. Zimmerman’s defense did not hinge on the Castle Doctrine according to Bill Lee. According to his testimony, Zimmerman could not retreat since he was pinned by Martin.

Florida law provides that a person is justified when they “reasonably believe that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.” George Zimmerman told police that Martin attacked him and told him, “You’re gonna die tonight, mothaf____!” according to Business Insider. At that point, Zimmerman said that his gun became exposed and both men reached for it. Zimmerman was able to get the gun and shoot Martin. Zimmerman’s critics may disagree with the law as it is written, but the jury was required to decide the case based on current law, not what pundits believe the law should be.

In American jurisprudence, criminal defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Jurors should not enter the trial with preconceived notions about the defendant’s guilt or innocence. It is up to the prosecutor to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This means that it is “beyond dispute that any reasonable alternative is possible” and “that no other logical explanation can be derived from the facts” according to West’s law encyclopedia. In practice, this means that the American justice system defaults to a position where guilty men sometimes go free so that fewer innocent men will go to jail.

In the end, for both Bill Lee’s police investigators and the jury, there was simply not enough evidence to charge or convict George Zimmerman. The prosecution seems to have been pushed for political reasons to answer the media and public calls for Zimmerman’s arrest. The pressure may have emanated from as high as President Obama’s Department of Justice. The prosecution of George Zimmerman was an attempt to subvert justice for political reasons. In the end, in spite of the pressure, the system worked.

Originally published by Atlanta Conservative Examiner

Trayvon Martin case is gray, not black and white

By now the entire nation is watching the unfolding drama of the Trayvon Martin killing in Sanford, Fl. The basic facts of the case are undisputed. Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, who is black, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a white neighborhood watch captain, on the night of February 26. Beyond those basic facts, however, the case becomes far more muddled.

Much of the country is up in arms over the allegation that Zimmerman shot and killed Martin simply because the black teenager was walking through his neighborhood. Zimmerman has not been charged in the case because he claims that the shooting was in self-defense.

In the months before the shooting, there had been several burglaries in the neighborhood where Zimmerman lived. A neighbor, Frank Taaffe, told NBC Miami that there had been eight break-ins within 15 months, mostly committed by young black males. The crime rate set the stage for the shooting.

On the night in question, relatives say that Martin, wearing a hoodie, was walking back to the home of his father’s fiancée from a local 7-Eleven after purchasing a can of iced tea and Skittles. The fiancée lives in Zimmerman’s gated community, which is racially mixed.

Martin’s girlfriend was on the phone with him just before the altercation according to CNN. The girl says that Martin told her that someone was following him and that he was trying to get away. She says that she heard someone ask Martin what he was doing and heard Martin ask why he was being followed. At that point, the phone went dead. She did not hear a gunshot.

At the same time that Martin was talking to his girlfriend, George Zimmerman, who had seen Martin while going to the grocery store, was talking to a 911 dispatcher. A transcript of Zimmerman’s 911 call is available on Documentcloud.org. In the call, Zimmerman states his belief that Martin was “on drugs” and that he “looks like he’s up to no good.” He says, “These a—holes, they always get away.” Seconds later, he says that Martin is running away.

In a controversial part of the call, the dispatcher asks, “Are you following him?” When Zimmerman answers in the affirmative, the dispatcher says, “We don’t need you to do that.” Zimmerman answers, “Okay.” The call ends with the dispatcher agreeing to send police to meet Zimmerman.

What happened next is a matter of dispute. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Zimmerman, who wore a red jacket that night, told police that he had stopped following Martin and was returning to his car when Martin approached him from behind. He claims that Martin asked him if he had a problem. When Zimmerman said no, Martin allegedly said, “You do now” and punched him in the nose, knocking him to the ground. At that point, Zimmerman says that Martin pinned him and began beating him while he was still on the ground. Zimmerman reports that he yelled for help. The Sentinel reports that when police arrived a few minutes later, summoned by Zimmerman’s original call, that they found that Zimmerman had a bloody nose, a swollen lip, and injuries to the back of his head.

Zimmerman’s cries for help prompted several other residents to call the police according to CNN. Two women, Mary Cutcher and Selma Lamilla, report that they heard “whining, someone in distress, and then the gunshot” through an open window. When the women ran outside they saw Zimmerman standing over Martin. They asked Zimmerman three times what was going on before he responded by telling them to call the police.

Fox Orlando reports that another witness, identified only as John, said that Martin had been on top of Zimmerman. He said that “the guy on the bottom who had a red sweater (Zimmerman) on was yelling to me: 'help, help….’” He went upstairs to call 911 and then looked out again and saw that “the guy who was on top (Martin) beating up the other guy was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point.”

Further complicating the story are revelations that Trayvon Martin had a somewhat troubled past. NBC Miami reported that Martin had been suspended from school on three separate occasions. In one incident, Martin had been sighted “"hiding and being suspicious" in an unauthorized area of his school.

Last October, a school investigator saw surveillance video of Martin writing “WTF” (“what the f—k”) on a door inside the school. The next day, police searched Martin’s backpack for the graffiti marker and also found a screwdriver described as a “burglary tool” and 12 pieces of jewelry that included silver wedding bands and diamond earrings. According to the NBC report, Martin denied that the jewelry was his and said that it belonged to a friend who he declined to name. It is not known whether the jewelry was stolen. Four months after this, just a few days before the shooting, he was suspended again for possession of a marijuana pipe and an empty baggie with traces of marijuana in it.

The Daily Caller also recently published a record of Trayvon Martin’s tweets from his Twitter account, @NO_LIMIT_NIGGA, a reference to a gangsta rap song. Absent from the remaining record after the account was deleted are tweets that a blogger at Wagist claims imply that Martin “swung on a bus driver.” Wagist also presents a Facebook message where a friend contacted Martin with “business to talk” because he needed a “plant.” Even if Martin were a drug dealer or gang member, it would not mean that Zimmerman was right to kill him. It would, however, introduce significant doubt into the mainstream media’s version of events.

For his part, Zimmerman has a record as well.  Reuters reports that he was arrested in 2005 and charged with resisting arrest and battery on a police officer.  His fiancée also filed a restraining order against him citing domestic violence around the same time.  This is apparently where his now famous mug shot came from.

The State of Florida’s so-called “stand-your-ground” law has also come in for much criticism. In reality, the law merely means that a person has no duty to retreat from an attack before defending himself. Propublica.com reports that 23 other states have similar laws. The concept of stand-your-ground, also called the Castle Doctrine because it is normally applied within the home, is longstanding in U.S. law. The Supreme Court upheld the concept as far back as 1895 in Beard v. United States.

In any case, stand-your-ground would not apply in the Trayvon Martin shooting. If Zimmerman had continued following Martin after the 911 call ended and shot him in cold blood, as the media and Martin’s family and supporters allege, then it would not be a defense because the law does not give citizens the right to chase down and shoot suspects. Likewise, Florida law specifically excludes the justification of self-defense by someone who “initially provokes the use of force against himself.” If Zimmerman picked a fight with Martin and then shot him, he cannot claim self-defense. On the other hand, if Martin attacked Zimmerman and held him down, not only was Zimmerman not required by the law to retreat, he did not have that option.

The story has inspired protests in Atlanta and around the country on behalf of Martin to demand Zimmerman’s arrest. A black activist group has even offered a reward for Zimmerman’s capture. Spike Lee tweeted what he incorrectly though was Zimmerman’s address, possibly endangering the lives of an elderly couple. Rather than calling for cooler heads, President Obama sympathized with Martin’s parents.

Although more information is being released every day in the case, it is evident that the Trayvon Martin killing is not the simple case of violent racism that the prevailing media narrative tells. The pattern has been repeated several times in recent years. Pundits claimed that Troy Davis, a convicted cop-killer executed in Georgia last year, was an innocent man while ignoring facts that didn’t fit their story. Before that, the left-wing media was ready to convict the entire Tea Party in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Before that, the target was the entire Duke University lacrosse team for rape, sexual assault, and kidnapping before it came to light that Mike Nifong, the prosecuting D.A., withheld DNA evidence and misled a judge. In that case the North Carolina attorney general said that there was no credible evidence that an attack had even occurred.

The current rush to judge George Zimmerman is not helpful to anyone. In the end, the case of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman may very well turn out to be very different from how it has been presented in the media thus far. If the evidence indicates that Zimmerman is lying, then he will be arrested and charged. If not, then his electronic lynching in the media will have ruined his reputation and endangered his life.

Originally published on Examiner.com:
http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/the-truth-about-trayvon-martin-is-gray-not-black-and-white