Black Boys and American Justice
Eugene Robinson
***
Alan: By Law, it may have been impossible for the jury to find George Zimmerman guilty "beyond reasonable doubt."
Guilt -- at least legal guilt -- did not attach to the armed pursuant who, against police advice, exited his car to pursue and "provoke" (unarmed) Trayvon Martin, a "typical teen" who, when interrupted and killed, was returning to his father's home after buying candy and soda.
The jury found that legal guilt did not lie with the armed pursuant.
Rather, ground-zero guilt adheres to every Floridian who approved stand-your-ground gun legislation -- an exculpatory legal device to legitimize the killing of others when others are perceived as life-threatening.
These perceived threats need not be, in fact, life-threatening.
Instead, a "threatened" individual's spur-of-the-moment perception -- which is to say a completely subjective judgment -- is sufficient justification for use of lethal force.
Like much of Modernity, stand-your-ground legislation distills to the apotheosis of individualism and individual "feeling."
If a citizen "feels" threatened, the law vouchsafes summary slaughter of a "perceived" aggressor whether or not that person represents mortal threat.
In effect, stand-your-ground laws normalize/legitimize "feeling-based" murder.
***
Once George Zimmerman killed the only eye-witness to Trayvon Martin's killing, there was
nothing to prevent -- nor even inhibit -- the vigilante's claim of
"feeling" mortally threatened by the decedent.
Once Zimmerman "covered his tracks" by killing the witness, it became impossible to probe the hypothesis (which for me, at least, is the most persuasive) that it was Trayvon who first felt threatened by a meddling vigilante whom police had already "ordered" to stay in his car to avoid predictably provocative confrontation.
When I imagine myself "into" Trayvon's circumstances, I come to the conclusion that George Zimmerman, a pushy zealot packing a gun, represented a threat to my well-being, and, in consequence of that threat, it was appropriate for me to protect myself from Zimmerman's menace.
It makes no sense at all that this unarmed, candy-toting black man -- if unprovoked -- would have picked a fight with gun-toting Zimmerman.
In the end, it is likely Zimmerman got away with murder.
It is equally likely that The Law itself created the circumstances that impelled the murder.
Florida Law may even have compelled the murder.
However, constrained by The-Law-as-written, I would have voted as the jury did.
***
Americans are murderous people who, long ago, normalized perpetual warfare.
We don't just tolerate killing.
We love killing.
We feel empty - or least that "something is missing" - unless dark-skinned people, somewhere, anywhere, are being killed by "American operatives."
***
Aquinas weighs in...
"Laws are unjust in two ways: First, they
may be such because they oppose human good by denying the three criteria just
mentioned. This can occur because of their end, when a ruler imposes burdens
with an eye, not to the common good, but to his own enrichment or glory;
because of their author, when someone imposes laws beyond the scope of his
authority; or because of their form, when burdens are inequitably distributed,
even if they are ordered to the common good. Such decrees are not so much laws
as acts of violence, because, as Augustine says, "An unjust law does not
seem to be a law at all." Such laws do not bind the conscience, except
perhaps to avoid scandal or disturbance, on account of which one should yield
his right. As Christ says, "If someone forces you to go a mile, go another
two with him; and if he takes your tunic, give him your pallium" (Mtt.
5:40f.)." Aquinas On Law (Fordham University) - http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/aquinas2.html
"The most damning element here is not that George Zimmerman was found not guilty: it's the bitter knowledge that Trayvon Martin was found guilty."
Jelani Cobb
The New Yorker
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