The Experts Agree with Me

Of course they do – if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be experts, would they? They would be "the so-called experts."

I’m certain that I have been less exposed to the Zimmerman/Martin case than most Americans. I guess there it was pretty much nonstop coverage; here I’ve just read those news articles that seemed interesting.

My reading of the trial testimony indicated that the prosecution case was very, very weak and came nowhere near proving Zimmerman guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This trial wrap-up from the Miami Herald agrees strongly:

After five weeks of trial and 56 witnesses, few legal observers believed prosecutors came close to proving Sanford neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman committed second-degree murder when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin in February 2012. 

So for many legal analysts, it was no surprise that jurors rejected even a lesser “compromise” verdict of manslaughter, acquitting Zimmerman outright of all criminal charges and deciding he acted in a reasonable way to protect his own life. 

The acquittal was a stinging blow for prosecutors and their decision to file the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman, who was not initially arrested by Sanford police after claiming self-defense. And it was a resounding embrace of the defense’s strategy during closing arguments not just to establish that prosecutors hadn’t proven Zimmerman guilty, but also to show he was “absolutely” innocent.

Given that experienced attorneys, the police who investigated, and most important of all, me, are in agreement that there was pretty much no case against Zimmerman, one has to wonder why the case even went to trial. But I think we all know the answer to that – it was in Barack Obama’s political interests to stoke up racial animosity during his re-election campaign.

As something of an aside: The prosecutor who overrode the police and filed the flimsy murder charge, has now fired a whistleblower in her department who revealed that she was withholding evidence.

An employee of the Florida State Attorney's Office who testified that prosecutors withheld evidence from George Zimmerman's defense team has been fired.

The guy had found that a large amount of data from Martin’s cellphone had been deleted from files provided to the defense, and testified about it.