Zimmerman-Martin controversy and public lynching

 

There is something about the story of Trayvon Martin’s shooting that continue to trouble me. Not that such an event could occur, but rather the public response to the reporting of the event.

Once I assumed we were a nation of laws. That each man and woman was afforded certain protections under our system of justice, among them the right to trial by jury and the assumption of innocence. It seems that has not really been the case for some time and this particular incident is one of the most heinous public lynching’s I have seen in some time.

Let us begin with the original story from the mass media:
Man shot and killed in neighborhood altercation

Then, this came out:
Protests over Trayvon Martin’s death sweep across America as anonymous witness claims teen attacked his killer George Zimmerman before fatal shooting

And This:

Black friend defends shooter of Florida teen

Now, the story looks like this:
Police: Zimmerman says Trayvon decked him with one blow then began hammering his head

We have had the POTUS weigh in that the teen looks like the son he never had, despite the tradition of POTUS not commenting on pending legal investigations and calls for Beer Summit 2 (because the first was SO meaningful) and the posting of dead or alive rewards from the New Black Panthers that would have done my Great Granddaddy and his Klan buddies proud.

Are we a nation of laws or not? For those idiots who say that Zimmerman’s use of force was disproportionate to what was going on, I assure you if I am on top of you and pounding your head into a sidewalk you are in grave and imminent threat of losing your life, which is more than enough justification to use deadly force in response. We just don’t know enough about the circumstances of how the altercation went down to know for sure how much blame Zimmerman owns, if any. But we do a disservice to him, ourselves and our society by pre-judging. If you want to go back to the unthinking days of lynching’s and hang ‘em high justice, you haven’t read enough history. Tomorrow the rope may come for you…