I’ve been reading commentaries (and commenting myself) on George Zimmerman's shooting of Trayvon Martin, and I've discovered folks who believe that that Martin reversed on Zimmerman and attacked him. They make much of a bit of court testimony from Chris Serino, lead investigator for the police on the case.
He also testified that he believed Zimmerman was telling the truth, especially after Serino bluffed that Martin's cell phone may have captured video of the incident.
“I believe [Zimmerman’s] words were, ‘Thank God, I was hoping somebody would videotape it,’” said Serino.
I can see how that could seem very convincing … if you take Zimmerman as fundamentally credible. But I find it very easy to reconcile this statement with the possibility that it was Zimmerman who confronted, even assaulted, Martin.
Let us suppose that Zimmerman is hotheaded, bigoted, self-righteous, and stupid. I’m not saying he is these things, mind you; I’m just a guy who reads the news, so I don’t know. But he could be. The evidence in the public record is at least consistent with the possibility, and there are things which hint that he is.
Let us imagine him that way for a minute.
It’s easy to imagine that guy going chasing after Martin. Because he’d feel justified in doing it; he’s the hero of his own little action movie in his head. It’s easy to imagine that guy going up to Martin and confronting him provocatively and seeing Martin’s angry response through bigot-o-vision as an unprovoked threat. It’s easy to imagine that guy grabbing Martin’s arm when Martin tried to walk away — which legally means Zimmerman assaulting Martin — and feeling justified in that. It’s easy to imagine that turning into a pushing-and-shoving scuffle from Martin just trying to get away which could put Martin’s elbow in Zimmerman’s face, costing Zimmerman his footing so he falls and hits his head. It’s easy to imagine Zimmerman on the ground and Martin yelling, Zimmerman dazed and panicked and fearing what he perceives as a scary Black thug attacking him. That Zimmerman could have drawn his gun and shot Martin and felt himself completely justified, thinking that his life had depended on it.
That is, it’s easy to imagine that Zimmerman confronted Martin, attacked him, escalated the fight, then shot Martin when things didn’t go the way he wanted — and thought that he was entirely justified in the eyes of the law, even though under Florida law, having assaulted Martin first he would have been guilty of at least manslaughter for shooting Martin in this hypothetical, even if he had sincerely feared for his life.
Given how little we can confirm about what happened that night, I cannot claim to know that any of this happened. But it’s plausible that it did. Which makes it easy for to imagine Zimmerman being guilty but believing that he was acting reasonably and within his rights. He could have sincerely believed that video evidence would vindicate him, as Serino says, when in fact it would do the opposite.
The point here is not the question of Zimmerman per se. Again: I cannot know about him.
The point is that whether or not Zimmerman is the person I described, that guy does exist out there. And we have just demonstrated vividly that the criminal justice system will support him. So even if Zimmerman was right and justice was served in his case, on a broader scale this trial has demonstrated systemic racism and injustice.
Later updates
Jury instructions (September 2013)
A reflection on the conduct of Zimmerman’s trial and what his jury was and was not told about how to decide his case.
A properly instructed jury should have heard the complete law of self-defense in Florida, not just the portions that helped Zimmerman. Had the jury been instructed about the initial aggressor exception, it might have concluded that Zimmerman’s following of Martin, though itself not criminal, was reasonably apprehended by Martin as a “threat of force.” Put another way, the jury might have concluded that Martin was the one acting in self-defense during the physical confrontation that preceded the gunshot, making Zimmerman the aggressor.
Josh Marshall (November 2013)
I have a commentary from Josh Marshall, Sick To My Stomach, which says exactly what I'm thinking about what we have learned about Zimmerman since I originally wrote this piece.
Now we have him allegedly pointing a loaded weapon at his new girlfriend and apparently barricading himself in the house after police arrived on the scene. Add to this the earlier history of violent incidents including violently resisting arrest in 2005 and the real world verdict is now beyond a reasonable doubt as to this point: Zimmerman is a liar and a habitually violent and frequently out of control man who should never have been allowed to possess a gun.
Given all we know now about Zimmerman and all the additional evidence he's provided us with post-acquittal, there's simply no reason to doubt the worst case scenario of how Trayvon Martin died. The only real question is whether Zimmerman shot him in cold blood or killed him during the confrontation he himself forced to happen.
These revelations make my speculation that his shooting of Trayvon Martin may have come from panic, stupidity, irresponsibility, and semiconscious bigotry not the least generous plausible reading of Zimmerman, but actually the kindest. (Another update: evidence of Zimmerman's character keeps piling up.)
That makes me want to talk about how this post originally came to be. I wrote it as a response to conservatives on an online forum who insisted that Zimmerman’s reply to Officer Serino was part of a great pile of evidence which demonstrated that we could be certain that Zimmerman was rightfully defending himself against a fierce, unprovoked attack by Martin. These people were smug about how they were looking at the facts and bravely following them where they led, unclouded by a political agenda.
It is hard not to scent racist bigotry in people who find that absurd image of Martin randomly attacking a stranger not just plausible, not just likely, but certain.
In turn, while I phrased my original post cautiously as a speculation of what might have happened, I imagine that it’s obvious that it reflects my intuition about what really did happen. My framing my description as merely a speculation wasn’t just in the name of rhetoric in a debate, though; I don’t have any special knowledge, and need to be wary of overestimating my knowledge at a distance.
But it is interesting that my intuition is now strongly supported by later evidence, is it not? Why, in this case, was my intuition better than those conservatives’?
This question of intuitions is important. What do we find plausible? Who do we find credible? I don’t want a system of justice that simply accepts intuition — not even my own — but the question of intuition matters.
So let me confess where I got my image of Zimmerman. I got it from this softball interview with him on Fox News:
Watching that, to my eye, it’s obvious what kind of person Zimmerman is. I know that guy. He has no self-doubt. He could have done what I described and rationalized himself as being in the right, no sweat. And aside from recognizing that guy as as “hotheaded, bigoted, self-righteous, and stupid [⋯] the hero of his own little action movie in his head”, there’s one other thing I know about that guy: conservatives are dead suckers for him.
I first learned this watching Oliver North testify in the Iran/Contra hearings, when I was quite young. His earnest self-righteousness gave me the heebie-jeebies but conservatives lapped it up. They always do, when it’s a member of their tribe.
I’ve commented before about how differing responses to earnestness are part of the liberal-conservative culture divide in America. Liberals have a deep-rooted skepticism about it, because we think that one needs self-doubt to check one’s self. Cultural liberals’ attitude is not entirely a good thing — earnest sincerity can be beautiful and powerful. But conservatives are far too credulous about it, which makes them too supportive of the smug and self-righteous. And they never seem to learn.
This is a culture gap that literally kills.
Domestic abuser (January 2015)
A commentary reports …
George Zimmerman was arrested on Friday for aggravated assault and domestic violence with a weapon, marking the third time in as many years that he’s been arrested after an alleged domestic violence incident.
… and explores the legal logic which keeps guns in his hands despite this.
Still that guy (March 2015)
Smugly certain that he could not possibly have done anything wrong:
“I believe God has his plans, and for me to second-guess them would be hypocritical, almost blasphemous,” he said when asked if the encounter that ended Martin’s life would have turned out differently.
Was he always a neo-Confederate? (August 2015)
He made this for a fundraiser:
The caption, “the 2nd protects the first’ is a double entendre. The first flag I painted on this canvas was an American Flag, but decided to repaint over it with the Confederate Flag when I heard Andy was getting sued by CAIR. The 2nd flag I painted was the Battle Flag — which we need in America in order to protect the first.
He also does these:
Transparently racist and smug (August 2015)
Bragging about escalating to deadly force.
We all know how it ended for the last moron that hit me.
Stalking
Credibly accused by a private investigator who asked for a restraining order for cyber-stalking.
Law & custom
On the implications of our environment of lots of hotheads, guns, and rationalizations to escalate to deadly force:
Kyle Rittenhouse’s Defense Was Strong — It’s also a threat to the rule of law.
As Shaila Dewan notes in the New York Times, “legally kill or legally be killed” scenarios are just one of several pathological consequences of America’s lax gun regulations, and permissive police use of force and/or self-defense laws. In much of the country, Americans have a legal right to openly carry weapons of mass murder. And yet all it takes is one suspicious bystander, a phone call to the police, and the arrival of a trigger-happy cop for the legal act of carrying an AR-15 — or a toy gun — to become a legal basis for one’s summary execution.
If America’s permissive self-defense laws and abundant guns open up a vast zone of permissible killing, the precise borders of that territory are shaped by white supremacy. In a 2013 study of U.S. homicides, the Urban Institute found that killings involving “a white perpetrator and a black victim are 281 percent more likely to be ruled justified than cases with a white perpetrator and white victim.”
A legal environment that favors the armed in their confrontations with the unarmed, police in their confrontations with suspects, and whites in their confrontations with Blacks is antithetical to social peace, let alone social justice. It is, however, quite favorable to the American far right.
A word from bell hooks
White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action. Mass media then brings us the news of this in a newspeak manner that sounds almost jocular and celebratory, as though no tragedy has happened, as though the sacrifice of a young life was necessary to uphold property values and white patriarchal honor. Viewers are encouraged to feel sympathy for the white male home owner who made a mistake. The fact that this mistake led to the violent death of an innocent young man does not register; the narrative is worded in a manner that encourages viewers to identify with the one who made the mistake by doing what we are led to feel we might all do to “protect our property at all costs from any sense of perceived threat.” This is what the worship of death looks like.
Segments of this passage from hooks’ book All About Love: New Visions (2001) have made the rounds as inspired by Zimmerman’s shooting of Martin; obviously it actually predates that, but it is nonetheless about the incident, as the commentary where I found it underlines.
