One Minute of James Baldwin…Four Centuries of US History

Did someone just change the video link? Now I see JB.

My guess is that it’s the legality of carrying weapons, concealed or otherwise, that’s critical here. In Australia, Zimmerman would have been liable to 10 years jail just for carrying a loaded gun in a public place, and the fact that he was committing a felony would (I think) have defeated any presumption in favor of self-defence

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ca190082/s93g.html

The only successful claim of self-defence in a shooting of which I’m aware was an underworld case where the defendant claimed to have taken the gun from the deceased.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Gatto-cleared-of-Veniamin-murder/2005/06/15/1118645852566.html

Does anybody know about how the legal systems in other countries would handle a case like this?

In Canada there’s more judicial discretion. Zimmerman would probably go to jail one way or another, others might be able to kill in other contexts.

I don’t many of the details of this case but I couldn’t see a self-defence plea being successful in the UK. You would need to prove that the force was necessary and reasonable. His carrying the gun would have been illegal so wouldn’t have helped. However even if he had used a legal object as weapon to kill Trayvon Martin the jury could have decided that the force was excessive.

One of the things that has struck me about the case is the sheer number of different layers and types of murder and manslaughter and the incredibly specific statutory definition of each one. ( In the UK there is murder, not three different degrees of murder. Sure there are different types and circumstances of murder but it isn’t half as convoluted.) And then if you claim that then that then the other then the other. It’s exhausting to follow, let alone understand and I am, or was, a lawyer. Goodness knows what a layperson makes of it.

Looking at the CPS site Philip linked to above, I think this:

a man who starts the violence, the aggressor, cannot rely upon self-defence to render his actions lawful. Of course during a fight a man will not only strike blows, but will defend himself by warding off blows from his opponent, but if he started the fight, if he volunteered for it, such actions are not lawful, they are unlawful acts of violence.

would leave Zimmerman high and dry.

A quick reply to comment five:

The NRA does not, in fact, advocate that young black men should also have firearms to protect themselves from this eventuality.

Now…

There was literally nothing Martin could do to preserve his life in the context of Stand Your Ground.

Lastly, be advised that there have been a number of meme propagations through nominally non-crazy intellectual channels which are intended to protect the status quo, the most prominent being that “Stand Your Ground had no role in the trial, and thus of Zimmerman’s acquittal”. That would be incorrect. SYG had an impact on Zimmerman’s conduct as he committed his actions. It had an impact on how the investigation was (not) carried out. Most importantly, it had an impact in creating a jury instruction that makes it profoundly difficult to contest the defendant’s narrative when self-defense questions arise with no living victim, so as to convict the defendant. What the defense actually did was refuse the Stand Your Ground pretrial hearing (which was not the total of the law), which success would preclude both criminal and civil trials. Martin’s family looks to have a legal means of suing Zimmerman, still.

I also wonder how a man who had once assaulted a police officer and had been charged with domestic violence could get a gun and become the neighborhood watchman in his gated community.

Yep, from this distance the verdict looks correct given Florida law. Further, the reluctance to prosecute Zimmerman was justified – it’s no use the coppers charging him if his actions were lawful, whatever they might think of those actions’ morality.

In better jurisdictions Zimmerman would certainly have gone down for something, and quite possibly for murder. But I don’t think race was a big issue in these events (for a start in Florida it’s much more likely the victim would be an Hispanic youth in a hoodie, on simple Bayesian grounds), just the interaction of a stupid guy with some stupid law. Now of course you could argue that those laws would never have been passed if Florida was racially homogenous, but that’s not the same as saying the coppers, the courts or even Zimmerman were racist.

p.s. actually Martin was a 17 yr old kid — “young man” is perhaps stretching it

Remember all those people that thought they just HAD to be out there to make sure everyone knew what they thought about a woman that didn’t please their sense of aesthetics?

What racist labor unions is Baldwin thinking of in 1968?

Katerine at 10
In the UK there is murder, not three different degrees of murder. Sure there are different types and circumstances of murder but it isn’t half as convoluted.

That’s interesting (if true- are you sure?) as the US rules developed out of British common law. They have changed over time, but that’s the origin.

What makes the US rules particularly complicated is that different states all have somewhat different rules, though they often use the same name for somewhat different crimes. But, in each state, the rules are not really all that difficult or hard to understand, and have a modestly good fit with common-sense moral distinctions (ie, what it an intentional killing, a killing done in the heat of the moment, a wrongful but not intentional killing, a negligent killing, and so on, w/ some other complications, some not as well connected to common sense.)

Make no mistake about it–the FL stand-your-ground law made all the difference here. The jury–assuming rational assessment of evidence and understanding of impartial duty, which I think is satisfied here–could arrive at no other decision given the burden and high standard of evidence on the prosecution.

It was the law that was wrong, clearly (I’d say). Juries have some flexibility to interpret law particularly with regard to how evidence is handled, but in this case it seems it was not exercised in lenient moral ways. (A contrary case? Jeffrey Dahmer’s conviction here in Wisconsin. I leave proof of it as an exercise for the reader.)

But there can be repercussions. The Hinckley trial was decided on similar legalistic contextual grounds (the jury did their duty by the letter of the law and many wept as they left the courtroom). Result (and mostly due to high-profile of the case more than anything): Federal laws drastically changed. (I’m convinced not for the better, but mileage might vary as they say.)

US law is subject to so many economic and social and political forces, and increasingly it seems in that exact order, that there is no telling where our future might go. But on the whole considering the largely harmful effects of luck it’s probably not good.

The best piece on this topic is quite easily by Charles Pierce.

I don’t many of the details of this case but I couldn’t see a self-defence plea being successful in the UK. You would need to prove that the force was necessary and reasonable. His carrying the gun would have been illegal so wouldn’t have helped. However even if he had used a legal object as weapon to kill Trayvon Martin the jury could have decided that the force was excessive.

This is not correct. You are right that under UK (well, England & Wales) law, force must be necessary and reasonable, but the defendant doesn’t have to prove anything. Rather, the prosecution must prove that it wasn’t necessary and/or reasonable, beyond a reasonable doubt. Note that this is the same burden the prosecution faced in the Zimmerman trial; see relevant section of the jury instruction below:

“The danger facing George Zimmerman need not have been actual; however, to justify the use of deadly force, the appearance must have been so real that a reasonably cautious and prudent person … would have believed the danger could be avoided only through the use of that force.”

This is pretty much identical to a model jury instruction under English law.

Salem, sorry my mistake, the burden of proof is on the prosecution. I’m not a lawyer so it is all just my common understanding of the law. The quote about the proof needed for Zimmerman only seems to address whether the force was necessary and not whether it was reasonable, this is where I think it would have been different under English and Welsh law.

Matt @24, In the UK there are separate offences of manslaughter and murder, but no different degrees of murder. If someone is found guilty then the judge will take any mitigating or aggravating factors into account for sentencing.

William Timberman: “The NRA would no doubt argue that if Trayvon Martin had also been strapped, there’d have been no need to involve the justice system at all. If you want to know what the result of a consensus based on that philosophy might look like, you have only to look to ”

… the number of black men in Florida who shot an unarmed white man on the street and who were not given very. very long prison sentences. I don’t know the count, but I imagine that it’s rather low.

re: 21 James Baldwin on TV

I remember — unreliably — James Baldwin with Noel Coward and the very old Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. On Dick Cavett.

Cavett watched as the group exchanged private information via raised eyebrows and mumbles and such. It was like overseeing an auction in some exotic foreign market.

Or I could have dreamed it.

Can’t watch this right now, perhaps it contains the same line as the Baldwin quote (from “Go tell it on the mountain”) that I found apposite: “People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead.”

Great video clip there.

As for the Zimmerman case, there’s actually little to say about it. It tells us what we already knew. A lot of people are angry, but no one is surprised.

sorry for the mangled grammar above. I am so busy and so disgusted.

Trader Joe @ 41

I’m not disputing your statistics, but maybe you should have a look at this part again: …the NRA’s vision of a libertarian paradise… George Zimmerman wasn’t a one-off, and he didn’t arise full-grown from the brow of Zeus. The NRA does conflate black skin with criminality, and they do advocate open season on criminals. If they get their way a lot of people are going to be sorry, and if black people are forced by our laws to live in the NRA’s paradise, not all of them will be black….

Interesting. Thanks Katherine and Philip at 34. So, it sounds like there are two official grades of murder in the UK- “murder” and manslaughter, and then the rest is left to the discretion of judges. I don’t know how well that works in the UK, but in the US I’d not be happy with it, as discretion is often used to give worse penalties to the disfavored and favorable treatment to the favored more than anything else. In general, I think that formal categories are more likely to lead to equal treatment, though of course there are still lots of places to go wrong. And, once you understand them, the various grades are not especially difficult to understand, though they do vary from state to state (something even people in the US forget all the time.)

Thanks for the Baldwin video.
As for other countries, leaving the gun issue aside (though JQ is right that that’s almost certainly the biggest difference), at least for Roman law countries the “Stay your Ground” part, taken literally, isn’t actually that unusual. In German law, e.g. you’re not obligated flee (“shameful flight/schimpfliche Flucht”) from an assailant even if you can.
(Not applicable in this case, but this is not true for the “Castle Doctrine”, i.e. the idea that the threshold for legitimate self-defense is significantly lower for someone trespassing in your home. That does not, as far as I’m aware, have an equivalent in most Roman law countries).
What might apply to the case, though, is the importance of prior provocation. The Florida law has an exemption for self-defense if you provoked the fight, but as TNC points out, the exemptions in said clause make this rather flexible.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/trayvon-martin-and-the-irony-of-american-justice/277782/
This is actually a controversial topic in German jurisprudence, but the increasingly predominant opinion is that you lose your right to self-defense if you provoked a fight.

@49
As I said, I’m not going to defend SYG.If you think its inherently racist you have a right to that view. Some of these state laws date back decades and such laws are hardly confined to either the South or states with a strong record of racial discord.

The data on the topic is sufficiently biased in each direction that both sides can trot out statistics to support whichever stance they choose to take. In Florida, where the state is 58% white and 42% non-white, I have a hard time seeing passage as strictly a sop to rural whites – I wasn’t there though, so maybe it was.

So it sounds like at least in the UK the burden is still on the prosecution to overcome the self-defense plea. The salient difference is that most people won’t be carrying guns because it’s illegal. I’d suppose that if a society wants to allow people to carry guns, the presumption of innocence in self-defense pleas for gun-toting citizens in public ought to be different. At the same time, I’d think it proper in this case if Zimmerman was bankrupted with a wrongful death suit since the burden of proof there is lower.

Jerry Vinokurov @ 55:

Or if you’re a group of black men who decides to stock up on guns because you believe this will help you defend yourselves, expect the governor of your state to say, well, that’s not what we had in mind, and engineer the passage of legislation intended to disarm you.

<SARCASM>
Humph. Sounds just like what a typical liberal gun-grabbing California governor would do. I’ll bet he was pro-choice, too.
</SARCASM>

Jerry Vinokurov @ 55

Thank you. That covers what’s at stake about as well as it can be covered. From my perspective, the rest is either legalistic nitpicking, or outright hypocrisy. I can understand Trader Joe’s point, but it doesn’t accord very well with my own experience. As a white person raised largely in the Jim Crow South, I came to think of myself as a sort of a spy in the house of hate, and much of what I remember from those years of experience accords very well with the what many black people have to say about their own experiences.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a lot more to tell us about this reality than most white people are willing or able to see, and while he’s not the only articulate black person in history who’s tried to make us aware of the obvious, for my money, his is the most eloquent black voice on such unhappily unfinished matters that’s available to us today. We should heed him, just as we should have heeded Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, or Fannie Lou Hamer before him.

@55
The list I saw at Wikipedia (copied below) lists 31 states in total.

“Many states have some form of stand-your-ground law. Alabama,Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts (though the term is used very loosely there), Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania , Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming have adopted Castle Doctrine statutes, and other states (Iowa, Virginia, and Washington) have considered stand-your-ground laws of their own. ”

I agree your list, which focuses on those with more recent adoption clearly bias towards white and rural populations – Florida, interestingly, being probably the nearest exception. The other 11 states, many of which adopted their laws long before 2000 are quite notable for being pretty strong “blue” states despite clearly adopting a law more commonly associated with “red” states.

It didn’t mean to derail this into a debate on the motives of an SYG law (although its perhaps not much of a derailment). I strongly concur SYG at its core is a “pro-gun” bit of legislation and if, because of the demographics of gun owners that automatically makes it “anti-minority” or “racist” than I’ll conceed the point although I think its a little more nuanced than that. Proponents of the legislation usually point to some theme along the lines of reducing crime as the reason to adopt it, probably to appeal to urban voters, but inevitably that’s a talking point not a motivation.

WT’s clarification @46 (in response to my initial post) made the point “The NRA does conflate black skin with criminality, and they do advocate open season on criminals. ” That was a very fair point and not one I would refute. I think it better expresses the motivation of the NRA than necessarily the motivations of SYG supporters, but perhaps they are sufficiently one in the same that such a view is moot.

I found that Wikipedia article somewhat misleading. For example, it claims that California has an SYG law, and links to the penal code. However, that statute is distinguishable from the Florida one in a simple way: it doesn’t contain any mention of the duty to retreat. The Rhode Island law specifies that there is no duty to retreat in the event that the crime is occurring in the person’s house, which is the more standard castle doctrine (California has the same thing but doesn’t use that specific language). That’s crucially different from the statute in Florida, where the “no duty to retreat” bubble travels with the person. I haven’t check the rest (I hit only two states that I’d actually lived in), but this suggests to me that the article is inaccurately lumping all self-defense/castle doctrine laws into a single category.

Proponents of the legislation usually point to some theme along the lines of reducing crime as the reason to adopt it, probably to appeal to urban voters, but inevitably that’s a talking point not a motivation.

Well, of course they do. But the fact that they don’t actually reduce crime (in fact, they increase it) means that one can’t honestly contend that these laws should be kept on the books for that reason.

It’s not just the disparity in gun ownership across racial categories that makes the debate about guns and self-defense a racial issue; it’s the sum of the rhetorical positions taken by large numbers of gun advocate groups (see this (PDF)) for a particularly egregious example), plus history. And that’s where it links with what Baldwin is saying in the video in the OP: we don’t know for sure whether real estate agents “really” hate black people, but somehow, magically, black people end up being directed away from white neighborhoods when they try and buy a home. So with the issue of guns and SYG laws: they might just be innocent measures designed to promote public safety, but to reach that conclusion one would have to ignore a whole lot of context and rhetoric swirling just outside the legislative ambit.

I’d point out that discussions about percentages of majorities/minorities rural/urban etc. expressing themselves in matter like SYG/Castle laws in the US overlooks a national effect we see now of the 2010 mid-term elections: many states, even if bluish-purple before, turned a much darker shade of red in their state houses and governor’s mansions. That is exactly what happened here in Wisconsin. And now with Republican control of both houses and the governor’s Tea-party sympathies, unions are crushed, women’s rights are under attack, teachers and public employees are vilified, private-school vouchers have gone state-wide, and generally we have turned into a transplanted deep-south state. (Sure we managed to elect Tammy Baldwin thanks to Democratic get-out-the-vote-for-Obama in 2012 but we also replaced Russ Feingold–one of the finest Senators this state ever had–with a total Teapublican buffoon in 2010. ) But here’s my point: once in power the state houses redistricted the state so that, despite something like a statewide 200K victory for Dems in state elections in 2012, both state houses easily were kept red. I’m not at all sanguine that anything of substance will happen soon to turn many states back to even some shade of purple at the state level anytime soon.

I feel the discussion of race (and ideological worldview) in relation to SYG / Castle laws may be functioning as a shiny object, used to distract or hypnotize. We do know the drill, and the litanies tumble out, almost unbidden.

But, the spread of SYG laws, and of the gun culture, is not being driven by some spontaneous race consciousness, even if already existing racism and racist prejudices may be exploited for their emotional resonance, in the same way sex is used to sell soap. The driver behind SYG appears to me to be commercial: the existence of an industry making guns, which has been captured by its own Frankenstein monster, the NRA — the one time hunters’ mass-membership organization, now re-animated as a powerful political lobbying and activist organization. That industry is now selling vastly more guns than this country needs for any legitimate purpose to a deeply frightened minority, and a well-funded organization exists to generate propaganda to keep them suitably frightened.

It is worth remembering that white supremacy had definite economic and commercial motives. The notion of a Southern “national” identity tied to the peculiar institution and, not incidentally, to a proto-libertarian ideology of States’ rights, free trade and limited government, was manufactured to serve the interests of a self-conscious class. And, it got away from them, and destroyed them and much else.

JV: “Stand Your Ground is obviously a law with a racially disparate effect, largely intended to feed the fears of white rural gun owners. Why anyone would deny this obvious fact is left as an exercise for the reader.”

So I ask which “obvious fact” is being denied and which is being ignored? Are the fears of white gun owners being stoked to make them racists or gun buyers? Is racism a goal or a means? Does it matter? Should it matter?

Clearly, there’s plenty of room here for reflexive feedback loops, and, indeed, I think the transformation of the NRA and the gun manufacturers into a manipulative parasite that feeds on fear, racism and gun violence is already well-advanced.

Well, apparently you can kill a perfectly harmless Japanese exchange student in black tie for mistakenly ringing your doorbell and walk free – only in America …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshihiro_Hattori

William Timberman @67

Seeking after the “reasons” people do what they do can lead to too much emphasis on content and not enough on container, and a failure to recognize rationalizations are effects, not causes. Frightened people tend to adopt authoritarian political attitudes, including in-group, out-group distinctions that govern what little is left of their capacity for empathy and cooperation. Racism, with its garish palette, colors within that paint-by-number outline.

It seems to me that the Trayvon Martin case and the Zimmerman trial were used by the powers that be, for a kind of moral panic. The sheer scale of journalistic resources — combined with the conspicuous careless with which pundits repeated facts and “facts”, making many “facts” suitable fodder for a variety of unfounded narratives —
point to a propaganda purpose. I suppose it could be demand-driven; how far did the fascination reflect mass interest? The proximity to the Voting Rights strikedown by our corporate Supremes has to reflect some kind of synchronicity, no?

70 years ago, lynching a negro for disrespecting a white woman, or perhaps discovering a ring of homosexual predators seducing young men, would be used to reinforce the moral order and white hetero male dominance. Looking back, it seems almost quaint in its unsubtlety.

The sophistication of manipulation has increased remarkably, but to what ends? Why exactly do we have a Department of “Homeland” Security? Why is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s unruly hair featured on the cover of Rolling Stone?

Alan and Jerry, @64 and @65, mention that various electoral discouragements and disappointments, combined with local . . . inattention?, are driving the country against majority sentiment in an increasingly and radically authoritarian direction. Is the proximity of the Zimmerman trial to the Supreme’s strikedown of the Voting Rights Act an instance of synchronicity?

We seem to be re-telling the tales of the 1960s to explain the predicaments of the 21st century, and I don’t quite grasp why.

Bruce Wilder @ 70

I just don’t think that anyone supposedly in a position to influence, let alone control public opinion in the manner we in our darkest hours suspect is actually smart enough to do it, except perhaps locally, and they’re certainly not smart enough to control all the possible consequences. Yes, there does seem to be something driving the Zeitgeist, or the synchronicity, if you like, and yes, if national polls are to be believed, this something doesn’t seem to be a majority of the population, or even a more narrowly drawn political majority.

Should we then look for conspirators among the malefactors of great wealth, knee-jerk authoritarians, or those with a vested interest in wielding secret decoding computers, or decking themselves out in gaudy uniforms and even gaudier weapons systems? I’m not sure, but if I ask myself very carefully, I have to confess that I don’t really believe it. They’re such a disparate bunch after all, nasty enough, certainly, considered separately, but taken as a whole, there isn’t really any whole there that one can analyze with a simple set of parameters.

Something Gramscian, or Marcusian, or perhaps even Darwinian might be more to the point, but honestly, I have no idea where one would even begin.

Alan and Jerry, @64 and @65, mention that various electoral discouragements and disappointments, combined with local . . . inattention?, are driving the country against majority sentiment in an increasingly and radically authoritarian direction. Is the proximity of the Zimmerman trial to the Supreme’s strikedown of the Voting Rights Act an instance of synchronicity?

They are points in a rightward trend. Zimmerman doesn’t become possible (or, well, much more probable) without changes to Florida law taking place during the previous decade. The Roberts court is not possible without the election of GW Bush. And so on. It’s not like we suddenly woke up in 2013 and found that the whole place was on fire; conservatives have been piling the kindling and fanning the flames for decades.

It’s not so much discouragments or disappointments, it’s the simple fact that the party in power in the statehouse can literally choose its own voters. A whole bunch of factors have coalesced that makes moderation a bad idea for Republicans; at the same time, they have an institutional lock on power that subverts majority will at the state and Congressional level.

We seem to be re-telling the tales of the 1960s to explain the predicaments of the 21st century, and I don’t quite grasp why.

I don’t know what this means. What tales, exactly? It’s just the opposite: the situation today is radically different than it was in the 1960s, partly for the reasons I mentioned above (and many others).

A local here (rural Oregon), after some recent school shooting, said that he carried so that if he saw someone with a gun running into a school, he could draw his weapon and run into the school to shoot him. I conclude that many of us like the idea of dying by gunfire.

Related, I can’t understand why Martin wasn’t justified by SYG in using force. Except (besides being Black) that he didn’t live to assert it.

mpower is like the chipmunk of trolls. I know you’re not supposed to feed, but it’s soooooo tempting…

The only real question for the jury was this:

Did the prosecution prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Martin was not on top of Zimmerman, beating him in such a way (by knocking Zimmerman’s head against pavement) that Zimmerman was in reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm and reasonably believed that he had to use deadly force to escape death or great bodily harm?

That’s it. And the evidence didn’t prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. Evidence of Zimmerman’s injuries, and forensic evidence concerning the gunshot wound (angle and distance of the gun at the time of the shot), were enough to raise reasonable doubt. Therefore not guilty.

The jury’s verdict is very clearly the legally correct verdict, regardless of whether Florida’s concealed carry law, or its lack of a duty to retreat before using deadly force in self defense, are good policies.

The event of Martin’s death is a tragedy, and one made possible by Florida’s concealed carry law. But that tragedy would only have been compounded by a conviction for murder or manslaughter when the prosecution’s burden of proof simply was not met.

Outrage about the verdict is based on either lack of knowledge or political opportunism.

Outrage about Florida’s gun laws, however, is well justified.

this clip from 1968 of James Baldwin on the Dick Cavett Show seems apposite

The things Baldwin says in that clip are just as true today as they were in 1968. That’s kind of the point.

JV:
“It’s just the opposite: the situation today is radically different than it was in the 1960s”

“The things Baldwin says in that clip are just as true today as they were in 1968.”

Thanks for clearing that up.

JV: “I take that seriously because I take politics seriously”

I don’t. But I’ll say this: this whole situation looks very bad for the Democrats. If you care about politics, you need to shut up. Demonizing George Zimmerman seems like a very bad idea, politically. This is how the next Reagan wins.

“It might be a side-effect of watching too much television”

I don’t know if wanting to die by gunfire is that recent a phenomenon. It seems to be a reasonably constant aspiration for a certain type of peson since the first gun was developed

Bruce Wilder @ 87

I think we’re looking at different parts of the elephant, that’s all. Yes, they’re smart enough to spend money, and to push buttons, these guys with an exalted sense of their own inevitability, but manipulation isn’t the same thing as control. As you yourself say, or at least imply, no one — no coherent vision, certainly — is behind the events so breathlessly reported on Fox News.

When I say they aren’t smart enough, what I mean is that they don’t understand their own motivations, let alone everyone else’s, and when you look at the entire Gestalt, what you actually is a kind of slow-motion anarchy, the outcome of which no one is in a position to predict, except to say that it’s likely to be both ugly and fragile. In the long run, these grand manipulators will prove to be as powerless to the control the consequences of their actions as we are. Did Brezhnev or Andropov foresee the collapse of the Berlin Wall? Did Gorbachev?

Yes, of course in the long run we’ll all be dead, but the misery they inflict on us in the meantime is hardly a testament to their intelligence. Quite the contrary, I think. In the meantime there’s enough work to do planting what we seeds we can in the ground they’re so busy trying to poison.

No wonder Dick Cavett suffered from extreme depression. Great clip and even though he monopolizes the “conversation” his diatribe had a lot of truth to it then and probably now.
As for the trial, from a purely technical standpoint, it may be that the prosecutor just did not prove the case. The trier of facts, the jury, is the only one that can make this call.
But politically, this is a mess and it is really wrong and points our state of our nation and that we are not there yet; not even close to racial equality.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about”

Was that really necessary? Something like “I’m quite sure that” would do the work, and without unpleasant odor.

William Timberman: the misery they inflict on us in the meantime is hardly a testament to their intelligence

People can be highly intelligent, and mean.

Hubris, in our era, attaches to our whole civilization. Our tragedy is collective, and our flaws are collective. That we apparently prefer to passively allow this anarchy is just how the tragedy of the industrial revolution is playing out. We are inflicting this anarchy on ourselves, with denial and passivity. We poison ourselves and our world: this — this elite, this “leadership” — is the poison.

Political societies are organic, and being organic, they age and die and are re-born. The U.S. and the global post-WWII world it fostered, are in a crisis of extreme old age, in their (our?) political life cycle. That’s the context we live in; it calls for demolition and re-founding. So, when you reference the earlier death of the Soviet Union, in political anacyclosis, I’m not sure what you mean to convey. People are often in denial of their own mortality, even in circumstances in which medical professionals are able to give quite specific prognosis. Gorbachev certainly saw that the end had come, and he hoped for renewal, but he acted decisively to bring about a peaceful end — he didn’t personally retain control, or a personal position of supreme power, but that’s confusing the case.

I think much of the center and the centre-left are in a self-deceptive preservationist mode, but much of the right in American politics is self-consciously engaged in demolition politics. Striking down the Voting Rights Act, for example, was sweeping away an anachronism, in the right-wing view.

Part of the preservationism of the corrupt center of American politics, of Bush-Obama, part of pasting wallpaper over the widening cracks in the foundations, is pretending that there’s a Manichean struggle going on between the political Parties, in which the unalloyed evil of one Party redeems the other Party, and, at the same time[!], that our goal should be bi-partisan consensus and comity. It’s the master narrative of a dream and a nightmare combined, with all their logical incoherence exploited to the max to keep the madness going, the population asleep.

I’m saying, “wake up!” when I insist on noticing the manipulation, which has become such a prominent and dominant feature of our politics and political news. I’m not trying to monger conspiracy, or channel Chomsky. If you were to say that an emerging consciousness, or other distributed, amorphous process, drives much of the propagandizing (broadcast and reception) — not deliberate purposeful coordination from a single or few self-conscious, fully intentional sources, I’d probably agree. I think I was making the point that the Trayvon Martin / Zimmerman phenomenon had moved way beyond the efforts of the gun lobby to build a political culture driving high gun sales.

And, what I hear in reply to my “wake up!” — not from Timberman so much, but frequently from others — is often something along the lines of, “let me sleep, let me dream.” I relate that wish to go on dreaming to the preservationist impulse to keep the corpse of the post-WWII order going. When things are falling apart, it is hard to say, “yes” to the falling apart, even when wisdom demands it.

It’s easier for human beings, when the old world just seems to self-destruct on its own, unexpectedly, leaving us with no choices, until it is time to start anew, building anew. Those choices are easier, when the old is just gone, irretrievable, and no one is vested in the past. Maybe, that’s why there’s so much investment in, “this time is different”, and “whocoodenode?”

Pretty rich? I don’t think so. Maybe an unfortunate turn of phrase, but not in an assholish manner.

Apparently, a cop told him to get a gun. From wikipedia:
“In response to Zimmerman’s multiple reports regarding a loose pit bull in the Twin Lakes neighborhood, a Seminole County Animal Services officer advised Zimmerman to “get a gun”, according to a friend, rather than rely on pepper spray to fend off the pit bull, which on one occasion had cornered his wife.”

“how did someone with Zimmerman’s record come to have a pistol permit?”

What record? His record seems trivial, no more remarkable than that of any working-class murkan.

As for changes in law that’d make a difference: yes, gun laws are clearly the biggest one (also fantastically unlikely to change, because, as you so aptly put it “USA is very strange country”.)
As I say above, I think in most European countries Zimmerman could have been on the hook (i.e. lost his right to self-defense) for provoking the confrontation, especially as the European legal system and popular opinion view of “neighborhood watchs” and vigilante justice in general with a lot more skepticisim.

As for your Queries
1: Lots of reasons: less inequality, much fewer guns, if you look at US crime statistics it’s likely prohibition played a major role, and then again the drug war etc.
2. Probably neither. Violence in the US is typically quite isolated and for the most part it doesn’t directly affect middle class people. So that wouldn’t be NI, but the high crime rates in general wouldn’t fit the UK pre WWII (I presume that’s what you refer to as BigMistake?) either.
3: Because Florida’s gun laws are pretty lax. First, as in most (all?) US states, you don’t need a permit to own a gun at all. You do need a permit for “concealed carry” (Florida is actually on of the few states where you aren’t allowed to openly carry) and Florida has regulations that such licenses should generally be granted. While Zimmerman had a couple of altercations with the legal systems (a restraining order and a charge for resisting an police officer that was later dropped) he wasn’t ever convicted, so he doesn’t have a felony record that would likely have prevented him from getting a concealed carry license. My guess would be that the restraining order would probably been enough to prevent him from getting a concealed carry license in a strictly regulated state like Illinois.

Jerry Vinokurov@100:
“Well, for starters, the law could be changed to penalize someone who instigates a confrontation (although how much that would affect the outcome of the verdict in the Martin case is unclear)” Very unclear, I think. Change that law: there is no evidence in this case who started the confrontation: presumption of innocence?

“The jury was explicitly instructed that Zimmerman had no duty to retreat, if he had, in fact, been attacked.” True but irrelevant. Since Z had, by his account, no possibility whatever of retreating when he shot M: argument for self-defence would have been valid even if Florida had no SYG law whatever.

Big Mistake I, 1914-18. Big Mistake II, 1939-45. Big Mistake III expected for many years, fortunately averted so far.

From European perspective, yes, by Floridan law Z entitled to buy and carry pistol, but Florida very strange place,

Very unclear, I think. Change that law: there is no evidence in this case who started the confrontation: presumption of innocence?

That’s why I said I don’t know how much difference it would have made in this case. But again: look at the perverse incentives of the law as it currently stands. It’s basically a license to instigate confrontation, because at any moment when you feel threatened you can pull out a gun and use it.

“The jury was explicitly instructed that Zimmerman had no duty to retreat, if he had, in fact, been attacked.” True but irrelevant. Since Z had, by his account, no possibility whatever of retreating when he shot M: argument for self-defence would have been valid even if Florida had no SYG law whatever.

I am not a lawyer, so I won’t pretend that my answer is authoritative in any way, but there’s a pretty big grey area here. There’s a good explication of that grey area here, which, keep in mind, is just someone commenting on the internet, just like us. But at least facially it does not seem entirely correct that the SYG law had nothing to do with the defense.

Ultimately, I think it makes very little sense to excavate the legal details of this particular case. What makes more sense to me is to look at what kinds of actions the law (not just SYG, but effectively unlimited license to carry guns, etc.) incentivizes; the answer to that question is, as the data shows, nothing good whatsoever.

Big Mistake I, 1914-18. Big Mistake II, 1939-45. Big Mistake III expected for many years, fortunately averted so far.

Ah, this was some usage I had not been familiar with.

From European perspective, yes, by Floridan law Z entitled to buy and carry pistol, but Florida very strange place,

I would say that from the US perspective Florida is a pretty strange place too. But it’s sadly not at all uncommon in its intersection of crypto-racism and gun-worship.

It depends, if you were a Prussian prince and you hit a Bavarian copper you’d be fine. But if you were a cobbler in the East End, not so much. So context is important

Bringing a gun to a fist fight, and using it with lethal effect, is manslaughter.

One could make the argument that Z, by harassing TM, was the instigator of confrontation, and carrying a loaded gun while undertaking the unjustified confrontation, constituted a kind of culpable negligence or even malevolent intent.

I think Z was in the wrong, as soon as he got out of his car, with a loaded, but hidden pistol. Self-defense is subject to a proportionality qualification. Spitting in a man’s face is an assault, but an assault of that character does not justify a lethal response, or excuse one from a charge of manslaughter for a lethal response.

The effect of SYG, by removing a duty to retreat, muddied the evidentiary waters, regarding indications of whether Z was acting responsibly to avoid a use of lethal force. As earlier commenters have pointed out, it’s a get-out-of-jail-free-card for any sole surviving witness. SYG doesn’t explicitly authorize the disproportionate use of lethal force, but makes it much harder to prove otherwise.

I had written the above earlier and forgot to post. I see the discussion had progressed further since. So I will look into some of the more recent arguments, if I have time.

matt 07.17.13 at 12:05 pm
Marc @ 25:

It was the AFL and the CIO in those days. The trade unions were the AFL, and were for all practical counting lily white (there were disagreements about whether Italians were white). The CIO was organized on an industry level, and had elements of social democratic unionism. So yeah, the plumbers, electricians, etc (AFL) didn’t accept black members or apprentices while the auto workers (CIO) did.

Have any of you heard of the Roderick Scott acquittal? This is a recent verdict of Not Guilty from a court case centering on a homicide that took place on April 4, outside of Rochester, NY. I’ll summarize it for you, but you’re welcome to do a little googling to find the facts on your own.

Mr. Scott, age 42, heard some kids in his driveway one night, and since there had been a recent rash of break-ins of cars in his neighborhood he called 911. But then, instead of staying safely in his house and waiting for the police to come, he grabbed his .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol and went outside to confront them. His explanation for his action is in these words: “I wanted to stop them before they could get away.”

That ought to sound familiar, no?

Mr. Scott confronted 3 teens. One took off immediately to make an escape. Another, Christopher Cervini, age 17, a young man—or child, depending on your preference when it comes to describing 17-year-olds—charged Mr. Scott, allegedly shouting something along the lines of, “I’ll get him!” Mr. Scott fired twice and killed the teen. The young man had never in his life been in trouble with the law.

Note, NY state has no “stand your ground law.” It’s self-defense laws are nothing like Texas, Florida, or any of the other states often maligned as the Wild West. NY has strict laws governing handguns as well. Mr. Scott was arrested, brought to trial, claimed self-defense, and was acquitted.

Had Mr. Scott not acted “the hero”—à la George Zimmerman—and stayed inside, a 17-year-old boy would still be alive. We have to wonder if Mr. Scott would have gone outside in the first place if he hadn’t had a gun. Now, the circumstances of this case admittedly are not exactly the same as those of the Zimmerman case, but the one thing that we really don’t have to wonder about is why this case was not national news, like the Zimmerman case was.

Roderick Scott is black and the late Christopher Cervini was white.

Also missing a few pertinent facts, too, and one would be advised to google the case rather than read that link. One should also be advised that this was a cause célébre for white people at the time, and this particular trial is brought up fairly often among Zimmerman partisans, plenty of them rather unsavory.

Just remember, those teens were not minding their own business, walking some with candy and a drink. That shooter clearly caught the teens in the act of trespassing/probable theft, and his story holds up much better than Zimmerman’s wrt to sudden charge of the teen that provoked the gunfire.

The sad truth in both cases is, irrespective of the actions of the men with the guns, two teens are dead because of their own hotheaded impulsiveness.

How lovely to see that Suspiciously Black Teenagers have joined the ranks of rape victims as Acceptably Blamable Victims. Any others we should add to the list, just for completeness’s sake?

Mario Diana
Personally, from only reading the article you linked to, I dont have a huge amount of sympathy for Scott. But the obvious main difference is those kids were actually stealing a car, while Martin was walking in the street
Anyway, from my reading, most people here aren’t arguing that Z should have gone to jail, but thay by that by the letter of the law the acuittal was the right decision.

” That shooter clearly caught the teens in the act of trespassing/probable theft, and his story holds up much better than Zimmerman’s wrt to sudden charge of the teen that provoked the gunfire.”

I googled. Apparently, “trespassing/probable theft” is not very relevant to the claim of self-defense. And the prosecutor “told jurors that Cervini was shot from behind which proves the teen was not coming towards Scott at the time of the shooting.”

In fact, both stories are murky, but at least Zimmerman was clearly involved in a brawl with Martin before he shot him, and had some injuries, while Scott just simply came out and shot Cervini.

http://rochester.ynn.com/content/top_stories/490755/awaiting-verdict-in-roderick-scott-trial–911-call-released/

What causes the outrage, in Z’s case, is that he had become suspicious of Martin in the first place. But if we were to move this far by the chain of causality, then his lawyers should be able to go even farther and make the behaviorist “society made me do it” defense. What’s the point.

Sorry for triple posting and for repeating above what shah8 had said (which Ive only seen now), but Mario I just want to break down my point a little
To my eyes the problem with your linked article is that the cases really arent that similar, except in a very superficial way (it involves a man shooting a teen of a different race) The specifics are completely different. The point about race in the Martin case is that Z assumed Martin was engaged in criminiality b/c of his race, even though there was no evidence to support that assumption. In the Scott case he saw them breaking into the goddamn car! he wasnt profiling the kids, and he wasnt making assumptions.

Your argument that Scott was more guilty in NY than Zimmerman was in Florida is neither here nor there (even taking your analysis as correct) b/c no one is really arguing that Z should have been found guilty by the letter of the law. Just that he’s an idiot,and a coward, and probably a bit of a racist.

@116
Several have posted valid distinctions. The other one not mentioned was that Scott was on his own property and defending it. The Castle Doctrine is the common-law precursor to many of the SYG laws that many states have adopted. In general it extends greater protections to a person who is defending his home or property when he is either within his home or within the boundaries of his land (depends on state).

The interesting thing is, NY doesn’t formally recognize the Castle Doctrine and to the extent it does it has a “reasonable force” provision which my guess isn’t really applicable to .40 caliber automatic weapons. It also only applies in the event of home invasion (i.e. within the threshold of the home), not out in the yard where the actions took place – the notion being “self defense” not crime prevention.

Scott acted to prevent or limit a crime, its unlikely he acted in self defense and the decision (acquittal) should be viewed as every bit as bad as Zimmerman.

“Now, the circumstances of this case admittedly are not exactly the same as those of the Zimmerman case, but the one thing that we really don’t have to wonder about is why this case was not national news, like the Zimmerman case was.”

As far as national attention goes, here’s a big factor: “Mr. Scott was arrested”. Zimmerman’s case didn’t get national attention until weeks had gone by with no arrest.

To make the claim that a white Martin–a white kid going out to buy candy, stalked as a criminal in his own neighborhood by a gun-carrying wannabe cop, while his killer was never even arrested by the cops–would have received less attention is absurdly transparent race-baiting. That you “encouraged people to google the story themselves” doesn’t make it any less dishonest for you to claim the most pertinent difference re:national attention is that “Roderick Scott is black and the late Christopher Cervini was white.”

“But in any case, going by what the laws of each state allow”

“what the laws of each state allow” is part of the outrage.

Andrew F. @ #131

All that said, I do think that states with concealed carry laws – at a minimum – should create laws that impose additional duties to avoid physical confrontations when any person involved is carrying a firearm.

Andrew, even though I consider myself a strong advocate of gun rights, and so my opinion may surprise some who have made up their minds about people like me, I agree with you. Possession of a gun escalates a situation. Let’s suppose, for the sake of illustration, Mr. Zimmerman started the fight, though left his gun holstered. If, while wrestling on the ground, Mr. Martin saw the gun on Zimmerman, I think he would have every right to attempt to take control of it. If you’re in an altercation—even if it seems on the face of it a simple fistfight—there is no way a gun can be safely ignored. A gun in a situation like that is, essentially, a loose cannon.

I am for carry laws, but I think anybody arguing for such laws has to acknowledge that carrying a gun is a huge responsibility to avoid conflict in the first place. Now, how this plays out on a case by case basis is arguable.

Re:guns and escalation, it isn’t merely once the fight has started it’s defensible to reach for the other guys’ gun. Even while it’s still at the verbal stage, if the other guy is following and confronting you aggressively, if you see the gun and think violence is imminent, it might make sense for you to start it. Guns work from a distance, fists do not, so a gun-less combatant might decide to close that distance before its too late. Even if that’s inadvisable, it’s certainly understandable why someone would think that way, and therefore it should be considered reckless endangerment to put someone in that situation.

The core problem we have are these situations in which both parties could claim self-defense for killing the other one. Creating those situations should be a crime. Perhaps in some cases both sides acted to create it–in which case both sides, or the surviving side, should be punished for that.

7) Roderick called the police after the shooting to report himself and calmly and accurately recounted what had happened. 8) Roderick was charged with murder by the prosecutor, only to have the charge reduced to manslaughter by a grand jury. 9) Roderick was tried before a 12 member jury, which deliberated for 19 hours. Roderick didn’t benefit from any SYG law, and testified credibly on his own behalf. (It couldn’t be determined which bullet struck first). 10) Cervini was found to be legally drunk, with traces of marijuana and methamphetamines in his blood. 11) Cervini was observed in the act of committing a felony and was being detained at gun point until the police arrived, who had already been called. 12) It was 3:30 AM and rainy and windy, not 7:15 PM and well-lit. And so forth.

Zimmerman gets the benefit of claiming self-defense without ever having to testify to the facts in the case. Seems crazy to me, really.

nonono. Regardless of how upset you are about the Zimmerman verdict, hands off the fifth amendment.
Compelling defendants to testify in their own trial would – among other issues – add yet another way in which less educated folks are disadvantaged by the legal system.

What many seem to want to impose on Zimmerman’s actions is some variation on the felony murder rule.

Rather than attempting to read people’s minds, you might want to, umm, read their words.

Thanks to Corey Robin for posting on this topic. I don’t have anything I want to add to the discussion, just thanks for the post.