The FBI says there are 13,000 murders in the U.S. annually. So what is
it about the killing of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman's trial that
has so inflamed passions?
FULL STORY
(CNN) -- When the jury emerges from deliberations
days or weeks from now to render its verdict in that Florida courtroom,
when the family of Trayvon Martin leans forward in breathless
anticipation and when George Zimmerman stands to hear his fate, you can
bet your Disney vacation the whole affair will end badly.
July 9, 2013 -- Updated 1844 GMT (0244 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- There are about 13,000 U.S. murders annually; why does this case fascinate us?
- CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin: Case is at intersection of guns, race, self-defense, kids
- Trial is "the equivalent of O.J. Simpson for the next generation," a radio host says
- Many people have an emotional investment in the outcome of the trial
Not because Zimmerman, on
trial in the shooting death of Martin, will be found guilty or not
guilty, but because millions of Americans have already made up their
minds about what should happen. Large swaths of people are going to be
disappointed no matter how the verdict falls. Probably more like
outraged.
This is odd, because FBI
statistics show there are about 13,000 murders annually; people shot,
stabbed, beaten, run down with cars and thrown off of balconies; 13,000
times that we could get interested, get involved and pass public
judgment.
So what is it about this lone killing that has inflamed passions to such a degree?
At Georgetown University
in the offices of history and African-American studies, associate
professor Maurice Jackson has an answer. At 60, he is old enough to have
lived through the glory days of the civil rights movement and young
enough to still fear for his own son's life in a dangerous world.
Trayvon Martin's mother on the stand
Darden: Race is the case
Does Zimmerman need to testify?
Martin lawyer: Confident in conviction
Covering the George Zimmerman trial
"I think this is very
important to black people because it brings to mind their worst fears
that this could happen to their sons. You have a kid with everything
going for him, doing no harm, and going about his business, and all of a
sudden he is marked."
From his syndicated radio show in Dallas, conservative host Ben Ferguson has a different take.
"This has had everything
to do with manipulation and race war from day one," he says, citing what
he has heard from listeners. "This is a life-changing, life-altering
court case, and I'm not so sure people really care about if justice is
served truly. It's more: Did my side win or not?"
And at the trial itself, CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin believes the fascination lies in all that and much more.
"People care about gun
rights. People care about race. People care about children. People care
about the right to defend yourself. And this case has all of them
wrapped up together, and that's rare."
Case didn't start out as big news
Although it is hard to
remember now, there was a time when this case was far from a national
obsession. At first, the shooting on that rainy Sunday night in late
February 2012 was barely a blip in the media.
A few Florida news
outlets picked it up, but as the days passed and interest faded, it
seemed destined to fall into that neverland of sad, forgotten stories
with headlines like, "Young black man shot; police investigating."
But the victim's
parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, were convinced that the police
were not investigating nearly enough. "I think this is very much about
two parents who felt that their child was murdered," Hostin says.
They pushed for greater
exposure for their complaints and were connected with Tallahassee lawyer
Ben Crump. Crump enlisted others, spread the word, and a week and a
half later, their efforts paid off.
Reuters published what the MIT Center for Civic Media
found to be the first major national news item, and it heavily quoted
Crump. In just under 500 words, he laid out what is now the
prosecution's script:
Trayvon Martin was a
high school junior who hoped to become a pilot. He went to the store for
Skittles and an Arizona Iced Tea. Zimmerman (who has Latino roots and
is incorrectly identified as white in the story) deemed him
"suspicious," stalked him and shot him in the chest.
"He was a good kid," Crump told Reuters "On his way home, a Neighborhood Watch loose cannon shot and killed him."
And in the final
sentence, Crump slammed down the race card. "Why is this kid suspicious
in the first place? I think a stereotype must have been placed on the
kid."
The next day, "CBS This
Morning" picked up the story, and soon it was blazing into the homes,
computers and smartphones of close to 3 million Americans and climbing
according to that MIT study.
A petition on Change.org started filling with what would add up to more than 2 million signatures.
In Florida, the Sanford Police Department's checkered past
with race relations came under scrutiny. Celebrities railed about
injustice. Young people marched in hoodies, carrying bags of candy. The
New Black Panthers, an activist group for African American rights,
offered a reward for Zimmerman's capture. Even President Barack Obama weighed in, saying "You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."
Tapes of 911 calls were
released, fueling the media frenzy, especially when NBC edited
Zimmerman's comments in a way that many saw as unfair, imparting a
racial tone to his comments that is missing in the original recordings.
The network later apologized.
And of course, there were the photos.
As the story heated,
news agencies everywhere favored pictures of the victim from several
years earlier, showing him not as a 6-foot-something 17-year-old but as a
fresh-faced kid, a child really.
On a People magazine
cover, an image of Martin looking like a seventh- or eighth-grader,
incapable of any menace, appeared next to the words "An American
Tragedy." And the die was cast: The killing evolved into an unstoppable
narrative that spurred a national outcry for justice, and 45 days after
the deadly encounter, Zimmerman was charged with murder.
That is as it should be,
says George Ciccariello-Maher, a researcher at Drexel University in
Philadelphia, who has written extensively about race.
He defends Martin's
reaction to Zimmerman with a simple precept: The teenager intuitively
knew he was being hunted because black citizens have suffered injustice
time and again at the hands of police, security guards and neighborhood
watches.
"It is kind of
implausible to say that Zimmerman was not operating on the basis of
racial assumptions and on the basis of racial targeting of Trayvon
Martin. What else explains it? This is something that has repeated
itself historically. The conditions of this case are not new."
History hard at work in this case
At the Center for the
Study of Southern Culture in Mississippi, director Ted Ownby agrees that
history is hard at work spurring interest in the case, especially for
Southerners.
"Travyon Martin is a
reminder of Emmett Till and the possibility that a black teenager isn't
safe just doing ordinary teenager things." Till, a 14-year-old black
youth, was killed in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a
white woman.
Still, even if all of
that helped turn this into a national cause for those who believe in
regimental racism, what is the reason so many others are also watching
closely?
"It is the same reason why everyone became obsessed with Paula Deen," says Ferguson, the radio host.
In a nutshell, just as
some people feel the cooking queen was too zealously pilloried for using
a racial slur, they fear all the worry about race, stereotypes and
cosmic justice could interfere with the down-to-earth legal question:
Did George Zimmerman, in fact, do anything wrong? And just as
importantly, will those who are already convinced of his guilt or
innocence accept a verdict that says otherwise?
"People want to see what
the reaction is going to be from society," Ferguson says, "and it's not
even so much about facts of innocence or guilt. It's truly watching a
live soap opera that is the equivalent of O.J. Simpson for the next
generation."
Many raise the Simpson case in discussing Zimmerman because it also produced a sharp divide among court watchers.
When the former football
star was acquitted in the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend, polls
found that most blacks agreed with the verdict and most whites did not.
Central to that case, too, was the idea that police and prosecutors do
not treat black men fairly.
So back at Drexel,
Ciccariello-Maher pushes against calls for a Dragnet-style "just the
facts, ma'am" approach in the Zimmerman case. Race would be important,
he suggests, even if words that are racially provocative such as
"cracker" and "profiling" did not appear in the testimony, because it
shapes how all of us see life itself.
"Unless we are willing
to grapple with that importance, then I think we're kind of refusing to
begin to understand what is going on here."
'I don't want to predict it'
Make no mistake: There
are those who feel a conviction of Zimmerman would be proof of political
correctness run amok and who firmly believe Martin escalated the
confrontation to the point of his own death. Case closed. And they
believe that just as firmly as Jackson believes the counter: Zimmerman
was armed Martin was not Martin died. The jury has to see that a crime
was committed.
"I don't want to predict
it," Jackson says, "but I couldn't imagine him being convicted of
anything less than manslaughter. He deliberately went out to take the
law into his own hands. It was vigilante justice."
From her seat as a
former prosecutor, Hostin tries to thread the needle. She'd like to see
the jury fairly consider everything, including any racial overtones.
"Jurors don't leave their life experiences at the door, and we don't
want them to."
Much has emerged since
the earliest days of this case to challenge assumptions, although some
of it has already been barred from admission at the trial.
Less-than-flattering pictures of Martin flashing obscene gestures have
appeared, along with accounts of repeated school suspensions, suspected
marijuana use and text messages about fighting and guns.
The teen was never
charged with any crimes, and his mother has angrily dismissed such
accusations. "They killed my son, and now they're trying to kill his
reputation," Fulton says.
On Zimmerman's front,
the Internet has buzzed with reports of past brushes with the law, and
prosecutors are even now painting the image of a man who passed himself
off as merely a concerned citizen when he was actually a would-be cop
who cunningly pretended to be ignorant of Florida's "Stand Your Ground"
law, which allows a person to essentially hold their position,
violently if necessary, rather than yield to any intimidation. The
defendant's bail was revoked early on when the judge determined that he
had misled the court about his finances.
In other words, this is real life with real and terrible consequences.
Neither the victim nor
the defendant is precisely what mythmakers in each camp would have you
believe. Indeed, like most cases where race, violence and our biases
collide, this one involves imperfect souls in imperfect circumstances,
and it will render an imperfect justice in the eyes of many.
All of that undeniably
adds to our multilayered fascination with this trial, but how we react
to the verdict when it finally comes may tell us more about our
expectations than the evidence.
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