Let's talk about Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and how unbelievably fucked up this all is

It's been interesting and infuriating to read the reactions on this thread after mostly following the aftermath of the verdict through black twitter. The way most of you are processing this feels utterly alien to me.

Care to expand?

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6duwsi3gP1rnpq4go1_400.gif

http://black.twitter.com ?

srsly get depressed and furious every time i read about this. what a fucked-up country.

I think "jury of your peers" is a nice idea in theory, but the one time I served on a jury I was angered and disgusted by how cavalierly the other jurors took their duty.

i do wonder how anyone could consider an all-white jury a fair and impartial group of "peers" in a case where race is so obviously a factor.

Care to expand?

― collardio gelatinous, Monday, July 15, 2013 4:02 PM Bookmark

I quite literally cried all Saturday night and have basically felt hollow since. I've had a thousand yard vietnam vet stare on my face for large portions of the past two days. The way I've experienced this has been through rage and sadness and fear and watching others go through the same things. It's really a very short time ago that I was a 17-year-old black boy. To come into this thread and witness all the bitchy lawyering and sniping is just like..... are y'all even seeing the point? For a black person this is SCARY AS FUCK.

thing i fuckin cannot stand is this idea -- which number one i question this WHOLE premise anyway -- is this faux rational tut-tutting "oh well you know according to our legal system the jury had to acquit, the prosecution didn't reach the burden of proof, there was simply too much reasonable doubt, old chum"

it's like there's nothing fucking holy or, like, pre-existing in nature about the U.S. legal system, it's like it's the fucking weather or gravity to these fucks....if our justice system reaches the wrong conclusion and lets someone get away with the murder of a child i have every right to be angry and i am under no obligation to necessarily give two rat fucks about "reasonable doubt" or "that's how our justice system works"

oh, this is a failure of the justice system, yes, and also the legislative system and the executive branch

(executive being represented by the cops in this case)

reasonable doubt is a cool thing you should like imo

& yeah rev i'm really fucking sorry man i literally don't even know what to say about this fucking shithole country anymore....and yep i'm as complicit due to my own privilege as anyone....couple months ago i got pulled over driving through a rougher part of north minneapolis, got pulled over.....cops both get out of the car kinda edgy but as soon as they saw a harmless looking, 30-something, glasses wearing white dude they totally changed....let me off w/o no ticket even though i had one headlight out AND couldn't find my proof of insurance....it's 2 different justice systems

Bryant and Milam acquitted by a jury of their peers. Rule of law, amirite.

on the subway today i saw a mom (~50yo, white) trying to explain what was going on to her son (~8yo, guessing vietnamese)

no matter how she broke it down, it still didn't make much sense

so you're against juries? the legal system in general? we know who's guilty and who isn't so let's cut out this foofaraw? I don't see your point. Your anger is more true because FUCK THE WHOLE SYSTEM MAN. Ok.

xp

would you say that to someone who was angry about the acquittal of Bryant and Milam?

i'm saying it to you now

they had to try medgar evers killer three times to get justice

..if our justice system reaches the wrong conclusion and lets someone get away with the murder of a child i have every right to be angry and i am under no obligation to necessarily give two rat fucks about "reasonable doubt" or "that's how our justice system works"

otm

i imagine everyone here knows that our criminal justice system's treatment of black americans is and always has been obscene, a crime in itself. but i don't think there's anything wrong with discussing the particulars of this or that case in a more-or-less clinical manner. nor do i think anyone's right to anger is being challenged.

i mean, the board has similarly discussed every important news story i can think of during the 7 or so years i've been posting here.

then again, i don't want to offend anyone or make a bad situation worse...

it's just like if i have to hear one more actually-racist-but-won't-cop-to-it facebook lawyer i went to high school talk shit about "reasonable doubt" as if it's some quantifiable, scientific measurement that exists outside of culture and race and politics and emotions etc i'm gonna explode

& also not to put words in rev's mouth but i imagine that if this case hits you hard, like a true assault on your status as a human being and citizen of this country, it's pretty sad to see ILX ILXing the fuck out of this the same way that, truth be told, we do everything because we're board at work and fuck it we gotta argue about SOMETHING and for a lot of the people doing it their priviledge has never been in question in this country, ever, for one second...i would imagine that feels hurtful even if not intended so

xxxxp that is otm. and I'm under no obligation to feel exactly how you do about it.

so you're against juries? the legal system in general? we know who's guilty and who isn't so let's cut out this foofaraw? I don't see your point. Your anger is more true because FUCK THE WHOLE SYSTEM MAN. Ok.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, July 15, 2013 4:44 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's nothing sacred about American legal system. Lots of other countries do it different ways. Not saying they're more right or wrong than the US legal system, but just because a court has found a certain way doesn't make it the paramount truth.

& also not to put words in rev's mouth but i imagine that if this case hits you hard, like a true assault on your status as a human being and citizen of this country, it's pretty sad to see ILX ILXing the fuck out of this the same way that, truth be told, we do everything because we're board at work and fuck it we gotta argue about SOMETHING and for a lot of the people doing it their priviledge has never been in question in this country, ever, for one second...i would imagine that feels hurtful even if not intended so

― adrian "stanky" legg (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, July 15, 2013 5:06 PM Bookmark

YES, THIS

Not saying they're more right or wrong than the US legal system, but just because a court has found a certain way doesn't make it the paramount truth.

Absolutely correct. As I said way upthread, this case nor any other isn't about "paramount truth". We all wish such a forum existed but it just doesn't, and I think that's the cause of a lot of the anger. This flawed legal system is what we have to live with, while (hopefully) constantlly seeking to make it more just and more perfect.
But in THIS case I don't see how the jury could've possibly ruled differently (disagree w/s.clover way upthread). The jury arriving at that verdict is pretty much the thing that upsets me the least about the whole affair.

This flawed legal system is what we have to live with, while (hopefully) constantlly seeking to make it more just and more perfect.

easy to say when the flawed legal system doesn't make you a target

maybe targets not the right word, i don't know

^^^^^

No, it is the right word.

you cannot see how the jury could've possibly ruled differently? what does that even mean? juries are human beings not legal data machines. one way I can see how the jury could've ruled differently is if zimmerman were black and martin were white. it seems more than plausible that a jury could have ruled differently were that the case.

these flawed and imperfect legal data machines are what we have to live with ELSE MOB RULE DO YOU SEE?

i don't see how they could've ruled differently and have it be the legally proper verdict.

what is the alternative to "having to live with it"? it's easy for me to say because what else does one do, regardless of their color?

one calls bullshit

This flawed legal system is what we have to live with, while (hopefully) constantlly seeking to make it more just and more perfect.

it's not an either-or thing -- ppl who denounce this aren't calling for the jury system to be thrown out and replaced with something else, any more than ppl who criticized the dred scott decision were calling for the supreme court to be done away with. it's not that the fundamental principles behind our legal system are bad, it's that the legal system we have fails to live up to those principles.

there's bullshit with carrying a loaded gun around a neighborhood. there's bullshit with thinking a black teenager walking around your neighborhood is a drugged out thug. there's bullshit in thinking it's your job to confront him when police have told you otherwise. there's bullshit in police believing it's self-defense with little investigation. there's bullshit in people thinking race was not in issue. there's bullshit in initiating a confrontation, losing the ensuing fight, and therefore shooting the other person. etc etc. I just don't see the bullshit in the jury reaching the verdict they did based on the evidence and all that silly reasonable doubt and preseumption of innocence stuff.

there's bullshit in believing that the did purely based on evidence and all the silly reasonable dobut

jesus christ ppl

Juror B37 on CNN right now...Trayvon never had a chance.

I guess you could think that, but just about every legal "expert" I've seen an opinion from said came to the same conclusion.

I wouldn't start going down the "they must've all been racist" line until there was no other logical explanation for their decision.

i don't see how they could've ruled differently and have it be the legally proper verdict.

in the same sense that jury nullification can override an unjust law to acquit, juries retain the right to convict even when the evidence seems shaky or the law doesn't otherwise seem to apply. we forget this, but as i understand things, juries are ultimately bound by nothing but their own hearts and minds. they get to decide which doubts are reasonable and which are not. they get to decide which witnesses and supposed "facts" they want to believe. they even get to decide which laws they think are just - and which are not.

Juror called Trayvon a 'colored boy'. Perhaps this is a ticket on the clue train?

That's how people of a certain generation talk. My dad who's 73 still calls them "colored people" and I'm pretty confident that he wouldn't acquit a murderer just because the victim was black and the defendant wasn't.
Are you saying all these legal experts are racist too?

maybe the cause to come out of this can be repealing the fifth amendment, it would have a broader base of support than repealing stand yr ground laws (oops, sorry forgot we couldn't discuss repealing stand yr ground laws, not systemic enough, discussing repealing stand yr ground laws is appeasement, you have trayvon's blood on yr hands if you discuss repealing stand yr ground laws, amazing how much progress the left has made w/ this approach, any day now that system is just gonna overthrow itself, any day now). repealing the sixth would be easy after that and repealing the seventh wouldn't even make the evening news. might as well repeal the fourth also, new york's two steps ahead of us on that one. good luck getting anywhere near that second amendment though.

Maybe that juror is a racist. Maybe they're all racist. Maybe if TM's and GZ's races were reversed, the verdict would be, also. I would find fault with that verdict, I don't with this one.

Uncanny grasp of the issues. You should get a show. Hannity and Balls.

granny doesn't find fault with this verdict because he read experts

My dad who's 73 still calls them "colored people" and I'm pretty confident that he wouldn't acquit a murderer just because the victim was black and the defendant wasn't.

no offense to your dad (or anyone else), but shitty verdicts like this result more from differences in how people perceive things than from anyone's conscious desire to "acquit a murderer" (or, at least, i hope that's the case).

supposedly non-racist american jurors are much more likely to see a black person as guilty and a white person as innocent than vice-versa. that's just as bad as overt, self-admitted racism - arguably worse because it's so insidiously pervasive.