George Zimmerman's brother, Robert, appeared on CNN this evening to discuss with Piers Morgan what the Zimmerman family has gone through after George Zimmerman killed (but did not murder) 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Flashback: The day Rep. Bobby Rush got kicked off the floor of the House of Representatives for wearing a hoodie in honor of Trayvon Martin.
Tonight a Florida man’s acquittal for hunting and killing a black teenager who was armed with only a bag of candy serves as a Rorschach test for the American public. For conservatives, it’s a triumph of permissive gun laws and a victory over the liberal media, which had been unfairly rooting for the dead kid all along. For liberals, it's a tragic and glaring example of the gaps that plague our criminal justice system. For people of color, it’s a vivid reminder that we must always be deferential to white people, or face the very real chance of getting killed.
George Zimmerman has been found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin.
Trayvon Martin was murdered. George Zimmerman murdered him. The jury may or may not see it that way; juries get a narrow and complicated view of things, and sometimes they get things wrong. But outside the jury box, there's no excuse.
A reader of mine sent me this photo last night. As the murder trial of George Zimmerman wheezes to its conclusion, the TV networks dutifully pipe in live pool video from the courtroom, as if it is force-fed to them and they have no choice but to excrete it, soft and undigested, into our living rooms, bedrooms, offices. Sometimes, the pool recorder or the networks' producers don't switch to a mundane image of lawyers being lawyerly quite fast enough, and we get to see snippets of the human cruelty, stupidity, and frailty that occasion trials such as this.
Did you know the Justice Department sponsored protests against George Zimmerman? They didn't, really—but this is the new conspiracy theory being passed around the internet gutter as Zimmerman's trial comes to a close.
The jury in the second-degree murder trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin will also be allowed to consider manslaughter charges, judge Debra Nelson ruled today. The judge has yet to rule on the prosecution's request that the jury also consider charges of third-degree felony murder—on the grounds that Zimmerman's violent confrontation with an unarmed teenager was an act of child abuse. UPDATE: The third-degree felony murder charges have now been ruled out.
For several days now, CNN’s extensive coverage of the George Zimmerman trial has shouldered aside the more important Egypt story on the network’s U.S. channel.
Trayvon Martin's mother testified this morning in the murder trial of George Zimmerman, the man who is charged with shooting the 17-year-old last year. Just before speaking in court, Sybrina Fulton tweeted:
Accused murderer George Zimmerman's college criminal justice professor was testifying in his trial over Skype today, providing a nice object lesson in why Skype testimony for nationally televised trials is probably not a good idea.
The tragic shooting death of Trayvon Martin continues to be one of America's richest sources of tangentially-related arguments. The latest: Is "cracker" a "racial" term? The correct answer: Shut up, cracker.
Rachel Jeantel, the girl Trayvon Martin had been speaking to on the phone immediately before George Zimmerman killed him, told a court this afternoon that Martin had grown worried when someone began following him. He described the person as a "creepy-ass cracker."
Let's say your brother was going to stand trial in June for shooting and killing an unarmed black teenager. What would you do? Would you keep your mouth shut? Or would you tweet at the NAACP and the NRA about black teens? Robert Zimmerman, brother of the George Zimmerman who killed Trayvon Martin last year, has chosen the latter:
George Zimmerman — who you may remember as the man who accosted and then shot a teen named Trayvon Martin for the crime of being black and wearing a hoodie — is in a bad place as the calendar slides towards 2013. Well, you knew that, but here's just one example of the pit that Zimmerman is currently in: he's being sued by a security firm that says he owes them $27,027 for services rendered. The response from Zimmerman and his attorney?
The Tea Party Nation — organizers of the National Tea Party Convention and the only Tea Party-affiliated group presently labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — sent an email to members yesterday with its official response to last week's shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Confidential school records for George Zimmerman and a blurry, xeroxed photograph of Travyon Martin's body were emailed to the press by prosecutors in a bizarre screw-up today. Two pages of records and the photograph, originally published by The Smoking Gun, are reproduced beyond the jump.
Earlier tonight, George Zimmerman gave his first televised interview to Sean Hannity on Fox News. Zimmerman offered an apology of sorts to Martin's parents, but refused to express regret for what happened. He also gave his account of Martin's killing.
Following a judge's ruling allowing its release, prosecutors just made public testimony from an anonymous witness in the case of George Zimmerman — who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old, in February — as well as phone calls Zimmerman made from jail.
Above, on the right, you can see the hoodie that Trayvon Martin was wearing the night he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. On the left his his shirt, on which a bloodstain is clearly visible. Prosecutors released the photographs today along with documents detailing the Sanford police response to Martin's death; among them include a statement from lead investigator Christopher Serino holding that Zimmerman "profiled the unarmed teen because he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, not because he was black." [WTSP]
