"Will an otherwise game Seminole County grand jury reluctantly refuse to indict Zimmerman because of a lack of physical evidence compiled by the police? In 1999, it happened in the Ramsey case. And it's certainly possible that it could happen here.
The Atlantic
Trayvon Martin's Killer Was Looking for Trouble -- and Found It
Examining the details and unanswered questions that will come to light when the case goes to court next month.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
By Andrew Cohen
Andrew Cohen is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and legal analyst for 60 Minutes. He is also chief analyst and legal editor for CBS Radio News and has won a Murrow Award as one of the nation's leading legal analysts and commentators
Trayvon Martin's Killer Was Looking for Trouble -- and Found It
Some excerpts :
From January 2011 until the night of the shooting, a period of roughly 13 months, Zimmerman called 911 for one reason or another an astounding 46 times. This official record alone, a sharp prosecutor might suggest to Seminole County grand jurors, indicates a pattern of unreasonable assertiveness (and perhaps even paranoia) on the part of the 28-year-old neighborhood watch captain. At a minimum, the calls reveal that Zimmerman took his job as a local busybody more seriously than most of us ever would or could. On January 29, 2012, for example, he called the cops on a group of kids just "playing in the street."
On Tuesday, Florida officials released audio and transcripts from six more of the Zimmerman tapes. Together, they portray a man on the lookout for "suspicious characters" -- a man out looking for trouble, an earnest prosecutor might say to grand jurors. On October 1, 2011, for example, Zimmerman called 911 to report that two black men were "just hanging out" at the gate of his neighborhood. "I have no idea what they're doing," Zimmerman told the dispatcher, as if this fact alone justified the intervention of the police. Neighbors say Zimmerman had a false sense of authority over his volunteer role -- and you can almost hear that in the tapes.
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We know from the 911 tapes what Zimmerman's motive might have been in going after Martin the way he did. But what would Martin's motive have been to attack Zimmerman, who was 11 years older and 100 pounds heavier than him? That's a question grand jurors will have to answer if and when they are confronted by the evident conflict between Zimmerman's story and the version offered by Martin's girlfriend. And it is here where the failings of the police investigation will likely deprive grand jurors of all the pertinent evidence and information they might have had, and should have had, in looking into this tragedy.
THE POLICE AND PROSECUTORS
Did the police fail to test Zimmerman for drugs and alcohol on the night of the 26th? If so, why? Did the police otherwise fail to treat him as a suspect? Why? Did they treat him, in other words, as they would have treated Martin, if it had been Martin who had shot Zimmerman that night? What about the allegation that a police officer may have coerced a witness into incriminating Martin, and not Zimmerman? Will prosecutors call that police officer before the grand jury to testify? And will there be a mini-trial during the grand jury proceedings over any conflicts between the witness's testimony and the testimony of the police officer?
There is something about this story, even this early on, that reminds me of the JonBenet Ramsey case. She was the little Colorado girl, the beauty pageant queen, who was killed in her home in December 1996. Early police errors in that case, some of them atrocious, have resolutely precluded any successful prosecution of any of the suspects ever identified. Will an otherwise game Seminole County grand jury reluctantly refuse to indict Zimmerman because of a lack of physical evidence compiled by the police? In 1999, it happened in the Ramsey case. And it's certainly possible that it could happen here.
All prosecutors have an ethical obligation to pass on a case they do not reasonably believe they can win. But all prosecutors also have a duty to push up against legal precedent when they believe that to do so would further the interests of justice. A reasonable prosecutor here could convince grand jurors to indict Zimmerman -- the idea being that there is a reasonable probability that his conduct on the night of Martin's death does not fall under Florida's self-defense law. But then the prosecutor would have the burden at trial, if the case got that far, of establishing beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman had not acted in self-defense.
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Like it or not, Florida law permits scared residents to defend themselves with lethal force. It permits residents to "stand their ground" rather than try to avoid trouble when trouble comes toward them. But it does not permit residents to go looking for trouble. It does not permit residents to hunt down other residents, to corner them, to kill them, and then to allege that they killed in self defense. George Zimmerman no doubt thought he was doing the right thing on those dozens of occasions when he dialed 911. Could he ever have imagined that one day those calls might be used against him with his life on the line?
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The federal investigation. So many questions for the Justice Department to answer! Here are a few off the top of my head: What did the police think about Zimmerman before the deadly incident? Did the dispatchers put together the fact that they were getting so many calls from one person? Did it influence their decisions -- the speed of police intervention, the way they treated Zimmerman on the scene -- on the night of Martin's death? At any point, did a police officer sit Zimmerman down and tell him to chill out? What about the allegations of disparate treatment for minorities in Sanford? So many questions. So few answers.
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