Drawing the line between mob justice and legitimate democracy in action isn’t easy, but one thing seems obvious. Standing up for kids doesn’t win political points for anyone because kids don’t vote, and they don’t have any money. Standing up for insufficient prosecutorial efforts against racist violence has obvious political implications, which doesn’t make it wrong – but the fact that there are votes at stake matters. Only a cool-headed apolitical application of law to the facts should determine whether an individual is charged with a crime, especially when the punishment could be life behind bars. If politics and strong emotions ruled the day, slavery would still be legal and “Scottsboro Boys” cases would be commonplace. Prosecutorial overcharging is dangerous not only because it isn’t fair, but also because it’s akin to vigilantism. If a prosecutor engages in vigilante activity, the public will, too. It also opens the prosecutor up to fierce criticism for the next case that has similar facts but involves different “types” of individuals. For example, what if instead of a security guard looking out for suspicious activity, Zimmerman had been a woman, suspicious of her husband when he didn’t come home after work. What if she found him leaving a barroom with another woman and surreptitiously followed him down the sidewalk. What if he became furious when he saw her spying on him, so he knocked her to the ground and started punching her in the face, slamming her head into the sidewalk. What if she screamed for help, but nobody came, so she pulled out her pistol and shot the guy dead. Name one prosecutor who would file ANY charges against the woman, much less murder in the second degree. How will DA Corey explain why a woman should walk free while George Zimmerman sits in prison? There’s little doubt Trayvon Martin would be alive today had he not been the target of unfair suspicion for walking on a sidewalk. It’s ugly and incendiary to make any human being feel bad about being black. But it’s also true that being the target of suspicion does not justify physical violence. Assuming Martin responded to Zimmerman’s suspicion with violence, the prosecutor has a duty to recognize that just as a gunshot is excessive force to repel a punch, a punch is excessive force to repel a suspicious follower. A prosecutor can take provocative behavior into account when assessing the context of an incident, but giving too much consideration to non-physical provocation opens the door to untold amounts of trouble when the next young man in Martin’s position feels disrespected and uses a weapon instead of a fist. By downplaying the significance of a physically violent reaction to a non-violent act of following, a prosecutor ties her own hands in future cases whenever an angry person responds with extreme force when they feel offended by words. Free from intense emotion, there is an objective reality about what happened between Zimmerman and Martin and there is an objective legal lens through which the evidence should be assessed, though the prosecutor seems more interested in politics than truth, which she made exceedingly clear when she asked people to join her in prayer for Martin and his family. She also declared her intention to achieve justice only for Trayvon Martin, as if her ethical duty to do justice on behalf of the public interest, including the accused, was nonexistent. Maybe the prosecutor in Zimmerman’s case needs to revisit the history books, and remind herself why John Adams is a celebrated lawyer precisely because he stood up against mob rule justice and defended British soldiers accused of murdering colonial protestors. Maybe she needs a refresher class in why our legal system was designed to resist angry emotions of even decent Americans, like those who demanded the blood of British soldiers. Maybe she simply forgot that the integrity of law itself is always more important than the next election.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 16:24:13 +0000