The George Zimmerman verdict

I see that there are protests across the nation today in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman (accused of murder after he shot a black teenager who was, at the time, apparently on top of him and pummeling him). Predictably, knee-jerk civil rights activist like Al Sharpton are calling for the Federal Government to find a way to retry him for the same event. (Would Al be so keen if it was a black guy who shot a white teenager? I don't think so, because that has happened a number of times without any public response from Sharpton.)

NBC of course made the whole issue much worse by airing an edited version of the exchange between Zimmerman and the police dispatcher he was talking to at the time;  The edited version, deliberately edited to make Zimmerman look racist, went like this:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.

And of course that is all most people have ever heard.  The actual exchange, which paints a very different picture, went like this: 

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

In any case, I think for once President Obama got it right when he commented that although many may disagree with the verdict, it was the unanimous verdict of a jury who heard ALL the evidence, and under our system that trumps anyone else's less-informed opinion, as it should. They apparently concluded, after listening to weeks of evidence, that there was insufficient evidence to convict him on that charge. American law does not allow a person to be tried a second time for the same crime (as used to happen in less democratic nations if the powers that be didn't like the original verdict). It would be a travesty for the Federal government to try him again, even if they use the fiction of trying him on a different charge (civil rights violation).

There is some evidence that Zimmerman was a bit of a vigilante, and may have suspected the victim in the first place because he was young and black, but the reality apparently is (a) that neighborhood had been burglarized repeatedly by young black men (so suspecting another one is not so unreasonable), and (b) the victim was indeed physically attacking Zimmerman at the time he was shot.

This is, I think, another case where populist emotion and political ideology is overwhelming common sense. He was tried. A jury didn't think there was enough evidence to convict him. Case closed.