Suspicion Nation Read online

  [Play the Lauer 911 call, with the high-pitched screams.] Remember, Rachel Jeantel told you that Trayvon had a “baby” voice. Listen to these screams, of the terrified teenager with the baby voice. No one has ever said Zimmerman had a high-pitched voice—and you’ve heard his voice yourself multiple times. And why would he need to scream for help? He’s the one with the gun.

  But Trayvon had fought back, and now Zimmerman was in a panic. The same panic that caused him to say his head was being banged on the concrete dozens of times, though his lawyer now admits that’s not true. He’s also even angrier now, angry that this kid, this punk, had the nerve to stand up to him. In anger and in panic, Zimmerman fired his gun at Trayvon. And at that precise moment, Trayvon’s screaming stopped. [Play the portion of the Lauer 911 call again, where the screaming stops suddenly with the gunshot.]

  Killing in panic is not selfdefense. Killing in anger is not selfdefense. Killing because a kid you followed responded by punching you in the face is not selfdefense. In each of these situations, Zimmerman is guilty of either manslaughter or murder.

  What is manslaughter? [Put up slide of jury instruction on manslaughter.] The intentional taking of a human life without justification. Intentional? Easy. Zimmerman admitted he shot intentionally. He did exactly what he meant to do. So we can check intent right off. And Trayvon was a human being, though Zimmerman saw him not as an individual, but as a member of a group, black males, and therefore criminal. Human life, check. Justification? That’s another word for selfdefense. And since we’ve proved to you with the physical evidence that Zimmerman’s story of selfdefense is a lie, not possible, that’s out. That’s why manslaughter very easily fits the facts of this case. Guilty. At a minimum, guilty of manslaughter.

  But we have charged Zimmerman with a top charge of second-degree murder, and that’s been proved, too, with the evidence and the reasonable inferences you should draw from the evidence. Second-degree murder is simply manslaughter (intentional killing) with just one additional element: hatred, malice, or ill will. It can be hard to get inside a human mind and see what lurks there, but in this case it’s easy because we have Zimmerman’s own words, recorded, that tell us all the dark, hateful thoughts he had about Trayvon right before he shot him. Upon seeing Trayvon for the first time, Zimmerman thought, criminal, asshole. Upon meeting up with him, Zimmerman delivered the belligerent, “What are you doing around here?” Now, do you think Zimmerman got warmer and fuzzier toward Trayvon after he grabbed or shoved Trayvon, and Travyon responded by punching Zimmerman in the face? Of course not. Zimmerman surely got even angrier at that point. He’s now furious, enraged. This “fucking punk” punched him! BAM. That, members of the jury, is an intentional killing with hatred, malice, or ill will. And after he shot him, more ill will—Zimmerman turned this dying boy facedown to the dirt and spread his arms, his final insult and humiliation to Trayvon, who had done nothing wrong. At the police station later, Zimmerman still insults him by calling him a suspect. This is the same ill will he’d harbored since the moment he laid eyes on Trayvon. And if all of that is not enough, and you still have any doubt about the ill will Zimmerman had in his heart toward this innocent teenager, consider this: five months later, after he’d lawyered up and had time to calm down and reflect on the case and choose his words carefully, he sits beside his lawyer, with a friendly interviewer, Sean Hannity, and says he has no regrets and that his shooting of Trayvon was “God’s plan.” Did God want Trayvon to die that night?

  The defense has never had an explanation for that chilling, malicious statement.

  Every word he’s uttered about the teenager has been insulting and false. Every action he took toward him was predatory. That’s how we know to a certainty that before, during, and after the shooting, Zimmerman harbored ill will toward Trayvon. Certainly at the moment when he pulled that trigger, he did. And he probably still does today.

  Zimmerman, as we know from his college professor, had been taught the law of selfdefense, and he was one of the best students, getting an A in the class. So after he shot Trayvon, he knew what he had to do: claim selfdefense. That would be his only hope, since the police arrived and there he was, the proverbial smoking gun still on him. Trayvon was unarmed, though, and had never touched the gun, so his fingerprints wouldn’t be on it. What was left for this star criminal justice student? He had to quickly come up with a story, that he was not just hit once, because that wouldn’t justify a deadly shooting, but that he was getting beaten to a pulp, and then Trayvon went for the gun, threatening him. Yes, that’s it—he reached for the gun! That was Zimmerman’s story, and he almost got away with it.

  But now we know the truth. We know that Zimmerman killed Trayvon intentionally, with ill will toward this boy he’d never met, and that his selfdefense story doesn’t match up with his own concealed gun and holster. We all have sympathy toward Trayvon, and his family, but this case is not about the emotion, it’s about the proof, the proof that Zimmerman’s story is impossible and therefore fabricated to cover his crime. All the evidence in this case points to Zimmerman as the predator, who followed an innocent unarmed minor, confronted him, started the fight, then needlessly shot to kill him. He almost fooled the police. But you know better. You now know conclusively that his selfdefense story is a lie. Once that’s out, conviction is the only remaining option. And he should be convicted, because he was a menace that night, to his community, and to a kid who just wanted to get away from him, so he could keep joking with Rachel Jeantel and watch the basketball game. And because Zimmerman chose to take the law into his own hands instead of following the police instructions, Trayvon didn’t make it home that night. And he never will.

  For that reason, you must return the only verdict that is consistent with the evidence: guilty.

  The state was not legally required to come up with its own version of what happened that night, but without one, they were doomed to fail. I have never seen prosecutors win without their own theory of the case. The jury simply will not do the job for them. Here they were required to explain how the proof fulfilled the elements of the crime they’d charged Zimmerman with, and they never did it. Left with only questions from the prosecutors and the defense’s version of the story, it’s surprising the jury took as long as they did, sixteen hours, to acquit Zimmerman. Inside the jury room, the voices for conviction were desperate for the facts and law to support their side. But as the hours went by, they couldn’t locate them because the state had not given them anything close to the roadmap they needed.

  EIGHT

  It’s Not Over

  WHY DID THE prosecution make so many blunders? Was it negligence or intentional?

  I can’t say they meant to throw the case. A few, like defense attorney Mark Geragos, made that allegation based on the prosecution’s poor performance. But I have no real evidence of that. Special prosecutor Angela Corey, who did not personally try the case but who oversaw it, did appear delighted in her press conference right after the verdict, as if she was pleased with the “not guilty” verdict, but perhaps that was just a politician’s “never let ’em see you sweat” smile for the cameras. In contrast, her two courtroom prosecutors, de la Rionda and Guy, seemed genuinely deflated. They appeared to work hard, and they looked like they wanted to win as much as any courtroom lawyer. That the police who initially failed to arrest Zimmerman, believing his selfdefense story, were vindicated by the acquittal is insufficient to make such a serious allegation.

  Was it inexperience—simple incompetence? More likely, but still, implausible. Lead prosecutor de la Rionda had obtained convictions in eighty prior murder cases, he said after the trial, losing only one other. He knew how to bring cases home to juries. So why did it not happen here?

  The most likely explanation is that, like the police who did not want to arrest Zimmerman, they just did not believe in their case. As we’ve seen, they did not choose this case. It landed on their laps, and they could not plea bargain or dismiss it. They were stuck
with it. Sure, they tried the case. But they only went through the motions.

  Angela Corey made a very telling public statement immediately after the verdict:

  What we promised fifteen months ago was to get all the facts before a jury. That’s what we’ve done. The focus needs to be on how the system worked, and how now everyone in this country can say they know the facts and can make up their own minds about the guilt of George Zimmerman.81

  What a peculiar view of the role of a criminal trial, coming from the special prosecutor. Her team’s job was simply to put forward all the evidence, so that everyone could make up his own mind about guilt? Prosecutors are not documentary filmmakers or journalists. One does not need lawyers to expose facts. Prosecutors are there to advocate, to make the case against the defendant in the courtroom, not just throw out all the facts and see what sticks. In that role, they failed miserably.

  Did the state attorneys truly believe that Trayvon was the innocent victim and Zimmerman the aggressor? Probably not. Certainly they did not behave in the courtroom as though they had the evidence to convict. As a result, they did not appear to have looked hard enough at the evidence. Assigned what Corey believed was a difficult case—she called it “difficult” or “tough” five times in her post-verdict press conference—Corey made it even more challenging for her team by choosing to charge Zimmerman with second-degree murder rather than simply manslaughter. Had the jury been given only that lower charge, and the prosecutors explained and focused on manslaughter, the prosecutors would have had a lower bar. If it’s a difficult case to begin with, why make it more difficult for your courtroom team?

  As advocates, the state attorneys did just a perfunctory job. Their trial strategy was not to argue for conviction but to toss all the evidence and witnesses before the jury and let them sort it out, if they could. They appeared to think that the passion was the best part of the case, so that’s what they argued, sympathy for Trayvon (while surely knowing, as seasoned prosecutors, that that would not be enough—it’s not a memorial service, it’s a murder trial). They stayed away from Phase 2 because they didn’t think they could win it. They didn’t bring in additional experts because they didn’t believe the science could prove another theory of the case. They were all over the place in handling the race issue because like most Americans, they felt uncomfortable talking about race and probably themselves believed in the logical fallacy that if African Americans had robbed one home in the neighborhood it was reasonable to be suspicious about all others walking the streets. And it seems that they didn’t put together a clear theory of the case to give the jury because in their heart of hearts, they believed Zimmerman’s.

  Of the four prosecutors who took to the microphones after the not-guilty verdict, only one, Bernie de la Rionda, said he was disappointed with the verdict. His boss, Angela Corey, concluded the press conference82 by insisting, “The focus needs to be on how the system worked.” It worked? So Zimmerman’s acquittal was the right verdict? Is there some other interpretation of these words?

  And thus, in a series of missteps, this very winnable case was lost. Though Zimmerman’s story of the shooting was belied by the physical evidence, though he expressed overt hostility toward Trayvon from the moment he laid eyes on the minor, though he admitted to no remorse afterward and gloated months after the shooting that the killing was “God’s plan,” the defense won the trial by painting Trayvon just as Zimmerman had, as “a real suspicious guy,” a “match” to burglars.

  At Pastor Durham’s Greater Friendship Baptist Church in Daytona Beach the Sunday morning after the verdict, men openly wept in the pews, “men in their fifties, sixties, seventies.” For that congregation, Pastor Durham said, Trayvon’s family “was the embodiment of mainstream America. Even when you look mainstream and live in a nice community, somehow America is not fully liberated because we hold these biases against individuals based on skin color.”83

  Justice was not blind, and it especially was not colorblind.

  After the verdict, Americans demonstrated in one hundred cities84 across the country in “Justice For Trayvon” rallies. On July 20, 2013—a hot summer day, when anger over injustice is most likely to turn violent—the most divisive trial in the country led to millions loudly but almost entirely peacefully marching to voice their opposition to the verdict. In Miami, a little black boy carried a handwritten sign that read, “I AM NOT A SUSPECT!!” In Atlanta, another African-American child’s sign read, “BLACK LIFE MATTERS,”85 reminiscent of the Memphis sanitation marchers’ signs86 from 1968, searing in their simplicity, “I AM A MAN.”

  She’s a human being.

  He’s not an animal.

  How little we had progressed in fifty years.

  Ugly social media posts abounded:

  I want to thank god … for that bullet that killed trayvon martin.

  Congrats to my boy Zimmerman for getting off the hook killing that dumb nigger.

  The stupid nigger shoulda never went to by Skittles, stupid fucker had the munchies.

  Hostile words were not limited to anonymous Internet nobodies. “Hallelujah!”87 bestselling conservative author Ann Coulter said of the verdict, claiming that Zimmerman was “mugged” by Trayvon (conveniently garnering attention for her just-released book of the same name, though even Zimmerman had never claimed such a thing). Musician and gun activist Ted Nugent announced that racism had been over since the 1960s and joined the blame-the-victim chorus with his patronizing, “Nothing of consequence existed to deter or compromise a black American’s dream if they got an alarm clock, if they set it, and if they took good care of themselves.”88

  Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly accused the NAACP and those speaking out against the verdict as being motivated by money. “The grievance industry,” he said, “there’s a lot of money in it, there’s a lot of power in it.”89 O’Reilly should know. He airs his own grievances nightly on his popular Fox News program, reportedly earning $20 million per year. (O’Reilly’s comment would be laughable if it weren’t so insulting to a heartbroken community. Singer Stevie Wonder, on the other hand, announced he would no longer perform in Stand Your Ground states like Florida. He gave up income derived from touring in more than twenty-seven states.)

  The former head of South Carolina’s GOP, Todd Kincannon, tweeted, “Trayvon Martin was a dangerous thug who needed to be put down like a rabid dog.”

  (Months earlier, Kincannon had amused himself during the Super Bowl by tweeting what he thought were funny zingers about the dead boy, like, “This Super Bowl sucks more dick than adult Trayvon Martin would have for drug money.”)90

  A Volusia County, Florida, police officer posted online91 a cartoon of Trayvon Martin with the caption, “THOSE SKITTLES WERE TO DIE FOR,” and another of Rachel Jeantel on the witness stand, uglified as Shrek. “Another thug gone,” read one of the police officer’s messages. “Pull up your pants and act respectful. Bye bye thug r.i.p.”

  The trial was over, but the fight against dehumanization was not.

  A MONTH AFTER the verdict, Zimmerman went to the manufacturer of the gun he’d used to kill Trayvon, KelTec. He was treated like a celebrity, was given a tour of the factory by the owner’s son, and smiled for a picture92 with an employee.

  Less than two months after the verdict, another 911 call was made, another accusation that Zimmerman was threatening someone with his gun. Zimmerman’s estranged wife Shellie Zimmerman, who had filed for divorce after the trial claiming Zimmerman now thought he was “invincible,”93 called the emergency number to report that Zimmerman had punched her father in the face, threatened her with his gun, and smashed her iPad that she was using to video record the entire incident. Zimmerman claimed he only acted in selfdefense after both Shellie and her father assaulted him.

  Shellie declined to press charges, claiming in an interview that the police said they’d put her in jail if she pursued the matter. She was on probation for perjury at the time, as she’d lied under oath at Zimmerman’s bail h
earing the year before.

  Two months later, Zimmerman’s new live-in girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, made strikingly similar allegations against him, claiming, like Shellie Zimmerman, that when she’d asked him to leave her home he became belligerent, threatening her with his gun. Zimmerman denied her allegations, claiming she was the one who’d “gone crazy” on him. Scheibe later recanted her story, saying the police had exerted undue pressure on her.

  Zimmerman may be the Teflon defendant, with accusations of criminal violence periodically made against him with few legal consequences. I spoke with Florida attorney David Chico, who was the prosecutor assigned to yet another Zimmerman case in 2005 (and who also, coincidentally, represents Maddy pro bono). In that case, Chico said, Zimmerman was at a bar with a friend who was arrested for underage drinking by a uniformed police officer. Zimmerman tried to speak with the arresting officer, and when refused, Zimmerman became angry and pushed the officer. Aggression toward a uniformed police officer is a serious offense, and Zimmerman was arrested and charged with two felonies, “resisting an officer with violence” and “battery of a law enforcement officer.”94 “For some mysterious reason,” Chico said, “the charging prosecutor decided to reduce it to a misdemeanor. I don’t know why.” After three years, the records were destroyed. Chico recalls that Zimmerman was ordered into a twelve-hour anger management class, mandated fifty hours of community service, and required to pay a fine. “George Zimmerman is so lucky,” Chico said.