Politics and Justice

---

Trayvon Martin makes his purchase minutes before his death.

---

From the start, I have felt that the Trayvon Martin–George Zimmerman matter was being made into much more than it was.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am not being flippant. A young man is dead, and that is a terrible thing — on several levels.

But legally the prosecution had no case. The whole thing was driven by politics.

What it is is a situation in which things rapidly got out of hand. That happens sometimes, usually because people are human. They are flawed. And they let matters get the best of them sometimes. That is sad.

But anyone who thinks George Zimmerman is racist either is having a knee–jerk reaction or must know something that no one else knows. The FBI, which operates under the Department of Justice, investigated Zimmerman following the shooting and found no evidence to support the claim that he was a racist.

The only racial epithet that apparently was used that night was when the victim said he was being followed by a "creepy–ass cracker." But he did not call the defendant that. He used that language in a phone conversation with a friend.

No testimony suggested that racial language played any role in the shooting.

No one — outside of the two people who were directly involved, and one, of course, is deceased — will ever know the whole truth about what happened that rainy night in February 2012. But I think a reasonable guess can be made based on even a casual understanding of what most people are likely to do under certain conditions.

According to Zimmerman's statements, he was in his vehicle running some personal errands when he observed Martin walking inside the gated community where he was a volunteer neighborhood watchman. He called the police to report observing an individual who was behaving suspiciously. Zimmerman said Martin, whom he did not recognize, had been walking behind the homes, not on the street or sidewalk.

It's a judgment call whether Martin's actions were suspicious. The police who were called to the scene after Martin was shot reported finding no evidence of anything like burglary and found no evidence of stolen property on Martin's body.

But Zimmerman knew there had been many break–ins of late. It's reasonable to believe his senses were on heightened alert so when he saw Martin, he called non–emergency police to report what he had seen. During that conversation, he said Martin approached his vehicle "to check me out." He said he rolled up his window because he did not want a confrontation with Martin.

At that point, Martin apparently ran away from the vehicle, and Zimmerman told the dispatcher he was following. The dispatcher told him he didn't need to do that. Zimmerman said he was returning to his vehicle; that is when he was confronted by Martin, and that is when the fight began.

And in the course of that fight, as nearly everyone must know by now, Martin was fatally wounded.

Zimmerman never denied shooting Martin, but he claimed he did so in self–defense. In such a case, it doesn't matter if the defendant sustained life–threatening injuries. During my career as a reporter, I covered enough trials and spoke with enough lawyers to know that, if someone claims to have been in fear for his/her safety and uses deadly force against his/her attacker — and if the jury believes that he/she believed that he/she was in danger — it was self–defense.

I understand the frustration of those who feel Zimmerman's acquittal fell short of being justice for Trayvon. But that is the thing, you see.

Justice was done. Martin's side was presented by the prosecution to a jury in an open court. Zimmerman was permitted legal defense, as any person who is charged with a crime in America is entitled to have. A jury that was approved by both the prosecution and the defense listened to the testimony, observed the evidence and rendered its verdict.

Anyone who thinks justice was not done has a skewed view of what justice really is.

"Justice" is having a fair trial. Does anyone think the trial was not fair? If so, speak now and be prepared to defend your conclusion with facts, not emotion.

"Justice" is having the opportunity to present your case to a jury — ideally, one that is made up of residents of the area who know neither the victim nor the accused and have nothing to gain or lose by their verdict. Does anyone have proof that this jury did not act in good faith?

"Justice" is the promise that, if you are accused of a crime, you will have your day in court, or, if you are the victim of a crime, your accusations will be heard. It is not a promise that your side will win.

The founders of this nation had experienced judicial systems that did not have things like open courts and trials by juries, prohibitions against things like double jeopardy and concepts like innocent until proven guilty. They knew that freedom would be a hollow claim without a judicial system that protected the rights of all the citizens.

Sure, there was a time in America's history when the judicial system fell far short of that lofty goal. During the time when slavery was legal in this country, blacks had no legal rights. For a long time, women had few, if any, legal rights. Even after many of those laws were changed or repealed outright, some things didn't change right away.

And there have always been times, from the earliest days of the republic to the present day, when guilty people went free and innocent people went to prison. That's the price we pay for safeguarding everyone's rights — or, at least, trying to.

Slowly but surely, the flaws in the judicial system are being corrected. It is not perfect. It will never be perfect — because laws are written by humans, and trials are conducted by humans. But it is the best system man has devised for administering justice.

I have seen graphics popping up on Facebook that complain about the verdict using totally irrelevant points — and, in the process, showing a shocking absence of understanding of how the law works.

For example ...

I've seen graphics that imply that miscarriage of justice is a fact of life in Florida. A similar case involving a black woman who supposedly fired a warning shot and wound up getting jail time is frequently cited as proof of the racism within the system — as if the two cases had the same set of facts, the same attorneys and the same jurors.

Well, let's look at the facts.

Marissa Alexander was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing what she called a "warning shot" into a wall during a confrontation with her abusive former spouse. Alexander had gone to her ex–husband's home to retrieve some belongings, believing he wasn't home, but he was and they got into a fight. When the argument became heated, Alexander went out to her car, got the gun that was there, returned to the house and fired a shot into the wall.

Alexander was offered several plea bargains, including a three–year sentence and then a probational sentence with time served, but she decided to proceed with a stand–your–ground defense.

The jury in her trial decided that the shot was not fired in self–defense and convicted her of aggravated assault. This triggered provisions of the state's "10–20–Life" law, which set mandatory minimum sentences for crimes committed with firearms.

Under that law, any crime committed with a gun receives a minimum of a 10–year sentence. If the gun is fired during the crime, that receives a 20–year sentence. And if anyone is injured or killed, the sentence is 25 years–to–life.

As someone who has covered many trials, I can tell you that each case is unique. All that those cases have in common, aside from the racial aspect, is the law, which is the same for everyone.

Well, not quite. Does the name Angela Corey ring a bell? It should. She's the state attorney in Florida's Fourth Judicial Circuit Court. She was in charge of the investigations and prosecutions in both the George Zimmerman and Marissa Alexander cases, and she defended how both were prosecuted.

Different sets of facts, different juries, different interpretations of "stand your ground."

Along the same line of thought, I have seen a graphic that asserts that Florida stole the 2000 election for George W. Bush. It's irrelevant to the point of law, of course — unless one is making an argument for the elimination of the Electoral College, and that is an entirely unrelated issue — but, as long as it is being brought up, Florida voted for Barack Obama in the last two presidential elections.

The same graphic asserts that Florida is where "kids can be murdered without question."

"Murder" is a legal term. Unless a court has convicted an individual of a murder charge, there has been no murder.

In the Zimmerman case, the jury concluded that no murder had taken place. It's true that someone died, but the jury believed Zimmerman was in fear for his life and did what he had to do to protect himself.

Those who protest the verdict distort things by labeling Zimmerman a child killer.

The "child" in this case was no toddler. He was less than a year from being old enough to enlist in the Army if he had so chosen, and he was four inches taller than Zimmerman. Technically, he may have been a child, but physically, anyone who saw him, especially on a dark and rainy night, would not say he was one.

It was clear to me — from the persistent media outcry that lifted the case from local to national to the president sticking his nose into it — that it was politicized.

And politics has no place in a courtroom.

Read More

Clint Eastwood

---

---

Let me be very clear about this.

Clint Eastwood has never been my favorite actor.

I've seen many of his movies over the years. Some I have liked better than others.

But that is the thing, you see. I've never regarded Eastwood as anything other than an actor. Oh, I know he was mayor of a small town south of San Francisco for a couple of years in the 1980s, but he's not an actor/entertainer/politician like George Murphy or Arnold Schwarzenegger — or Ronald Reagan.

Politically, Eastwood has always leaned toward the Republican Party, but he has often taken positions that were at odds with the GOP. In 1974, he told Playboy that he was a "political nothing ... a moderate," and, 23 years later, he told Playboy he was a libertarian.

He supports a number of things that most Republicans do not — he's pro–choice and a supporter of same–sex marriage. He has endorsed Democrats and liberals in the past.

In 2008, though, he endorsed John McCain for president so it really shouldn't be surprising that he has endorsed Mitt Romney this year. (It may be disappointing to some diehard Democrats, but it really couldn't be surprising.)

Politically, I suppose, Clint Eastwood is a bit of an enigma to many people — and his "speech" to the Republican National Convention last week is something of an enigma as well.

Before that performance, I guess a lot of folks expected him to be the tough guy he has often been in his movies when he came out on the stage. Instead, what they got was something of a comedy routine.

To be honest, the thought that went through my mind was that only Eastwood could do this and get away with it — kind of like when Henry Fonda played the really bad guy in "Once Upon a Time in the West."

Fonda had always been the good guy, never the villain. The role was such an extreme reversal that Fonda made the character seem even more menacing, more terrifying than he would have been in anyone else's hands.

For many moviegoers, it was as if Fonda had been captured by the body snatchers, and a mean, vicious person who looked and sounded like Fonda had been left in his place.

Even before Eastwood took the stage, I had decided not to judge his performance as I would a career politician. Consequently, I was not expecting him to deliver a traditional convention speech.

But, apparently, some folks were — and I've been amused to watch their horrified responses.

The usually verbose Rachel Maddow was, seemingly, at a loss for words, finally labeling Eastwood's presentation as "the weirdest thing I've ever seen at a political convention in my entire life."

And MSNBC's uber leftist evening anchor Ed Schultz moaned sanctimoniously about how Eastwood's routine was "demeaning" to the presidency.

Seems to me Schultz really ought to be more concerned about what demeans journalism.

Read More

Preppie Love

On this day 25 years ago, Robert Chambers became the "Preppie Killer" when he strangled an 18–year–old girl named Jennifer Levin in New York's Central Park.



That was a different time. Today, the murder of an unknown yet attractive girl anywhere would attract dozens of camera crews from all over the world, and the internet would be full of details on first the investigation and then the trial. In 2011, you wouldn't be able to escape those details, no matter how hard you tried.



But in 1986, things were different. I was living in Arkansas at the time, working on the copy desk of the largest newspaper in the state. I thought that having access to the Associated Press' wire meant I would know things that many of my friends did not, but the information we got on the Preppie Killer was spotty at best.



I'm sure the coverage of the case was pretty intense in New York and the media centers of the Northeast, but, as I say, that was many years before cable and the internet made it possible for people to see and read daily news coverage in places around the globe.



As the drama of Chambers' arrest and trial played out, I might as well have been in another hemisphere. Most of the information I got on the case came from my subscription to Newsweek. It wasn't quite as spotty — but it still left a lot to be desired.



I have often wondered if it might have been the "trial of the century" until the O.J. Simpson case in the mid–1990s — if the technology of the 1980s had been as advanced.



When Chambers eventually did go to trial, it was hardly what I would call the "trial of the century." But it sure did draw a lot of attention for its day — and that did lead to a kind of trickle–down effect in terms of the information that was available.



It's the kind of thing that has always attracted the folks in our culture, and if cable TV had been more extensive and the internet had been more than an information network linking research–oriented institutions, the audience that followed the Preppie Killer story might have rivaled that of the Casey Anthony trial.



Chambers was a tall, good–looking guy who, apparently, had most things handed to him as he grew up. He seems to have had something of a social inferiority complex.



Chambers attended prep schools on scholarships; his family couldn't afford the tuition. He did not thrive in that environment, received poor grades and ran into problems with theft and substance abuse.



He was accepted to Boston University, but the same problems that plagued him in prep school followed him to college, and he was asked to leave after a single semester.



On Aug. 26, 1986, a month before his 20th birthday, he was at a Manhattan bar where his girlfriend loudly ended their relationship, throwing a bag of condoms at him and assuring him that "you're not using them with me."



Chambers' girlfriend was, reportedly, upset that Levin was at the bar. The story was that Levin was Chambers' secret lover. Witnesses said they left the bar together.



I don't know if that was true or not. Neither do I know if it is true that, later, Chambers and Levin had "rough sex" before Chambers, who stood more than a foot taller than Levin and weighed nearly twice what she did, strangled her in Central Park.



Chambers claimed that Levin hurt his genitals and he pushed her from him, accidentally killing her. It never really seemed plausible, considering the nature of the physical evidence.



"I've been in this business for a while," the prosecutor said to Chambers, "and you're the first man I've seen raped in Central Park."



But that was Chambers' story, and he stuck with it.



Well, whatever the truth was, Chambers wound up pleading guilty to manslaughter, and he served 15 years in prison. He was released, ironically, on Valentine's Day 2003. With time off for good behavior, he might have been released earlier — but he had disciplinary issues in prison that mirrored the ones he had prior to Levin's death, and the same problems followed him as he tried to carve out a life for himself after his release.



A few years ago, Chambers, now in his mid–40s, was sentenced to 19 years in prison after his conviction on drug charges.



I suppose it is possible that he could get some time off for good behavior. But, given his history, it doesn't seem likely. I think he will be behind bars until he is in his 60s.



A cynical person might say a pattern has been established.

Read More

Going Rogue

My background is in print journalism — not show business.

And I can only conclude that show business is what people like Sarah Palin really mean when they complain about a "liberal press."

That must be what she means. Her latest remarks were in response to comments made by Bill Maher. He's a comedian (like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert), not a journalist (like Walter Cronkite and Woodward and Bernstein).

Yes, Maher is bright and articulate, and he does engage in political commentary — but anyone can do that, especially today. If you have a computer and an internet account, you can write a blog on anything.

You don't have to have a college degree. You don't have to invest any money (beyond the cost of the computer and the internet account).

You don't really have to know what you're talking about. You don't even have to be able to spell, which, frankly, appalls me. I mean, you don't need to be able to spell if people are only going to hear your views, but if they are going to read them, I think you'd better be able to spell — yet far too few bloggers seem to be capable of that.

You really just need to have an opinion — and everybody's got one. At least one.

If you take a good, honest look at the blogs that are being written these days, you'll find that there's a good mix of opinions being represented out there. It may seem sometimes that things are tilted more one way than another, but, for the most part, I think it is pretty balanced.

It tends to get shrill at times — but I often think that is precisely because people who are accustomed to pushing emotional buttons (like, for example, comedians) are mistaken for people who prefer to deal with facts (like, for example, journalists).

In other words, any resemblance between Bill Maher and Edward R. Murrow is purely coincidental.

Perhaps Palin harbors resentment over the fact that more newspapers endorsed the Democratic ticket than the Republican ticket in 2008. But that was an historical anomaly. In nearly all of the presidential campaigns in the last half century, Republicans have received more endorsements than Democrats.

It may be a simple matter of semantics. When she says "press," Palin may mean anyone in the media.

But that is misleading because the word media is only part of the story.

The more appropriate terminology would be mass media (or mass communication) — media is far too generic.

Even so, mass media covers a wide spectrum of things. It covers all media technologies — both established and emerging.

It covers traditional publications, like newspapers, magazines and books, and it also covers newer technology, like television, radio, audio recordings, movies and the internet, as well as the related fields of advertising and public relations.

Mass media covers a whole range of specialized professions within those more general occupations. For example, newspapers have editors, and so do audio and visual production companies, but they don't edit the same things, and their skills wouldn't be particularly transferable to the other field.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed in the 18th century, press meant newspapers. But, today, it covers a lot of things — and, since people seem to be less inclined to get their news from newspapers these days and more inclined to get it from broadcast outlets — many of which, like the Fox News to which Palin contributes, clearly have an agenda — they tar all members of the media with the same broad, brush strokes, whether or not they apply.

It's easier to do that than think, I guess.

I can live with that misconception, though, easier than I can live with the insistence on labeling anyone who disagrees with Palin a "liberal." She isn't the first political conservative to do that, just the most prominent current one.

When did liberal become a dirty word? As nearly as I can tell, it goes back at least to the 1960s. The liberals of that time were primarily liberal on social issues but more conservative on foreign ones. Hence, when Lyndon Johnson and the established liberals of his day got the country into a war in Vietnam that couldn't be resolved quickly, it sparked resistance from what was called the "New Left."

As E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post wrote in "Why Americans Hate Politics" in 1991, "If liberal ideology began to crumble intellectually in the 1960s it did so in part because the New Left represented a highly articulate and able wrecking crew."

Conservatives were trying before the 1960s to portray liberals as soft and squishy — on communism, on crime, just weak in general — but it really seems to have caught on in the 1980s.

I admit, I leaned more to the left when I was younger. That was at a time when there was more mutual respect in our political discourse, and liberal wasn't treated with the same contempt as pedophile.

I'm much more of a centrist today, but not because of popular (if erroneous) definitions that are misapplied to ideological terms. I try to be respectful of everyone's opinion — and, if you read the things I have written about her in the 2½ years since Palin was chosen to be on the Republicans' national ticket, I think you will agree that I have often come to Palin's defense when I felt she was the victim of — as she correctly calls it — a double standard in American politics.

I don't agree with most of the things Palin says, but I have defended her when I felt she was treated unfairly.

She doesn't make it easy, though. She rejected support she received from the National Organization for Women (NOW) in this skirmish with Maher, presumably because it is a liberal group.

Philosophically, you would think that Maher and Palin would be natural allies, wouldn't you? I mean, Maher is a libertarian, not a liberal. If you know anything about American politics, you should know that the only things those two words really have in common are their first five letters — although there are such things as left libertarians and right libertarians.

The latter are usually considered the best–known form of libertarians, but the things all libertarians seem to have in common are their desires to see the influence of the government diminished and the freedom of the individual increased.

Libertarians tend to reject the labels of left or right, though. I guess if you press a libertarian for more details, he/she will say his/her label probably should be independent. Maher did openly support Barack Obama in 2008, which may be the real reason for his feud with Palin, but he also has not hesitated to criticize Obama since he took office.

As I say, liberal and libertarian sound similar so maybe that is what tugs at Palin's chain (although the apparently sexist slur that Maher used against Palin certainly deserves some credit).

Maybe she just doesn't know the difference between the two.

I guess that wouldn't surprise me.

After all, when you read the dictionary, you really have no choice but to conclude that rogue really doesn't mean what Palin seems to think it means — any more than liberal means what she apparently thinks it means.

Read More