26 februar 2012 skød og dræbte George Zimmerman den kun 17 årige Trayvon Martin. Sagen eksploderede i medierne da det lignede fortællingen om en sort teenager, der blev offer for en blanding af hvid racisme og en liberal våbenlov. Sorte borgerretsgrupper mobiliserede medierne i et hysteri, der kulminerede med at selveste præsidenten for USA fældede dom over Zimmerman og sagde dels at hvis han havde haft en søn kunne han have lidt samme skæbne som Martin og dels at han selv som ung kunne have lidt samme skæbne som Martin. Under det gevaldige nationale pres som også var noget en antiamerikansk omverden kunne bruge, rejste anklageren i Florida en straffesag mod Zimmerman. Der var dog et problem, der var ingen sag.

Zimmerman var egentlig ikke sådan helt hvid, men hispanic med jødisk islæt, og Trayvon var ikke en lille 12 årig dreng selv om det var det billede, medierne brugte igen og igen og igen, men en stor gnøf, der gik til kampsport, forestod indbrud, havde ‘disciplinære problemer’ i skolen og tweetede stærkt voldelige og racistiske drømme med sine hip-hop venner. Zimmermann var heller ikke en selvbestaltet vagtmand, som medierne beskrev, men en ansvarlig borger der var en del af et naboværn i det raceblandede kvarter han boede i, som samarbejdede tæt med politiet. Zimmerman havde reageret på, hvad han så som mistænkelig opførsel af Martin, var blevet overfaldet og havde skudt Martin i selvforsvar. Nøjagtig, hvad der var politiets konklusion fra starten. Men processen blev gennemført og Zimmerman tog mere end 50 kg på i vægt. 13 juli 2013 blev George Zimmerman frikendt for anklagerne imod ham - alle anklager.

Bob Owens skrev for Pajamas Media

Claim 1: George Zimmerman profiled Trayvon Martin

Both the prosecution and supporters of their case suggest that George Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon Martin — that Zimmerman singled out Martin because of his race. There is potentially some merit to this theory, as many of the calls made by George Zimmerman to the Sanford Police Department did indeed end up involving young black males that matched Trayvon Martin’s general description, as noted by one of Zimmerman’s neighbors:

“Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. I’m black, OK?” the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. “There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood,” she said. “That’s why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin.”

However, the phone call George Zimmerman placed to the Sanford Police Department’s non-emergency number (NEN) suggests that Zimmerman did not know the race of the person he was calling about as the call was made, and indeed suggests that he was merely calling about suspicious behavior:

We’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood and there’s a real suspicious guy. It’s Retreat View Circle. The best address I can give you is 111 Retreat View Circle.

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.

This is called behavioral profiling, offender profiling, criminal personality profiling, or other similar terms. This tactic is used extensively by law enforcement to make an educated guess about an individual based upon their behavior.

Only when prompted by the dispatcher did Zimmerman claim of Martin:

He looks black.

Zimmerman later stated that he was only able to confirm Trayvon Martin’s race when Martin approached Zimmerman’s vehicle with his hand in his waistband.

The available evidence suggests that behavioral profiling, not racial profiling, led to Zimmerman calling police.

Claim 2: Language used in the non-emergency number (NEN) call suggests malice aforethought

The prosecution began their opening statement with prosecutor John Guy angrily repeating one phrase from Zimmerman’s NEN call:

F***ing punks, these ass****s always get away.

Brought up later in the trial, the prosecution inflected anger in the statement on multiple occasions. The state claims that the statement showed George Zimmerman was angry and bore “ill will” or “malice aforethought” towards Trayvon Martin. Indeed, the requirement for a second degree murder charge hinges on whether George Zimmerman had this mindset.

Listening to Zimmerman make that statement in the context of his call, in his own voice, reveals that Zimmerman’s inflection suggests a man frustrated by the string of burglaries in his neighborhood. At no point during the duration of the NEN call does Zimmerman’s voice rise to the level of what most would consider anger. The prosecution makes a subjective argument here in asserting this proves “ill will”or “malice aforethought.”

As this is the contention on which a second degree murder conviction hangs, the state has little to no case.

Zimmemans skader i hovedet, som Martins håndskade stemte overens med hans forklaring om overfaldet , der førte til at han trak sin pistol og skød og dræbte Martin. Zimmerman stalkede ikke Treyvon Martin, med sin pistol allerede trukket, pistolen var ikke allerede afsikret og havde en patron i kammeret. Anklageren appellerede grundlæggende til juryens fordomme om Zimmemans påståede fordomme.

…the state couldn’t get away with not trying for murder; this case is supposed to illustrate a Larger Truth about white (or “white Hispanic”) racism, and something as malignant as that requires a murder charge. If the jury acquits, as it almost certainly will, at least the state’s covered its own ass on the left by saying, “Hey, we tried.”

Pajamas Media’s Bryan Preston beskyldte medierne for mere end blot at prøve, de pustede til ilden

According to the documents JW received, a little-known DOJ unit called the Community Relations Service deployed to Sanford, FL, to organize and manage rallies against Zimmerman.

Among JW’s findings:

• March 25 – 27, 2012, CRS spent $674.14 upon being “deployed to Sanford, FL to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.”
• March 25 – 28, 2012, CRS spent $1,142.84 “in Sanford, FL to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.”
• March 30 – April 1, 2012, CRS spent $892.55 in Sanford, FL “to provide support for protest deployment in Florida.”
• March 30 – April 1, 2012, CRS spent an additional $751.60 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance to the City of Sanford, event organizers, and law enforcement agencies for the march and rally on March 31.”
• April 3 – 12, 2012, CRS spent $1,307.40 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance, conciliation, and onsite mediation during demonstrations planned in Sanford.”
• April 11-12, 2012, CRS spent $552.35 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and rallies related to the fatal shooting of a 17 year old African American male.” – expenses for employees to travel, eat, sleep?

JW says the documents it obtained reveal that CRS is not engaging in its stated mission of conducting “impartial mediation practices and conflict resolution,” but instead engaged on the side of the anti-Zimmerman protesters.

On April 15, 2012, during the height of the protests, the Orlando Sentinel reported, “They [the CRS] helped set up a meeting between the local NAACP and elected officials that led to the temporary resignation of police Chief Bill Lee according to Turner Clayton, Seminole County chapter president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.” The paper quoted the Rev. Valarie Houston, pastor of Allen Chapel AME Church, a focal point for protestors, as saying “They were there for us,” after a March 20 meeting with CRS agents.

Separately, in response to a Florida Sunshine Law request to the City of Sanford, Judicial Watch also obtained an audio recording of a “community meeting” held at Second Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Sanford on April 19, 2012. The meeting, which led to the ouster of Sanford’s Police Chief Bill Lee, was scheduled after a group of college students calling themselves the “Dream Defenders” barricaded the entrance to the police department demanding Lee be fired. According to the Orlando Sentinel, DOJ employees with the CRS had arranged a 40-mile police escort for the students from Daytona Beach to Sanford.

“These documents detail the extraordinary intervention by the Justice Department in the pressure campaign leading to the prosecution of George Zimmerman,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “My guess is that most Americans would rightly object to taxpayers paying government employees to help organize racially-charged demonstrations.”

Organizing such protests falls well within both President Barack Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s wheelhouses. Obama was a “community organizer” in his career prior to elective politics, a position that uses protests and street theater, along with threats, to obtain concessions from businesses and other political opponents.

Og Mark Steyn skrev i The National

The defining characteristic of English law is its distribution of power between prosecutor, judge, and jury. This delicate balance has been utterly corrupted in the United States to the point where today at the federal level there is a conviction rate of over 90 percent — which would impress Mubarak and the House of Saud, if not quite, yet, Kim Jong Un. American prosecutors have an unhealthy and disreputable addiction to what I called, at the conclusion of the trial of my old boss Conrad Black six years ago, “countless counts.” In Conrad’s case, he was charged originally with 17 crimes, three of which were dropped by the opening of the trial and another halfway through, leaving 13 for the jury, nine of which they found the defendant not guilty of, bringing it down to four, one of which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional and the remaining three of which they vacated, only to have two of them reinstated by the lower appeals court. In other words, the prosecution lost 88 percent of the case, but the 12 percent they won was enough to destroy Conrad Black’s life.

Multiple charges tend, through sheer weight of numbers, to favor a result in which the jury convict on some and acquit on others and then tell themselves that they’ve reached a “moderate” “compromise” as befits the reasonable persons they assuredly are. It is, of course, not reasonable. Indeed, the notion of a “compromise” between conviction and acquittal is a dagger at the heart of justice. It’s the repugnant “plea bargain” in reverse, but this time to bargain with the jury: Okay, we threw the book at him and it went nowhere, so why don’t we all agree to settle? In Sanford, the state’s second closing “argument” to the strange, shrunken semi-jury of strikingly unrepresentative peers — facts, shmacts, who really knows? vote with your hearts — brilliantly dispenses with the need for a “case” at all.

Zimmerman er siden blevet arresteret flere gange for vold og trusler mod dele af sin egen familie, mod de mennesker, som han tidligere søgte at beskytte.