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Reply to Jonathan Wallace About Zimmerman & Martin

by Bruce A. Clark

I find lots of bones to pick in Jonathan Wallace’s Rags and Bones article last month. Some of them are factual, some legal and some philosophical, all mixed up together.

Acceptable Basic Premises

Mr. Wallace thinks it’s unacceptable for “George Zimmerman [to] patrol his own neighborhood with a loaded weapon.” This is a confusion and conflation of several assumptions and judgments, and the only way to understand it is to break it down.

• Zimmerman, like many other people, jumped through all of the legal hoops and obtained a permit to carry a concealed weapon. People do that to protect themselves in case someone tries to attack them. Getting a permit would be a waste of time if one does not make use of it and carry a firearm concealed on one’s person. While I cannot claim to read Zimmerman’s inner thought, he is probably like most other folks with carry permits. Carrying the weapon was a totally separate act from anything else Zimmerman did that evening. He was only engaging in his standard practice of carrying his pistol when he left home. It was part of his personal safety, even part of his apparel, like a necktie, not part of his neighborhood watch.
• Attributing anything sinister to the act of Zimmerman carrying his pistol would show a serious prejudice on the part of Mr. Wallace. He would be attributing thoughts or characteristics to Zimmerman that have no factual basis since, as far as I am aware, Mr. Wallace is not telepathic.
• Mr. Zimmerman was not patrolling his neighborhood that evening. He was simply driving by and accurately noticed a person who, with Zimmerman’s years of seeing the people who live in his complex, was not a resident. After a rash of recent burglaries, it was perfectly reasonable for any resident to want to find out who this person was. There is nothing threatening in that, and it is the right of any member of a private community, or even a public one.
• Mr. Wallace seems to have difficulty with the fact that George Zimmerman ever patrols the gated complex whether as a part of a neighborhood watch or as a resident. If that attitude is based upon the fact that Zimmerman took the precaution of legally carrying a pistol wherever it was legal to do so, we are getting into an area of real silliness.
  • There is nothing illegal about carrying in one’s own private community, especially when one is in transit to or from the big world outside.
  • There is nothing illegal about carrying while acting in one’s neighborhood watch duties. While police recommend, for their own reasons, that people not be armed doing neighborhood watch duties, there is no requirement of that. Even if there were, it would be meaningless. Zimmerman is first a citizen, second a resident and third a neighborhood watch person. The first two would trump any such requirement, if it existed.
  • Mr. Wallace seems to feel that people shouldn’t patrol their own communities for dangerous persons unless they are incapable of resisting any harm they could suffer if such a dangerous person chose to make an attack. Seriously? Is he kidding?
• The 911 dispatcher did not instruct Zimmerman to stay in his vehicle. As anyone who listened to the recording of the call would know, the dispatcher asked him if he was following Martin. When Zimmerman said yes, the dispatcher said “We don’t need you to do that.” Then Zimmerman quickly responded “Ok.” After a few seconds, one can hear in the recording that Zimmerman’s heavy breathing stopped and the sound of the wind in the phone microphone ceased, as if Zimmerman actually did stop following. The conversation with the dispatcher continued quietly afterward.
• The fact that there was a “shooting to death of a young, unarmed neighbor” was certainly acceptable, however unfortunate, if that person, who was six inches taller than Zimmerman and an active, athletic football player, attacked Zimmerman and caused the injuries we have seen in photos and heard about in medical reports. We don’t yet know certain facts about who was where and moving in what direction. If Martin’s attack on Zimmerman occurred while Zimmerman was returning to his vehicle, as he has stated, then there is absolutely no possible justification for it, and it would clearly be a self-defense situation for Zimmerman.
• Zimmerman did not “deputize” himself do do anything. He noticed a stranger in his community while driving through it, after a string of burglaries, and wanted to know who the person was. He took on an admirable amount of community responsibility. If Mr. Wallace feels otherwise, then I think I can reasonably assume that he approves of the people who listened to the murder of Kitty Genovese in New York City in 1964, and did nothing whatever about it.

The “Illogic of the Situation”

Actually, we have here the illogic of the example given by Mr. Wallace. The “stand your ground” law is not one that protects “the one who is better armed or a better shot.” It protects the one who is the victim of an attack and whose actions fall within the legal definition of self-defense. That is the purpose of the mini-hearing that will take place before Zimmerman actually goes to trial. Even in Mr. Wallace’s ludicrous example, such a mini-hearing would examine the evidence to see who was actually the attacker and who was actually practicing self defense, regardless of how each was armed.

Playing the Race Card

Here we have a perfect example of what I have called “The New Bigotry”, that is, “the assumption of prejudice in others.” Mr. Wallace clearly practices this when he says “the shooting of Trayvon Martin was unlikely to happen in the absence of a racism so innate that some commentators, such as Bruce and Ethics Alarms, claim not to be able to see it.” This new prejudice is something that has developed in this country in the 1960s and continued since. It is part of what is commonly called “political correctness.” It assumes that everyone not a member of a minority group is prejudiced against that minority group. In this case, George Zimmerman is presumed to be prejudiced against African-Americans because he is half Peruvian and half Anglo. Never mind that he might be part African-American himself, never mind that he has shown in the past an attitude that is very friendly to Blacks.

Added to that, Zimmerman himself was not even sure, as evidenced by his 911 call, that Martin was Black. He is condemned to be fundamentally guilty of practicing racism or racial profiling only because he is not himself Black. Unfortunately, those who claim themselves to be liberal or progressive are the worst practitioners of this type of bigotry. Even more unfortunately, it is often brought to the fore whenever such a liberal or progressive is confronted with an argument that he or she cannot defeat in a rational manner. If all else fails, call the other person a racist. In this environment, it is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

While Mr. Wallace is certainly correct in assuming that racism still exists in the United States, it is nothing but plain old garden-variety bigotry to characterize any particular person as a racist without strong and personal evidence to that effect. This evidence Wallace does not have. It is especially surprising to find him practicing such an infernal method given his extraordinary sensitivity to the prejudices that have taken place in the past and in the present against certain groups in the world. There is no doubt about his condemnation of the holocaust. There is also no doubt about his criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. He is definitely (ostensibly) on the side that fights against prejudice in this country. Why, then, does he stoop to the level of assuming that some person has racist motives when he has no such particular evidence. I’m sure I don’t know.

Zimmerman’s Account to the 911 Operator of Trayvon’s Behavior

George Zimmerman stated his opinion about the behavior of Trayvon Martin as Mr. Wallace described. Like Wallace, I too might be walking around in the rain in the same manner. However, Zimmerman correctly noticed that Martin was not a resident and also has a right to his opinion as to how he felt Martin was acting. That does not change the fact that Zimmerman’s only stated motive was to ask Martin “Who are you? How do you fit in here?” There is nothing in the world wrong with that! If Martin responded to such a question “My dad’s girlfriend lives in number XXX and we are visiting,” Zimmerman’s response, if he is anything like me, would have been: “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. Have a nice evening.”

I’ve been in the same situation myself when I have seen strangers to the neighborhood being on properties where no one lived, or something similar. I always asked politely and non-confrontationally. Is there evidence that George Zimmerman would have done anything different? Not that we have seen. There is no reason on earth why Martin should have responded with his fists, perhaps even before Zimmerman got to ask the question. (That part of the evidence is not clear yet.) This, of course, also raises the race question, with the same justification as when Mr. Wallace raised it: Did Trayvon Martin attack Zimmerman because the latter was white or Latino? Was Martin the racist in that situation?? He didn’t know Zimmerman was armed. Did Martin do that because they were alone, in the dark, he being six inches taller and athletic, and thought he could get away with it? It is just as legitimate a topic for speculation.

Were the Police “Doing Their Job”?

Mr. Wallace assumes that since the local police did not immediately arrest Zimmerman, they were not. Therefore, a rush to judgment is ok. I beg to differ. The Florida “stand your ground” statute reads, in part

(1) A person who uses force as permitted … is justified in using such force and is immune from criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of such force … As used in this subsection, the term “criminal prosecution” includes arresting, detaining in custody, and charging or prosecuting the defendant.

(2) A law enforcement agency may use standard procedures for investigating the use of force … but the agency may not arrest the person for using force unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force that was used was unlawful.

As is obvious from the text, if the police thought that Zimmerman acted in self defense, they were legally prohibited from arresting Zimmerman. Therefore, they were very much doing their jobs by assessing what they could see of the evidence and following the dictates of the “stand your ground” law. The police chief determined, from the best he could see, that it was a case of self defense and released Zimmerman without charge after much questioning. Contrary to Mr. Wallace’s view, there was very much “visible law enforcement interest in George Zimmerman” — the police were visibly enforcing the “stand your ground” law and continuing to investigate. Moreover, since in this country a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty, there was never any reasonable excuse to rush to judgment and presume that Zimmerman was a racist and a murderer and call for his head. This case was nothing whatever like that of Amadou Diallo and the reasonable course was to wait for the evidence and see if the initial assessment by the police was correct.

I’m not an attorney, but it looks to me that if Zimmerman is found to have acted in self defense, he will have the grounds for a major lawsuit against the prosecution for arresting and prosecuting him.

(3) The court shall award reasonable attorney’s fees, court costs, compensation for loss of income, and all expenses incurred by the defendant in defense of any civil action brought by a plaintiff if the court finds that the defendant is immune from prosecution as provided in subsection (1).

Another Non-Fact

In the very numerous articles I have read about this case, I also have seen slanders of Trayvon Martin, some of them downright racist. They disgust me equally as much as they do Mr. Wallace. Unlike him, however, I am equally offended at the slanders aimed at George Zimmerman. Unfortunately, even when showing legitimate outrage, Mr. Wallace needs to be careful about his facts. (This has been a persistent problem throughout his contributions to the Martin/Zimmerman situation.) Wallace stated “others will actively slander Trayvon Martin, imply he had no right to be there (in his own neighborhood) …”. In fact, it was not Martin’s own neighborhood. He lived a few hundred miles away in or near Miami. Martin was in Sanford after being brought by his father to visit the father’s girlfriend, while Martin was suspended from school. That’s not saying that he didn’t belong there; he was an invited guest. But the fact that Martin was a guest and not a resident probably explains why Zimmerman recognized that he was a stranger to the neighborhood and wanted to discover who he was. There is no evidence supporting the fact that in so doing, Zimmerman was “looking for confrontation.”

In Summary

Unfortunately there are lots of people in this country who tend to color the character and actions of people involved in such incidents based only on the fact that they don’t like the way it turned out, the real facts of the situation be damned. (Sherlock Holmes would be outraged!) They look for the worst in people they disagree with and the best in people they agree with. That seems to be the problem with so many folks involved in the rush to judgment against George Zimmerman, Jonathan Wallace included. Since an unarmed kid got killed, people are not interested in hearing that the shooter might have no motive at all to kill someone except in his own protection. They assume that

• since he was (legally) carrying a weapon, Zimmerman must have wanted a confrontation and an excuse to fire it;
• since the kid was unarmed, he was innocent, despite the evidence that he attacked Zimmerman;
• Zimmerman provoked violence by trying to find out who the stranger in the neighborhood was;
• since Martin was Black and Zimmerman was not, racism must be involved (although one wonders, if the races were reversed, if they would assume that racism was involved — probably not, in my opinion, because that would not be politically correct);
• Zimmerman disobeyed an order from a 911 dispatcher not to follow Martin, when she was only stating a preference, and Zimmerman said “Ok” and sounds from the recording indicate that he did stop;
• the “stand your ground” law must be a bad thing since poor little Trayvon Martin got killed.

Of course, the mainstream media is also to blame for fanning the flames. It used old photos that showed Martin to be a little kid and not the tall, strong, athletic person he had grown to become. The Zimmerman photo used showed him as a heavyset man who obviously could have prevailed in a physical confrontation with Martin, implying that Zimmerman should never have drawn his weapon. Furthermore, said media has a decades-long bias against guns and the Second Amendment, and never uses a fact when a lie will do.

What all of this says to me is that the rush to judgment against Zimmerman was not just people getting a little carried away. It was motivated by an enormous amount of prejudice: prejudice against guns and people who legally own or use them, and prejudice in favor of Blacks (i.e., the assumption that the African American must be the victim of racism) in any situation in which more than one race is involved. It’s a sad state of affairs.

I, like everyone else, am waiting with bated breath to find out how this situation will turn out. While there still can be some surprises here, the evidence that keeps trickling out to the public makes it look more and more like there are going to be two people who were right all along: George Zimmerman and the Sanford, Florida, police chief, who declined to press charges because he recognized a self-defense situation when he saw one.