Florida and Its 'License to Kill'

The Kel-Tec 9mm pistol with which George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012 in Sanford, Florida will be returned to him. This is one of the outcomes of the acquittal of the self-proclaimed vigilante on Saturday, July 13. He needs his weapon “even more” than before, justified his attorney, Mark O’Mara: “There are a lot of people … who hate him.”

A pistol bought and carried freely, a deadly gunshot against a young black man, an enclosed housing estate in a small town in the South, “legitimate defense” in favor of the white murderer … If the Trayvon Martin affair has gripped the United States, it is because it combines, to the point of caricature, all of the elements of an American tragedy.

But this is no longer the country of Emmett Till, the black teenager killed in 1955 in Mississippi because he had become overly familiar with a female grocer and whose murderers were acquitted. In Barack Obama’s America, racism no longer necessarily expresses itself in such a direct manner.

When George Zimmerman called the police to report a young “suspect” while patrolling in his car, he did not immediately allude to the color of his skin. Another one of these “thugs,” he muttered. The boy was returning home from his father’s house, carrying only a can of Arizona iced tea and a bag of Skittles. It was raining and he had pulled down the hood of his sweatshirt: the uniform of young delinquents, in the eyes of Zimmerman, who had made the hunting of burglars his specialty.

The Weight of Prejudice

Why is a black boy who is walking calmly and wearing a hoodie perceived to be a thief? The trial should have asked this question. The weight of prejudice is such that every parent of a black boy teaches him at a very young age to keep a low profile in this kind of situation.

If these questions were avoided during the three weeks of the hearing, it is probably for reasons of judicial strategy — obvious for the defense, more ambiguous for the prosecution, represented by the state of Florida.

But above all, it is because the Stand Your Ground law, voted into law in 2005 in this state and influenced by the National Rifle Association, has imposed its outrageous rhetoric. The bill exempts from legal proceedings anybody who may have protected his right to be wherever he is (even on the street), including by killing, and even if the person concerned had the possibility of escaping (the advice given to George Zimmerman by the police on the phone).

In the minutes following the death of Trayvon Martin, the law set the acquittal machinery in motion. Despite having admitted to the killing, George Zimmerman was immediately set free by the police in accordance with this legislation.

Certain of having wrapped up the affair, they barely searched for witnesses or clues and hardly questioned the murderer. Only the rumor of racial injustice, which was soon transformed into a national swell of public opinion, led to the opening of legal proceedings six weeks later.

In April 2012, in order to calm down overheated public opinion, Angela Corey, the state prosecutor, qualified the act as “murder,” which in the United States implies proving that death has been caused by “evil, hatred or rancor.” This was something she didn’t succeed in doing during the hearing because of the shortcomings of the initial inquiry, the mediocrity of the prosecution witnesses, but most of all because of the Stand Your Ground mechanism.

Proving the Existence of a Threat

The law raises the assumption of legitimate defense in favor of the accused. Whereas in France it falls upon the defense to prove the existence of a threat, in Sanford the prosecution had to supply proof that Trayvon Martin himself was not threatening.

In the absence of eyewitnesses, discussions have focused on the account of the only survivor: The young high school student had assaulted him, pinned him to the ground and then banged his head against the tarmac, insisted Mr. Zimmerman’s defense, supported by photos of the injuries. As for the reasons why Mr. Zimmerman, who was the only one armed, allowed himself to follow the boy like his prey — these have hardly been debated.

The prosecution failed to convince the jury that the high school student might also have felt threatened. As if George Zimmerman had the right to legitimate defense, but not Trayvon Martin.

The Stand Your Ground law has been applied 200 times in the eight years it has existed in Florida, according to the Tampa Bay Times; the corollary of this is a tripling in the number of gun licenses and a series of ridiculous acquittals. Moreover, the suspicion exists that George Zimmerman, who had a legal background, acted in full awareness of his impunity.

As much as an expression of latent racism, his acquittal illustrates the scandal of this law, whose author has been pointed out by American civil rights activists: the American Legislative Exchange Council, a lobby sponsored by major industrial groups, which drafts and then provides elected state representatives with turnkey ultra-security legislation.

Tainted by these revelations, certain companies such as General Motors, Amazon and Coca-Cola withdrew their involvement in ALEC following the murder of Trayvon Martin. But the legislation is in vogue: around 20 states have adopted it, thus legalizing a kind of “license to kill.”