Archive for ‘trials’

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July 22, 2013

Pause & Consider: Race, Jurors, and Perspective

by: The Civil Writer

One of the things I have found most interesting about the Zimmerman trial, that I haven’t had an opportunity to fully explore in conversation is how the issue of identity politics played into the jury and jury selection.

The prosecution banked on the fact that the identity of mothers on the jury would prevail over all else and carry the sympathy factor. While it is less clear which factor the defense felt would trump (race, or gun ownership, for example), they clearly weren’t as concerned about the fact that there would be mothers on the jury–or, they gambled that the mother-piece could be just as advantageous to their client if they could show Zimmerman to have acted out of fear for his life. Whatever the point(s) they used, the defense made a better calculation in this vein.

The mysterious Juror B37

I do not think the prosecution gave the proper amount of credence to race in terms of identity politics. There may have been an underestimating of whether white jurors might feel some commonality with Zimmerman because of his race or be susceptible to buying into the aggressive demonization of Trayvon Martin by the defense. Part of how this can so easily occur is for folks who do not regularly deal with race as part of their every day existence, the blinders that they have on cannot easily be lifted.

They missed this because they would not be called to think about this, normally, in any complex, critical or multi-faceted manner. (SN: How you allow a juror to sit when she refers to a victim as a “boy of color” escapes me but, I digress.). It isn’t as simple as making a determination about whether someone is a racist–the racial element of this trial was much more complicated than that. It extends to being able to understand and rank how important race is when you are discussing identity politics and how they would impact this particular situation.

Suffice to say, when it is a matter of life and death, freedom v. jail, innocence v. guilt, race might not trump all…but, it’s pretty damn high.

‪#‎staytuned‬

Posted in civil rights, civil writer, jurors, law, pause and consider, race, racists, trials, zimmerman | Leave a Comment »

July 22, 2013

Trial Attorney Charles F. Coleman Jr. Gives Reasons for Zimmerman Accquittal

So the civil writer himself was featured in Rolling Out after trying to provide a plain speak explanation to the Zimmerman verdict.* The original article can be found here but is also cut and pasted below. Big shout to @M320_consulting for the placement although something must be done to permanently remove the “husky” photos off the internet!

Trial attorney Charles F. Coleman Jr. gives reasons for George Zimmerman acquittal

10:00 AM EDT
7/16/2013 by Terry Shropshire

charles coleman2

As a seasoned trial attorney, Charles Coleman Jr. was not surprised by the not guilty verdict following the George Zimmerman trial even though he shared in many citizens’ disappointment.
“The verdict is consistent with (Florida) law, but it’s not consistent with justice,” Coleman said. “And that’s the difficult thing for people to reconcile. That’s a very hard pill to swallow.”
So hard in fact that demonstrations and protests have broken out in major cities across the country in the aftermath of Zimmerman’s acquittal of second-degree murder in the killing Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla.
A veteran practitioner of juris prudence, Coleman spent five years as an assistant district attorney in New York City before becoming a federal trial attorney in the civil rights arena, specializing in equal employment opportunity law. Coleman’s cases have been featured on the Huffington Post, MSNBC.com, Law360.com and the National Law Journal.
Cultural morays, Coleman attests, as well as other important factors played into the way the law was administered in this case.
In Florida, unlike in his home state of New York, “it’s very much acceptable to shoot first and ask your questions later. That’s the culture. That’s why it’s not surprising that three of the jurors were gun holders. That’s what the culture is,” Coleman said. “It’s not necessarily foreign to them. I think that the law, combined with the culture, combined with a couple of other things such as race and a poor case put on by the prosecution, led to what the eventual outcome was.”
Unlike many ordinary laymen and women, who think that the state botched key witnesses — most notably Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel — Coleman believes a much bigger prosecutorial error helped decide the outcome.
“Rachel Jeantel did fine. I think the bigger miscue [is] the prosecution let the narrative get away from them and they did not do a good job of controlling the narrative. The defense was able to take ahold of the narrative and they never gave it back and the prosecution never went and reclaimed it.
“[The state] tried to reclaim the narrative during the summation, and I think they did a very good job on the summation and the rebuttal. But, by that time, it was too little too late,” Coleman continues. “They had allowed the entire course of the trial to be about too many little details that had detracted from the bottom line. And the bottom line was: you had a 17-year-old, who was unarmed, who had done nothing wrong, who was dead. That was undisputed. You had a person in that room that was the shooter. That was undisputed. George Zimmerman was the killer. That was undisputed. The verdict is that a young man is dead and no one is held responsible for it. They lost the case when they lost the narrative. They didn’t sell it right. They didn’t make that clear. They had that part of their strategy but they assumed that’s what the jury would surmise that.”
Coleman believes it is “highly unlikely” that the U.S. Department of Justice will bring forth any other charges against Zimmerman. The NAACP and other groups pressed Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the former neighborhood watchman.
“Some see Trayvon Martin as the modern-day Emmett Till, and that may be true. But the federal anti-hate crime statutes as they are written do not fit the facts in the Zimmerman case,” Coleman said.
Coleman added that the FBI, a bureau within the Department of Justice, had already interviewed Zimmerman and 30 people last year to determine if Zimmerman was guilty of a hate crime in following, confronting and shooting Martin. The answer was “no.”
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*originally published on 7/16 at rollingOut.com

Posted in analysis, attorney, Charles Coleman Jr., civil rights, justice, law, trayvon, trials, verdict, zimmerman | Leave a Comment »

July 22, 2013

JUSTICE FOR TRAYVON: What Went Wrong?

JUSTICE FOR TRAYVON: What went wrong? 
An brief analysis of the trial of George Zimmerman from the perspective of a former Brooklyn, NY prosecutor.

by: Charles F. Coleman Jr.*

I never met Trayvon Martin. I never had an opportunity to see him smile or hear him laugh. I became familiar with his wonderful mother, a woman of incredible strength, through the most unfortunate of circumstances. Still, I never had the chance to actually meet Trayvon himself.

When I heard the verdict on Saturday, like many, I was confused and disappointed. The duality of being a black man who is also former prosecutor  was too much to bear and too difficult to reconcile in that moment. After stepping back and looking at the trial objectively, and the case in its entirety, I have to concede that the verdict–while unjust–is consistent with the law.

The first thing that must be understood is the difficult nature of the prosecution’s case. There are only two people who were present on that February night in 2012. Just two eye witnesses who actually know what happened. One is dead. The other is protected by his Constitutional right against self-incrimination. That means it was up to the State of Florida to tell Trayvon’s story. They were without the benefit of Trayvon himself, but were further handicapped by not having anyone else who would be able to deliver a first hand account of that night’s fateful events.
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From as early as the indictment, months before the actual trial, the prosecution struggled to stay in front of a case that was spiraling out of control on a rapidly growing stage. The inaction by Sanford police regarding Mr. ZImmerman’s arrest drew Trayvon’s death further into the national spotlight before the State’s attorneys office had concluded its investigation. The court of opinion was at the wheel, steering the ship and, in the process, giving the defense team extra time and useful insight to develop a strategy that ultimately proved effective. When the prosecution did file its indictment shortly after Mr. Zimmerman’s arrest, the indictment seemed rushed in the charges the State brought against him. In hindsight, it is even more obvious that the prosecution had not thought critically about its theory of the case. One reason for a hasty indictment may have been the state’s need to create the appearance of swift justice after such a long delay before Mr. Zimmerman’s arrest. The pressure had swelled as the case became more a part of a national dialogue and our consciousnesses all began shining a collective spotlight on small Sanford, Florida. Even President Obama lent comment on the situation.

What George Zimmerman Can Do Now
George Zimmerman following the not guilty verdict at his trial in Sanford, FL. Zimmerman was accused of murdering 17-yr old Trayvon Martin.

The result of all of this was that the prosecution lost control of the narrative of the case and never got it back. Rather than aggressively hammering home the bottom line and seeking a fair and just verdict which was consistent with common sense, the State was baited into a game of debate on marginally important details. This played directly into the defense’s strategy, and allowed too much room for reasonable doubt. The State spent its case in chief on its heels, spending as much time laying the foundation for its own case as they did trying to anticipate and counter the arguments they expected the defense to make. Meanwhile, the defense knew that the prosecution’s distraction with smaller issues was enough to give their client a fighting chance. Therefore, they goaded the State into following them deeper down that trail. The prosecution then happily obliged, and got further away from the bottom line which mattered most.


This perpetual game of “catch up” played within the context of the defense team’s narrative was a fatal flaw because the State had allowed everyone from Trayvon Martn to Rachel Jeantal to be placed on trial. Everyone except for Mr. Zimmmerman. By the time the defense had competed its case, and before closing statements, a trial which was once about a young black man’s right not to be profiled, targeted, and murdered for doing absolutely nothing, had suddenly morphed into seemingly endless small details with no one to really explain why they were so important in the context of the big picture. While the prosecution delivered an outstanding summation and rebuttal that attempted to bring back the narrative, it was simply too far gone by that time. Too little too late.

Despite the fact that the verdict in this case may be consistent with the law, the outcome hardly seems consistent with justice. A young, innocent, unarmed black boy was killed. And this verdict says that it’s no ones’s fault.

I never met Trayvon Martin. And, because of George Zimmerman, I never will.

*originally published on EBONY.com, July 15, 2013

Charles F. Coleman Jr. is a former Brooklyn, NY prosecutor and current federal trial attorney specializing in civil rights.

He can be reached at civilwriter@gmail.com and on Twitter @CFColemanJr.

Posted in civil rights, crump, florida, justice, self-defense, stand your ground, trayvon, trials, zimmerman | Leave a Comment »

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