If a particular group of people are commuting more of the crimes within a society why is it unreasonable to think that a member of that group may be "up to no good"?

I found this to be both a poor and one-eyed account of the case. For a more complete and balanced account see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Florida_vs._George_Zimmerman. Much of the criticism of the jury's findings by partisan US critics of the case is speculative, reverse racism, highly inflammatory, and disgraceful.

I don't disagree that there are many unanswered questions on this case but that was inevitable because there were no useful eye witness accounts. The key matter is whether there was reasonable doubt about Zimmerman's guilt. There clearly was, as well as a strong case for self defence. The matter of Zimmerman being much bigger than Martin largely reflected that Zimmerman is obese and unfit.

Police officer Serino testified that Zimmerman said Martin came out and punched him and told him he was going to kill him.
Serino testified that he felt Zimmerman exaggerated the number of times he was hit that night but said he didn't feel any "active deception" on Zimmerman's part.

Zimmerman also said at interview that he was walking back to his car when Martin jumped out from the bushes. Zimmerman said that Martin then punched him and was banging his head into the concrete. Officer Smith testified that when he saw Zimmerman after the shooting, his backside was wet and had grass blades on it. He also saw several injuries on Zimmerman, which included contusions, lacerations, and a bloody nose.

Dr. Vincent Di Maio, a forensic pathologist and gunshot wound expert, testified that Martin's gunshot wound was consistent with Zimmerman's story that Martin was on top of him and leaning over him when he was shot.

What a disgusting bit of tripe for a law professor to commit to paper, or the net.

It was previously inconceivable that anyone so biased that they are prepared to misrepresent a case so badly could ever get a teaching position anywhere.

Thanks to the politically correct movement, & equal opportunity rubbish it now appears possible. This must be what trendies are talking about when they propose alternative truth.

Iain

There is one minority in Australia that is three times more likely than the rest of the population to commit a crime. They are responsible for 85% of murders, 96% of sexual assaults, 84% of abductions, 86% of robberies and 80% of illicit drug offences.

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/subscriber.nsf/log?openagent&45190do001_201011.xls&4519.0&DataCubes&749ABC344B5BA7AACA25799E000DE84E&0&2010–11&09.02.2012&Latest

You guessed it, it’s the men. If we locked you all up, the rest of us would be a lot safer, I reckon.

Certainly, if I find a man on my property I’d be perfectly justified in shooting him. Being male, it’s reasonable to assume he’s up to no good.

...James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) may be dead, but the Mafia dictum essential to a just outcome to "eliminate the witness", still lives on in the good o’l US of A.

Rhian:

...I got a laugh outa that one...!

Cherry picking evidence..... Disgraceful! Whatever is laid before the court, someone like you, thousands of miles from the courtroom, will inevitably find 'racism' to be the simplistic, ever present answer to the barrow you push.

Wow, I'm almost speechless at the ignorance and unabashed bias of the author, here are some realistic comments from some men who actually know what they're talking about. As Tommy Sotomayor points out, it's truly open season on Black men in the U.S.A and the hunters are invariably other Black men, I'd add that if Trayvon was living in Afghanistan he'd be considered a man of fighting age and be a legitimate military target in the U.S rules of engagement, he was not a child and he wasn't "harmless".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF0d12WtIRs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix1Xr8QHpRw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-cTLUCIMpo

Pompete,
George Zimmerman was more or less correct in his profiling of Trayvon Martin, the only thing he got wrong was his age, because Trayvon was so tall (some say 6'3") and heavily built he mistook him for a man his own age. Does anyone seriously believe that Zimmerman, who had previously given his time to mentor Black children would have hunted down and "murdered" the little 11 year old boy shown by the media in place of the fully grown man with the moustache, gold teeth and the muscle shirt who lay dead at his feet that night?

Zimmerman stalked and confronted Travyon with a gun, not the other way round. Any struggle that ensued – even if started by Travyon – would almost certainly have been in response to Zimmerman’s initiated aggression. Yet the prosecuting attorney, Angela Corey, allowed the Stand Your Ground defence plea.

Contrast this with another Florida trial presided over by the same prosecuting attorney.

Marissa Alexander – a black woman with a masters degree – fired a warning shot at her estranged husband during a domestic argument. No one was hurt; she had a restraining order against him, which he had violated by being in the home; and he admitted in a statement to police that during the argument he threatened to kill her.

Corey rejected the Stand Your Ground plea on the basis that Alexander could have fled the scene. The charge was changed to Aggravated Assault with a Weapon, leaving the jury no choice but to convict her and the judge to apply the mandatory sentence of 20 years.

When you compare this mind-boggling miscarriage of justice with the leniency given to Zimmerman, there are two fundamental prejudices at work here:

1. White men are within their rights to stalk and threaten black men, but black men are not within their rights to defend themselves.

2. Husbands have a right to stalk and threaten their estranged wives, but wives are not within their rights to defend themselves

Killarney, sorry but you're a sucker.
George Zimmerman is not White,he has African and Amerindian ancestry on his mother's side, Zimmerman is the name he took from his Jewish stepfather, he's actually darker skinned than Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, the media have photoshopped his pictures to make him look lighter.This is what he really looks like:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/george-zimmerman-friends.jpg
That's George in the Black shirt with what looks to be his younger brother and some of his many Negro friends. This is his great grandfather:
http://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/p280x280/21340_683208758362771_146106029_n.jpg
Race was never the issue in this case, Zimmerman is one of the good guys, Trayvon was a bad guy, here's another broadcast from Stefan Molyneux and Peter Schiff which discusses the facts of the case in a sane manner:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfZ2PBLGFhc

Thanks Jay. Regardless of anything else the race card being played is absolutely fantastically ridiculous.

Zimmerman is just as much, maybe even more so, a member of an "oppressed minority" than the so-called "black" victim.

Just goes to illustrate how twisted, illogical and abused the whole concept of "Racism" has become

Killarney, Zimmerman did not invoke the "Stand your ground" law in his defence. He claimed simple self defence. However, he is not one of the good guys Jay, but a pathetic, inadequate misfit who killed someone in the course of indulging his vigilante/wannabe cop fantasies. The most perceptive comment to come out of the trial was Trayvon's description of him as a "creepy ass cracker." He should be held accountable for unlawful killing of some kind. If Florida law Condones his behaviour it is shameful and disgracefully unjust.

Killarney, Zimmerman did not invoke the "Stand your ground" law in his defence. He claimed simple self defence. The judge did instruct the jury he had no duty to retreat. However, he is not one of the good guys Jay, but a pathetic, inadequate misfit who killed someone in the course of indulging his vigilante/wannabe cop fantasies. The most perceptive comment to come out of the trial was Trayvon's description of him as a "creepy ass cracker." He should be held accountable for unlawful killing of some kind. If Florida law condones his behaviour it is shameful and disgracefully unjust.

Sean,
By all accounts George Zimmerman was a good, kind, civic minded person who would go out of his way to help others, not one person who'd had anything to do with him has described him as you do.
Sean this is the age of truth, when NBC doctored the 9-11 recordings to make Zimmerman sound "Racist", when the newspapers and wire services photoshopped his image to make his brown skin look White they should have known that within hours the deception would have been all over the internet.
The U.S media are full of gullible people like you and worse, people who manipulate stories to fit an agenda.
The very presence of Al Sharpton in the pro Trayvon milieu immediately set the tone for the subsequent hill of lies and ham fisted attempts to set Zimmerman up for a fall.
Al Sharpton is a crook, he's a race baiting fraud, if any White person behaved as abominably as he does they'd be in jail on civil rights charges:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1816884/posts

I am completely confused as to what is Marjorie Cohn's logic is in this article. She seems to be against racism, but then she approves of racism.

Marjorie seems to be implying that Zimmerman was a racist who killed a black man, and his acquittal by an all white jury proves that white people are racist. But if Marjorie is really implying that the white jury found Zimmeran innocent because he only shot a black, then that is a racist assumption against the white jury.

Marjorie further confounds her logic by pointing out that the judge ruled that any mention of "race" could not be used in the trial. Isn't that what every so called 'anti racist" would applaud? Apparently not Marjorie. Like so many "anti racists", race may not be mentioned when it does not benefit her worldview, and it may be mentioned when it does.

The victim who was shot was a racist himself who called Zimmerman 'a cracker". This equates with a white person calling a black "a neegger." But naturally, Marjorie ignores that. Minorities get a free pass from Marjorie on their own racism.

What probably happened, is that Zimmerman got fed up of the outright and blatant acts of criminal behaviour committed by blacks everywhere in the USA, and he did something about it. The white jury, who are the ones most affected by black racism and black criminal behaviour directed at them, found one of their protectors innocent to send a message to the black racists, that they could use the law to shoot back.

Jay of Melbourne. You are correct when noting that the NBC 'doctored' (cherry picked) the 9-11 recording of Zimmerman. No mention of colour was made by Zimmerman until asked by the 9-11 responder. His initial description was not based on 'race/colour'. In much the same way that 'Islam' was not a motive in th British soldiers murder, according to ABC, BBC and SBS.
It would appear that the author forensically gathers her 'facts' from the left wing media and draws her own preconceived conclusions based on this ' evidence'.
As noted by Hasbeen "What a disgusting bit of tripe for a law professor to commit to paper, or the net."

This case, along with countless others (O.J.Simpson, etc), proves beyond all doubt that the U.S.A. must not be allowed to gain control of the world.

American democracy has been bastardized, the American justice system is a sick joke, the American political system is run by the corporations and AIPAC, the American President is genocidal and a warmongering psycho, and America is faced with worn-out infrastructure plus there is widespread poverty and homelessness and lawlessness.

Why is Australia a worshiper of such a country?

I agree with David G. The Zimmerman case is just a symptom. The real criminals run our finance system, wars and corporations.They flout the law with impunity and reward themselves for atrocities against our common humanity.

It is poverty and ignorance which is the major cause of crime and our elites are intent on making poverty far worse on this planet.

Jay

Thank you for the in-depth expose of Zimmerman's racial heritage. However, as with virtually all black Americans, it's also highly unlikely that Travyon's racial heritage is devoid of any white lineage.

The racial undertones of this trial are to do with US culture's association of black people with crime. So it's to do with a combination of sociological factors that centre on race, not racism per se.

Sean

‘Killarney, Zimmerman did not invoke the "Stand your ground" law in his defence. He claimed simple self defence.’

He was offered Stand Your Ground but waived it, because the defence team wanted to rely on evidence that there was a physical fight occurring when Travyon died. However, Stand Your Ground was still used repeatedly throughout the trial to portray him as a responsible neighbourhood watcher, rather than the seriously paranoid nutjob he was.

Compared to Marissa Alexander, he was offered every assistance to defend his case, whereas Alexander was denied the Stand Your Ground defence, the one means she had of avoiding an almost unwinnable Aggravated Assault trial (and mandatory 20 year jail term).

Unlike Zimmerman, Alexander’s plea was judged almost entirely on whether or not she could have fled the scene. Under Florida law, good girls run to big strong neighbours for protection from violent husbands; bad girls threaten violent husbands off the premises … and get 20 years for their efforts.

David G
.
‘Why is Australia a worshiper of such a country?’

Because we’ve seen what happens to countries that DON’T worship the US.

Killarney, so you believe Al Sharpton even though he's been caught lying so many times that no rational person could give credence to anything he says?
It's perfectly reasonable for Americans to associate young Black males with violent crime, it's a rational assumption, again, thanks to the internet we live in an age of truth, you can ignore the truth about race and crime in the U.S.A but that doesn't make it less true.

To Killarney

The only things wrong with your theory that black crime in the USA is a product of white US attitudes, is that such a premise is itself racist, and that it also it ignores the facts.

Black people in every European country are very disproportionately represented in violent criminal behaviour. To conform to your premise, you would have to claim that every white society on earth is equally as racist as the USA, even the super tolerant Swedes and Dutch. You won't get much mileage if you make that claim. Most people would know that you are wrong.

Even black run countries in Africa and the Caribbean are noted for their very high incidence of violent black behaviour. Black run societies everywhere and even black communities within peaceful white communities, are good places to keep out of.

The fact is, that regardless of where you go in the world, wherever young black males congregate, you have got a violent crime problem. You can perform mental gymnastics trying to blame the whites everywhere for poor black behaviour, or you can use your head and figure out that the problem with black criminal behaviour is a product of their own violence advocating culture which is grounded in their own genetic programming.

My heart breaks when I hear of this travesty of justice. I am ashamed to be white. They say look at the laws of the land and you see the people .. shame America, shame.

Mally.
what does this have to do with White people? Neither Trayvon Martin nor George Zimmerman are White.
Mally there was an interesting piece about "Stand your ground" on NPR's "All things considered" just now,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=204013757

LYDEN: And after the Trayvon Martin shooting in 2012, her newspaper published an investigation of every case in the state where Stand Your Ground had been invoked. They looked at about 200 cases.

HUNDLEY: We found that nearly 70 percent of the people who used the Stand Your Ground defense had gone free. Thirty-five percent were not even charged by prosecutors; 23 percent were given immunity by the judge. And this is a special feature of the Stand Your Ground law, that you can go before the judge and argue Stand Your Ground pretrial and then be given immunity, which basically dismisses the case.

LYDEN: As you took a look at this, how did race play in, or did it?

HUNDLEY: The race question was murky. If you looked at the victims, cases of fatalities, we found the defendants who were claiming Stand Your Ground were more likely to prevail if the victim was black. Seventy-three percent of those who killed a black person faced no penalty, and that compared to 59 percent of those who killed a white person.

When you look at the race of the victim, it's one thing. Interestingly, if you look at the defendants, we found that white defendants who invoked the law were charged at the same rate as blacks. Whites who went to trial were convicted at the same rate as blacks. But remember, most of the cases we found were same race. It was white on white and black on black. We found only less than a dozen mixed race cases.

So Mally, a Black man who kills another Black man is more likely to get off under stand your ground that a White man who kills a White man and in cases of interracial homicide, which make up about 5% of homicides in this analysis the effect would be the same.
There is no racial aspect to this case when you look at the evidence and the legal system in which it was tried, the racial aspect is, as always "Because FEELINGS!".
Al Sharpton and Barrack Obama made this into a race issue and a gun issue to suit their own agenda, Mally do you understand what will happen to Blacks if background checks are brought in or stand your ground laws abolished?
Black people are the least likely to be able to pass a test for a gun permit but the most likely to need a gun for personal protection, Black people are more likely to be confronted by a violent Black offender and are more likely to need the benefit of the doubt in cases of self defence because they are more likely to be convicted than other groups.
Self hating Whites such as you hate themselves because they're ignorant, if you knew the truth or even paid attention to what the Liberal media and genuine, sincere Black leaders say you wouldn't be waffling on about being ashamed to be White.
Expressions of White Guilt are a cry for absolution from crimes you've never committed upon people you've never met and could never understand if you did know them.