Racism?

People are saying — at least African-American people are saying — that George Zimmerman got off because he was white (actually, of course, he was Hispanic, at least on his mother's side) and Trayvon Martin was black. I've seen it written that if the races were reversed, there would have been a guilty verdict. I'm not so sure.

I remember, a few years ago, another trial. An African-American defendant killed two white people, one being his wife. And a court acquitted him. Remember O. J. Simpson? When the verdict came out in that trial, it was white people who were complaining about a miscarriage of justice, and African-Americans saying justice was done.

What we are seeing is not a racist America. (It certainly is a racially divided America, when a strong majority of white people voted for Mitt Romney last year, but the African American community was nearly unanimous behind Barack Obama for the second successive Presidential election.) The trial, and the O. J. Simpson trial, point out the way our criminal justice system works. The burden of proof is on the prosecution; the presumption of innocence favors the defense. Even if there is a lot of evidence showing that a murder occurred, if there is a “reasonable doubt,” the jury is supposed to acquit. And in both trials, the prosecution failed to make its case properly.

Perhaps this prosecutor was incompetent. At least one column I saw on the net says she was worthy of disbarment. This may be so, but it's too late to fix that. We have rules about “double jeopardy.” Like O. J. Simpson, George Zimmerman may face a civil suit, which may go the other way because the standards for evidence are weaker. But he cannot be tried for murder again.