Before It's News | NEWS
Lesson from the Zimmerman Trial: It’s Time to Curb Prosecutorial Abuse
Without a $1,000,000 legal defense warchest, the ordinary citizen has no chance against a dishonest prosecution that disregards evidence and law in its determination to win at all costs.
I’m writing this without knowing the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman.
The jury is deliberating now.
I assume he’ll be acquitted.
The prosecution did not provide one shred of evidence to refute Zimmerman’s self-defense claim.
Just a lot of: “Couldn’t it have happened this way?” Or “Perhaps it happened that way.”
The big lesson I took from the Zimmerman trial is that, without a high-powered legal team, you have little chance against the state.
Look at the resources the state brought to the prosecution of George Zimmerman.
Zimmerman had to defend himself against and army of prosecutors, investigators, and researchers working on the case.
The state must have spent millions of taxpayer dollars on this prosecution.
Fortunately for Zimmerman, he’s been able to hire a high-powered legal team.
Because this is such high-profile contentious case, donations have poured into Zimmerman’s legal defense website (about $30,000 per month in recent months), he’s been able to pay Mark O’Mara, Don West, and his legal team something — though not likely anywhere near the $1-2 million he likely owes these lawyers.
High-powered criminal defense lawyers earn $300 to $1,000 per hour.
These lawyers have been working on this case for a year-and-a-half.
We saw the value of high-powered legal representation in the O.J. Simpson and William Kennedy Smith trials.
But ordinary people who are not involved in high-profile cases cannot afford anywhere close to this level of legal representation.
Many criminal defendants are low-income Americans who must rely on an overworked public defender — most of whom are young and have almost no experience. They have no chance against the state.
In America, we are told to expect “equal justice of all.”
But there’s no “equal justice” for the low-income American who must rely on a public defender, or perhaps a single lawyer who must operate on a shoestring budget and doesn’t have the resources to conduct their own investigations.
In the George Zimmerman trial, we also saw how vicious and unfair the prosecution can be.
The prosecution has painted every statement and every action of George Zimmerman in the worse possible light. Because he is quoted once saying “these f____ing punks always get away,” he’s portrayed not as just frustrated because of the rash of home invasions and burglaries in his community, but as a racist with malice and ill-will in his heart toward Trayvon Martin.
The prosecution is supposed to be seeking justice, not twisting every statement of a defendant in an effort to paint a dishonest caricature of a defendant so the jury hates Zimmerman.
The prosecution also presented every little inconsistency in Zimmerman’s account as evidence that he’s a liar and therefore a murderer (an enormous illogical leap).
For example, the prosecution made a big deal of Zimmerman’s claim that his head was bashed on the concrete “maybe 25 times” — saying this shows Zimmerman is a liar.
It’s obvious from the evidence that Zimmerman’s head was slammed on the sidewalk maybe five or six times.
Zimmerman Trial: Looks Like Jury Has Dumped 2nd Degree Murder Charge
There is a big update in the Trayvon Martin death case. The Jurors just asked clarification on manslaughter charges. What does this mean? It means that they have discarded the ridiculous 2nd degree murder charges and are down to the new manslaughter charge that was tacked on right before they went into deliberation...expect a verdict soon: http://www.usatoday.com/news/
No comments:
Post a Comment