I think as Political Science majors or as people who keep up with the news most of us know a little bit about George Zimmerman. Whether or not you agree with the outcome of his trial is a different story. As it stands legally, he is innocent as declared by a court of law. My issue is not with the verdict though. My issue lies with the media's response to the whole case in general. Some people question whether it would have went to trial if it had not been for the demand of the people and the negative response from the media. Are we living in a mob society now, where when the people scream for justice we must follow their demands? There seems to be a whole lot of gray area in the whole situation. Even with his acquittal, George Zimmerman can't seem to avoid making headlines. Over the past few weeks he responded to an accident to help, been pulled over for speeding a few times, and now his wife has called 911 on him.
This week I would like to focus on an article from Salon.com. Whether or not you think it is a legitimate news website is for you to determine. As far as I am concerned they have a large reader base and it is a bigger website. Articles like this one get thrown around a lot.
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/12/take_his_guns_away_already_why_the_george_zimmermans_are_so_protected/
Now, I would take a moment to read through the article to see what you think about it before I start going through it. I'm guessing it did not take long to see what kind of stance the writer takes on George Zimmerman. While this isn't really a news article (at least I hope not) I keep like some of the comments are not rational. Granted, she does bring up some points about whether laws are right or not. But you have to remember it is the law. There were no charges brought up against George Zimmerman by his estranged wife, so what did the writer expect the police to do? By law he has rights to own guns. You can believe this is ok or not, but it is how it stands. His wife changed her story a few hours later, which hurts the credibility of it all. If something did happen or didn't, any further emergency calls of charges she might want to file will be harder to believe. Especially when she lied under oath in a courtroom during the trial.
As far as I believe I strongly doubt this will be the last time George Zimmerman's name makes a headline. He is a strong case for people wanting more restrictions on guns. While the man might be legally innocent, he is guilty in the minds of many people. The people's verdict was given long before the legal one was due to media responses such as the article I linked you to. Justified or not, we should not be branding a man guilty or innocent. That is not our job as a people.
Brandon, you bring up some great points. I was greatly disappointed as well at the reaction that came about from the trial and how politicized it was with the race factor stoking the flames of division. While the jury composition did not seem to be evenly distributed with regards to race and gender, one must consider this as just another case. There are thousands of such (accidental) crimes occurring throughout the country, so why should one be elevated to a national level over the others?
ReplyDelete