Within minutes upon hearing the verdict in the George Zimmerman case, I was stunned into a soul-deep retreat. It’s not that I didn’t know it would happen. This is America, after all. You knew the sooner the verdict came in that Zimmerman would be acquitted. The jury in the Zimmerman trial did not disappoint.
All it took for the defense team to secure a not guilty verdict was to align enough reasonable doubt amongst the jurors that four minutes — the amount of time needed for Martin to reach his father’s house — was: “how long Trayvon Martin had to run.
“Did they [prosecutors] show you, tell you, explain to you, give you any insight whatsoever on what Trayvon Martin was doing four minutes before that fight started at the T intersection?” he asked. “Do you have a doubt as to what Trayvon Martin was doing and what he must have been thinking for four minutes?”
By those very questions, the defense invited the jurors to scratch the race card, seeding four minutes of doubt as to what Trayvon Martin was up to. The same card makes young black men suspect before investigating, incarcerated or shot before having chance to protest their innocence.
Any number of things could have happened between the two in those long 240 seconds during the chase. But “reasonable doubt” found the one with the weapon was the one who was in danger, racially profiling and killing the black kid with the Skittles, cell phone and can of ice tea who had no chance to tell his story in court. As we feared, at the end of the trial jurors found Trayvon Martin guilty, charged him with vague suspicious criminal intent and approved his execution ex-post facto for being a young black male in America. All it took was four minutes.