George Zimmerman judge OKs question: Who was the real Trayvon Martin?

The new judge in George Zimmerman's second-degree murder trial allowed defense attorneys to subpoena social media networks and peruse Trayvon Martin’s school records to determine whether the slain teen had a violent past.

|
Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/REUTERS
George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer charged with second-degree murder for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, looks on during his hearing at the Seminole County Courthouse in Sanford, Florida on Friday.

In sparking a nationwide call for justice, Trayvon Martin’s parents painted the slain teenager as sweet, aspiring, and well-meaning – notions backed up by a baby-faced photo that led President Obama to suggest, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

But on Friday, a new judge in the second-degree murder case against George Zimmerman, the 29-year-old volunteer watchman accused of profiling, accosting, and then murdering an unarmed Trayvon on Feb. 26, made a major ruling that could alter that image.

Circuit Court Judge Debra Nelson allowed, with limitations, defense attorneys to dig deep into Trayvon’s social media scribblings and school records to determine whether the boy had a violent streak that may have put Mr. Zimmerman into a self-defense stance.

Gun nation: Inside America's gun-carry culture 

Whether any evidence dug up by Zimmerman’s defense team ever makes it to the media or the public will be up to Judge Nelson. But the ruling opens up a major new break in what’s shaping up to be an emotional, heart-wrenching trial that will explore not just Zimmerman’s guilt, but the extent to which race played into both Zimmerman’s actions and decisions by police in the aftermath.

“I have had anecdotal evidence that there were videos out there suggesting that [Trayvon] involved himself in MMA (mixed martial arts) fighting, he had an experience level with that,” Mark O’Mara, Zimmerman’s attorney, said after Friday’s court hearing. “I think the judge hit it on head … that reputation for violence is an issue in this case.”

The shooting caused a national uproar about racial profiling and permissive gun laws when local police in Sanford, Fla., where Trayvon was killed, let Zimmerman go free, citing the 2005 “stand your ground” law in Florida, which negated the legal doctrine of “duty to retreat” in the face of an attack. Forty-four days later, a special prosecutor filed second degree murder charges against Zimmerman, who is now out on bond at an undisclosed location in Seminole County.

On Friday, Trayvon’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, called Judge Nelson’s decision to allow the school and social media subpoenas a travesty, suggesting that by opening up Trayvon’s records it would allow defense attorneys to “make a dead child seem as if they’re the perpetrator.”

Yet there’s a sound legal reason for the judge allowing the defense to go on the offense, says George Dekle, a law professor at the University of Florida. True, he says, the prosecution has stated that the basic facts of the case – a grown man profiles a boy as a criminal, instigates a confrontation, then shoots him dead when the boy defends himself – substantiate a second-degree murder conviction.

But under Florida law, the nuances of the confrontation, and the actions of the victim, are all admissible in a self-defense claim.

The stand-your-ground law, which was cited by police when they originally let Zimmerman off without an arrest, doesn’t allow someone to instigate a fight and then immediately use deadly force. But if the tables are turned and the person is backed into a corner – or ends up with his back on the ground, as Zimmerman claims – a defendant can still claim that they acted in self-defense, Mr. Dekle says.

“You could analyze a lot of cases that are stand-your-ground cases as not having anything to do with stand your ground, because the person wasn’t in a position to run away anyhow,” says Dekle.

To be sure, race continues to be a simmering undercurrent in the trial. In late September, a Trayvon family attorney, Ben Crump, told the Orlando Sentinel that, “Nobody believes that if you make Trayvon Martin white [and Zimmerman black], there’s no way he would not be arrested. That’s why race is involved in this case.”

But this week, Mr. O’Mara shot back in an online post, writing, “While it can be safely argued that it is largely the question of civil rights issues that has made the George Zimmerman case a national – and international – story, there is nothing to support the contention of racism in the Zimmerman case.”

Either way, following a summer in which Zimmerman’s credibility came under heavy scrutiny after he and his wife colluded to lie to the court about their financial situation, the judge’s ruling on Friday made it clear that Zimmerman’s defense team has found some traction in a case that’s scheduled to go to trial on next June.

And while the race issue continues to define the case more broadly, it became clear this week that the tension in the case has come to revolve around whether Trayvon’s personality and whether the boy’s actions – not his race or his hoodie, which in part drew Zimmerman’s attention on the night of the shooting – played a role in the tragedy.

Trayvon had been on a 10-day suspension from his high school when he was killed. The suspension came after school officials found an empty marijuana baggie on him. An eyewitness to the shooting has also testified that Trayvon was straddling Zimmerman, punching him “MMA-style” in the moments before he was shot.

“The rules of evidence permit the defense to introduce evidence of a pertinent character trait in support of Zimmerman’s claim that [Trayvon] Martin was the aggressor,” writes former defense attorney Frederick Leatherman on his popular law blog.

“For example, if Trayvon Martin was known to be an aggressive bully who started fights, the defense would be permitted to bring that out at trial,” Mr. Leatherman writes. “The defense would be limited to introducing the evidence as a character trait. Assuming such evidence exists, which I doubt, it might be in the school records. Therefore, I believe the defense has a legitimate reason to want to review the records.”

Gun nation: Inside America's gun-carry culture 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to George Zimmerman judge OKs question: Who was the real Trayvon Martin?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/1020/George-Zimmerman-judge-OKs-question-Who-was-the-real-Trayvon-Martin
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe