Allergic to Bull: Prejudice Towards George Zimmerman

Link: http://allergic2bull.blogspot.com/2013/09/prejudice-towards-george-zimmerman.html

The George Zimmerman case, of course, was based on prejudice from the beginning and most of it seemed to be racial prejudice.  Right at the beginning of the case involving the shooting of Trayvon Martin, I started to get a "Duke non-rape case" vibe.  Read that analysis: virtually everything I wrote held up, and what little didn't was merely because of the development of the evidence.  In the Duke case, no one was there but the accused and the accuser, and yet people half a country away acted as though they were personal eyewitnesses, and absolutely convinced of the lacrosse players' guilt.  But by the end of it, it turned out they were guilty of nothing more than a rowdy college party and positively innocent of rape.  And the same was true in the Zimmerman/Martin case.  Right away people acted like they knew what happened—often with blatant appeals to racial bigotry (i.e. "white people have been victimizing black people therefore this allegedly white man must have victimized Martin"), when what should have happened was for everyone to wait for all the facts being in.

Yesterday, we saw a microcosm of that exact same dynamic when the news hit the web that George Zimmerman had been arrested, for allegedly threatening his wife with a gun.  The press and much of the Twittersphere declared Zimmerman guilty almost immediately... based on the word of a woman who has just recently been convicted of perjury.  I mean, there is no guarantee that a perjurer would lie at every opportunity (though rules barring perjurers from testifying do make a great deal of sense), shouldn't that have given some people some pause?

But before long the story started to fall apart.  According to MSNBC (whose bias against George Zimmerman is well-documented), the police said that George didn't have a gun, and according to USA Today, Shellie Zimmerman has admitted that he didn't.  So it should be no surprise that CNN is reporting that the police absolutely will not file charges against George Zimmerman.  Shellie Zimmerman's credibility is utterly ruined.

Mind you there is still plenty of disinformation and misinformation, as well as unanswered questions, involved here.  News outlets, for instance, keep reporting that Shellie and her father are "not pressing charges."  You see, on the 911 call, Shellie claims George punched her father and smashed her iPad.  But lawyers know that the term "pressing charges" is largely mythological.  The victim doesn't get to decide if charges are filed.  The state does and they can go forward despite the victims' insistence that the charges be dropped.  But having worked in a domestic violence unit in a state district attorney's office, we often defer to the wishes of the victim in a domestic dispute if only because we expect the victim to lie about what happened.  Also the CNN article I cited above treats it as proven fact that Zimmerman smashed her iPad, but I am doubtful that they really know this to be true.

Update: Can I call it or what?  Now Shellie is back-peddling.  Previously she said he had a gun, now she is saying she assumed he had a gun because he touched his stomach.  But why didn't she just say that, instead of positively stating that he was armed and touching his gun?