2013/07/12

Zimmerman

George Zimmerman's murder trial in Florida is wrapping up. If there is any justice in this world, he will be found guilty of murder or, at the very least, manslaughter.
Posted by Jay at 10:03:00 AM

3 comments:

  1. DadFriday, July 12, 2013 at 12:25:00 PM EDT

    I agree, but remember, this is Florida.

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  2. BillSunday, July 14, 2013 at 7:00:00 AM EDT

    I read this morning he has been found "not guilty" of all charges by the jury and therefore told by the judge he was released and his bail bond returned to him. So there, presumably, the matter will rest. Is it known what the composition of the jury was by gender/colour/"class"?

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  3. BillSunday, July 14, 2013 at 2:20:00 PM EDT

    Since posting my earlier comment I've now done some more research into the jury-composition in this case and the way such trials are conducted in Florida. Interestingly, in one report I read, it stated that the family of the young man who was killed was reasonably happy that the jury as chosen could deliver a 'fair' verdict. I must admit, though, that having read a little more about the history of jury selection in the US generally I was shocked to learn that it was not until 1975, as a result of a US Supreme Court ruling (in the case of Taylor v. Louisiana) that jury service by women was placed on an equal footing with that of men. Also that a celebrated case in Florida in the late 1950s (in which Gwendolyn Holt was accused of murdering her husband with a baseball bat) was the subject of a US Supreme Court ruling as recently as 1961 that States had the right to define women's jury service differently than men's: "woman is still regarded as the center of home and family" and for this reason a woman can "be relieved from the civic duty of jury service.", since overturned by the 1975 ruling.

    The history of 'justice' in the US is certainly a bizarre one, perhaps no more so than in many other Common Law systems, such as the originators of the concept (England&Wales - Scotland is somewhat different for various historical reasons), but perhaps that strangeness lingered on into much more recent times in the US. Whether the current way in which justice is decided in cases such as the Zimmerman one, commands a sufficiently large level of acceptance amongst those whom it affects (whether in Florida or the wider US) is a matter that will perhaps be tested further in the fall-out from this case.

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