The spectacle of murder

Tonight’s top CNN.com headline reads: Ex-chief: Zimmerman probe hijacked

The story goes on to detail how the ex-police chief in the Trayvon Martin murder case is spending his 15 minutes of fame complaining that he was pressured from above to make an arrest because of the high-profile nature of the case and attendant media scrutiny. Which, as anybody who’s watched a police procedural on TV can tell you, is the standing police imperative for any high-profile/media case: Make an arrest! Nobody running the city in which the murder took place wants to look like they’re asleep at the switch.

In this case, the police went out and arrested the man who admittedly shot the youth. Crazy, no? With George Zimmerman having already confessed to shooting the victim, who else were they going to go out arrest? The list of suspects was one name long.

The fact that they didn’t arrest Mr. Zimmerman initially is in itself curious. A dead boy, an armed man with a gun, non-life-threatening wounds and a thin story, and the authorities didn’t find it at all peculiar? Mr. Martin, being dead and thus unavailable for comment, was unable to provide his own version of events, a very lucky break indeed for Mr. Zimmerman.

But quite a happy windfall for the chattering class! Immediately political lines were drawn: Fox News and friends began warning against a rush to judgment, while the liberal victim-huggers lined up against Mr. Zimmerman.

It became clear pretty quickly that the Right’s investment in the killing of Trayvon Martin was that a gun was involved. The NRA’s legislative lackeys come dashing out in the wake of every mass shooting to absolve the weapons used of any responsibility, and to demand tougher laws on everything but guns. And on the Left, whenever a gun is used in a high-profile murder case, they use it to advance their argument for gun regulation.

If a gun isn’t used, however, cooler heads prevail and nobody pays much attention. Partly because the Swiss Army Knife lobby is widely considered to be a joke on K Street, but mostly because the body counts from knife attacks are so damned much smaller.

So let’s pretend cooler heads will prevail, and the case will be judged on its merits. Or my own interpretation of them anyhow, which in the end, is all anyone has.

I don’t feel qualified to weigh in on the vicissitudes of the court case because I really only paid attention to the details of the crime for the first few days after the killing.

At that time, I looked into the beady, calculating eyes of George Zimmerman, listened to his story and examined the photos of his superficial wounds. I watched for a few days as all the MSM news channels obsessively covered the story, then formed an opinion about what looked to me like and open-and-shut case and moved on to the next news-cycle’s Big Story.

And then the political blowback became the next Big Story. A man murders a boy in cold blood and there are political implications? I feel like I’m living in a Kilgore Trout sci-fi novel.

My own acid test for political outrage works like this: Reverse the facts of the case, then ask myself if the same interest groups would be taking the same positions: In this case, say an aggressive black guy approaches a lone, smaller, unarmed white kid in the dark, verbally harasses him then shoots him dead. Do you really see the GOP clamoring for airtime to insist the accused receive a fair and impassionate trial? Do you really see the Left using the murdered white boy as a cause célèbre and fund-raising tool?

Politics has always been ugly, but isn’t one of our goals as a society to improve ourselves? And is it really reasonable to think squaring-off politically over absolutely everything is going to promote a conversation that will lead to improving anything?

But now the court case is wrapping up, and the jury and the public have a decision to make. Whose story do they go with? Does any of it make a lick of sense anyhow?

Here is a scenario that encompasses both sides’ version of the facts and comes to a conclusion that will fully satisfy no one.

It’s also the story the defense is selling.

On the night of the killing, Trayvon Martin was coming back from the store to buy munchies, unarmed and by all accounts minding his own business.

George Zimmerman was on the prowl in his role as Neighborhood Watch captain. He decided Mr. Martin looked suspicious, based on what, people can argue about. So he followed him around the neighborhood for a while.

Mr. Zimmerman became more and more suspicious.

Mr. Zimmerman had a gun on him and had taken some law classes, so he knew all about Florida’s “stand your ground” law—that if he shoots someone while he says he was in active fear for his life, he theoretically could get away with murder.

Mr. Zimmerman approached Mr. Martin and began to interrogate him. Mr. Martin likely became agitated—I hear most folks are touchy about being profiled—and probably told Mr. Zimmerman to fuck off, or words to that effect. Mr. Zimmerman asserted his questionable authority again and at this point, my guess is Mr. Martin again told him to fuck off and probably got up in the face of the bigger, older man. Mr. Zimmerman was not expecting resistance to his assertions of authority and didn’t have time to immediately produce his weapon.

A brief scuffle then occurred which Mr. Zimmerman was losing. He was still screaming like a cat with her tail caught in a door when he finally fumbled his gun out and shot Mr. Martin point-blank in the chest. As soon as Mr. Martin was mortally wounded and the ‘danger’ from the unarmed teen was over, Mr. Zimmerman ceased his panicked shrieking.

Everybody agrees that’s what happened. The only argument is which person was wailing like a banshee during the incident, and I agree with the defense. I think it was George Zimmerman who was losing the fight and it’s his hysterical screaming on the 911 tape.

If that is essentially the case in broad strokes, the only question is, did Mr. Martin have a right to assume a defensive posture when approached aggressively by a stranger under the cover of night, asking questions that weren’t strictly any of his business? As far as I know, Neighborhood Watch is not a recognized law enforcement agency, and Zimmerman’s decision to carry and discharge a gun was his decision, not Neighborhood Watch policy.

Did Zimmerman’s zeal to protect his neighborhood supercede Mr. Martin’s expectation of a full life? Closing arguments in the case were heard today, and it’s expected to be thrown to the jury tomorrow. Whatever verdict is rendered, there is going to be hell to pay.

And political hacks everywhere will make hay out of it.