Almost 20 years ago we had another trial that many have said is the Star Trek Mirror Mirror Image of the current Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman trial.
Last week I wrote a diary about the new E-Book by George Zimmerman's Dad which exposes the "fact" that the genuine and true racists in America, are of course, all Black. http://www.dailykos.com/...
Previously, Zimmerman Sr. “believed generally racism was a thing of the past.” He says that, personally, he hadn’t encountered much racism, even though his wife is Hispanic. But after his son shot and killed Trayvon Martin, however, Zimmerman learned that racism is “flourishing at the insistence of some in the African American Community.”
You see, by arguing that his son
might have had Racist reasons for following and ultimately killing Trayvon Martin under suspicion of being a "Fucking Asshole Punk/Coon" neighborhood burglar - who'd already been arrested - Black people have shown that they are the
true racists.
His accusation is that it's only because of the efforts of Racist Black Activist like the NAACP, the United Negro College Fund, the Black Chamber of Commerce and the NBA that his son is even on trial at all.
Contrast this view, with the view shared in the video by Fred Goldman after Johnnie Cochran (as well as F. Lee Bailey) highlighted the importance and impact of Mark Fuhrman's perjury and subsequent invocation of the 5th Amendment after his own voluminous set of vicious and racist comments gained notoriety in the OJ trial back in 1995.
Goldman's vitriol is scathing. Vicious. It's the heart of a grieving father breaking on camera as he feels his chance for justice slipping away, sliding through his fingers like sand. Then he takes the pain and throws it a Johnny Cochran like a javelin aimed at his heart. It's wrenching.
To him Fuhrman's Racism means nothing, only (in his view) is Cochran is the racist for bringing up Fuhrman's comments.
But just for context, Let's remember some of what Fuhrman actually said over the flip...
From the Furhman tapes: http://web.mit.edu/...
"Westwood is gone, the niggers have discovered it. When they start moving into Redondo and Torrance. Torrance is considered the last white middle class society."
...
"Nigger drivin' a Porsche that doesn't look like he's got a $300 suit on, you always stop him."
...
How do you intellectualize when you punch the hell out of a nigger? He either deserves it or he doesn't."
...
"We stopped the choke because a bunch of Niggers have a bunch of these organizations in the south end, and because all Niggers are choked out and killed -- twelve in ten years. Really is extraordinary, isn't it?"
...
A: There was a black coalition in the south against police then. There is the ACLU, the NAACP . . . . The ACLU should be bombed, and everybody should be killed in it. They do no good. They are the cancer of society."
...
A: I'm the key witness in the biggest case of the century. And, if I go down, they lose the case. The glove is everything. Without the glove -- bye, bye.
As it turned out Mark Fuhrman went down, and yes, they did lose the case. On that issue he wasn't wrong, regardless of OJ's own guilt.
What we should have learned then is that yes, the black and minority experience with law enforcement is completely different from the experience of other citizens. The picture that Fuhrman painted in his talks with screen-writer Laura McKinney is a world that black and brown Angelino's knew well. It was no fantasy and no exaggeration.
Even if OJ was guilty, the willful attempt to use evidence gathered by Fuhrman and the choice to put him on the stand when the Prosecution Knew FULL WELL of the allegations against him was legal malpractice. Originally (according to his own book on the case) Christopher Darden had been brought into the case after the Heart Attack by another prosecutor in order to help Sanitize Fuhrman's testimony, but after learning more of the facts surrounding Fuhrman, and getting a "squirrely feeling" after talking to Fuhrman directly - He Refused to Do It. As a result the questioning of Fuhrman fell to Marcia Clarke, with ultimately disastrous results.
I've always felt that when the Government abuses it's position and power it's always worse than anything one individual may have done. Yes, even if that individual committed Murder.
To Fred Goldman and many others, it was a shock. It was anathema. What does any of that Race stuff have to do with my Dead Son? He was outraged, Outraged that Fuhrman was compared to Hitler (even though witness Kathleen Bell had testified that Mark Fuhrman had told her of a genocidal fantasy about bombing and burning every black person in L.A.) Why couldn't the jury see he was guilty? How could Black people cheer an obvious Murderer, we're they that twisted for revenge? We're they <>happy about what happened to Ron and Nicole, simply because - for once - the Black guy got away it? It never occurred to him, and to many others that their desire for retribution was, and should have been, trumped by the Constitutional requirement that the prosecution make their case without using falsified testimony and compromised/questionable evidence.
It's not that everything prosecution presented was tainted, but that after the prosecution presented Fuhrman as a perfectly acceptable witness and that blew up in their faces, all the rest of their judgement was suspect. And rightlyfully so, IMO. It's not that they didn't know about the allegations about Fuhrman, they did know, and then they used him anyway even over Darden's reservations.
As shown by the following Civil Case, the original OJ Murder case could and should have been won, if the LA District Attorney's office hadn't been so arrogant and clueless just as they had also been with the McMartin Child Molestation Case a couple years previously, which Gil Garetti's DA office had also blown massively.
What I felt then, and still feel, is that when the Prosecution Fucks Up a Case This Badly - they deserve to lose. They may have had a guilty defendant, but they deserved to lose based on this mistake and many, many others. They HAD To lose, because if they don't innocent people like the 310, and counting, who have been exonerated since the OJ case due to false testimony and false evidence uncovered by Peter Neufield and Barry Scheck's Innocence Project - suffer for it.
It's the Prosecution's job to put forth an argument that can not be reasonably doubted, however when you have a witness for the prosecution like this - one who DIRECTLY LIES ON THE STAND - then pleads the fifth when called to follow up and potentially explain - you can't trust anything he says or anything he brings to the case. He had allegedly found a key piece of evidence, now that evidence - and the handling a much of the evidence was quickly and easily in major DOUBT... For African-Americans. But not for White people for whom the level of corruption alleged here was simply - unbelievable.
They felt, even if it was true, that this was a minor issue. It was an aberration. Just a mole hill compared the other mountain of evidence presented. They couldn't believe that the kind of corruption suggested by Cochran and his team could be possible. No one could implement such a massive conspiracy without anyone talking or noticing? That's just not possible, right?
And they were outraged when the reaction of black young people around the country reacted to the "Not Guilty" verdict like this.
http://www.youtube.com/...
Yet 310 other people - so far- prove it is believable. It is possible. It is still happening.
(Brief sidebar: Very few people have ever known that there was a inside source within the Los Angeles Law Enforcement Community who through crime author Steven Singular was providing the defense team with clues as to which evidence to question and challenge far beyond the singular issue of Mark Fuhrman. Previously Singular had written about the murder of firebrand progressive Radio Host Alan Berg by neo-nazi's from Idaho who patterned themselves a paramilitary white supremacist group called "The Order" from William Pierce's infamous "The Turner Diaries" - which is the same book that inspired and outlined Tim McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. [In the book an ammonium-nitrate truck bomb is used to blow up FBI headquarters.] Some of the details of Berg's murder were later stitched into Eric Bogosian's "Talk Radio" movie. Singular's involvement was actually confirmed by both Darden's and Marsha Clarke's books on the OJ case, as Singular's book agent sent them a draft while the case was still in process. They both believed that the OJ defense team was leading Singular around by the nose with their wild theories, but Singular writes that it was the other way around, that his source was leading them to question the blood in the Ford Bronco, and test for the preservative EDTA in the blood at crime scene. They weren't just stabbing in the dark, they were getting inside info. Although the defense team has always denied Singular's involvement, Darden's description of the draft in his own book clearly shows that Singular had access to crime scene information and photos that were only available at the time to the prosecution and the defense. Singular has since written fairly well received books on the Jon Bonet Ramsey case and others.)
And then just to further illustrate the point, not long after OJ, there was the Rampart Scandal.
http://www.pbs.org/...
When first stopped and arrested by detectives, Perez asked, "Is this about the bank robbery?" It wasn't. It was about the 6 pounds of missing cocaine, which investigators believed had been checked out by Perez, under another officer's name, and sold on the streets of Rampart through a girlfriend.
...
Rafael Perez made a deal with prosecutors under which he pled guilty to cocaine theft and agreed to provide prosecutors with information about two "bad" shootings and three other Rampart CRASH officers involved in illegal activity. In exchange, Perez received a five-year prison sentence and immunity from further prosecution of misconduct short of murder.
Among his first revelations, Perez told investigators of how he and his partner Nino Durden had shot, framed, and testified against Javier Ovando, an unarmed gang member who was left paralyzed as a result of the incident. At the time of Perez's admission, Ovando was in jail, serving the 23 year sentence he had received for allegedly assaulting the two officers.
Thus began a nine-month confessional during which time Perez met with investigators more than 50 times and provided more than 4,000 pages in sworn testimony. Before he was done, Perez implicated about 70 officers in misconduct, from bad shootings to drinking beer on the job.
Unwarranted shootings, planting evidence, torturing and coercing false confessions from suspects, Bank Robbery, Murder .. every form of misconduct that Fuhrman had alleged on his tapes and more, were claimed to be TRUE (although at a completely different precinct) by former Ofc Perez.
After Rampart the LAPD were essentially put under control of the Feds, and only recently came out of it. By most accounts the LAPD has grown far more reasonable and responsive to the public, the era of the "thug cop" seems to be over.
Almost.
Recent attention of police brutality has resurfaced as one female officer apparently kicked a handcufffed woman in the genitals and induced her death.
That woman was, yes, you guessed it, black.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/...
LAPD Cmdr. Bob Green admitted to the Times that a female officer had followed through with a threat to kick Thomas in the genitals when she resisted being put into the patrol car. Video shows a restrained Thomas struggling to breath in the back of the patrol car. She was taken to a local hospital and later died.
This is a scenario that I find eerily similar to the allegations made by murderous ex-cop Christopher Dorner of his female training officer kicking a prone and handcuffed handicapped suspect- allegations which led to his ultimately being fired. A firing that the LAPD had yet again determined was "
justified" even though the victim in the kicking and his father have both
confirmed Dorner's claims.
The more things change, the more they fucking don't change.
As I wrote a year ago when the Trayvon/Zimmerman story this issue is far larger than just what happened on that solitary night on the dog path between Retreat View Circle and Twin Trees Lane. For African-Americans familiar with the police murders of Leonard Deadweiler shot down because he was speeding while trying to get his pregnant wife to the hospital in 1968, to Ron Settles - football star and honor student who was choked to death by Signal Hill Police after they had tried to cover it up as a suicide in 1981, to them this was not an isolated incident - it was part of a clear and easily discernible pattern.
You see that pattern going from Eula Love who was shot and killed over an unpaid utility bill in 1978, to Kendrick McDade a college student shot and killed by police after a false report of someone being robbed at gun point just last year.
Full disclosure: I've met Kendrick's mother and did a Memorial T-Shirt design for his passing.
Moving beyond LA we also see this pattern with the Police shooting of security guard Patrick Dorismond, the shooting of unarmed Amardour Diallo, and the torture of Abner Louima, and the 2006 shooting of unarmed Sean Bell on his Wedding Day in New York, the asphyxiation of Jonny Gammage by three White Officers after a routine traffic stop in Pittburgh, and the murder of unarmed and handcuffed Oscar Grant in Oakland.
In so many of these case, though not all, white people see one thing - black people see something else. For whites these are flukes, for blacks these are barely the tip of a giant Ice-T-berg of Mutha-FUCK DA POLICE. You pretty can't find an adult black male in this country who hasn't had an embarrassing, harassing, terrorizing, humiliating encounter with police. They don't need the proof of these various cases, they've all experienced some form of this first hand, just like nearly every teen to adult male in New York has been stopped an frisked, not just once - but multiple times over the past decade. It's like living under a constant ever-present siege by hostile forces.
Yet, Is it fair to make George pay for all of this? To hang the noose of retribution around his neck for what happened to Eula, Ron, Amadour, Patrick, Leonard, Jonny, Rodney, Oscar, Abner, Kendrick and so many countless thousands, and hundreds of thousands over the past few decades?
Of course not.
But as it was with OJ, so it is yet again with the Martin/Zimmerman case. We've got our hackles raised, and we want blood. Whether it's Trayvon's or George's - it doesn't really matter that much anymore. Someone must pay.
Today the Prosecution Rested in the Zimmerman Case, but not before finally hearing from the victims mother to get her confirmation that the voice heard screaming for help on the 9-11 tape was that of her son, Trayvon Martin. This of course, she confirmed, but was then confronted with the question from the defense that she "Had to say if was Trayvon, because if it wasn't - then he must have contributed to his own death"
I understand why the Defense has to ask this question, it's their job to probe this issue and test the credibility of the witness, but can you imagine if this had been asked of Fred Goldman?
Is your sons death his own fault for not minding his own business and staying at the restaurant, Mr. Goldman?
Can you visualize that? Just look at the rage on his face after Johnny Cochran's closing argument and think how ballistic he would have gone if he been asked, either on or off the stand : Wasn't it your SON'S FAULT he was killed for trying to protect himself (and in Ron's case, someone else)?
Shouldn't he have stayed out of it? Walked away? Never gotten involved?
He would've gone Thermo-Nuclear if that had ever occurred, and with good reason. But Trayvon's still grieving mother had to grin and bear this treatment on the witness stand. Am I the only one that finds the complete imbalance of this sickening?
Why is it acceptable to consider that Trayvon, who as far as I can tell was stalked and hunted down is at fault for trying to defend himself against someone he very well may have thought was some kind of sexual or other predator? How different is that from asking the survivor of a rape how high their skirt was before they were attacked? Isn't it her fault she was sexually assaulted?
Fact is; Sybrina Fulton has every bit as much right to go in front of the cameras and vent her righteous indignation at the Zimmerman defense team in terms as strong as did Fred Goldman back then. But she won't. She knows that - besides the fact she's still under subpoena - she'd hurt her own son's case, since any time a black woman gets angry and starts doing the Medea "neck waggle" thang, well - niggras do get uppity sometimes don't they?
All you have to do is take one look at how people reacted to Rachel Jeantel's testimony to see that the Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton have to play this smart and not give in to emotion. Even justified emotion. Is that another level of White Privilege, or is the Black Man's Burden?
Does it matter? It's Fucked UP either way.
As one prosecutor today put it: The right of Self Defense applies as much to Trayvon as it did Mr. Zimmerman and only the belief that he might be in serious or mortal danger is required to justify his acting to defend himself, not any actual injuries or verbal threats. That's the bottom line.
It's not exactly a coincidence that no-one put the reverse question to George Zimmerman's mother - who of course - confirmed that the screaming voice on the tape was really her son, not Trayvon.
"You had to hope that was your son's voice didn't Mrs. Zimmerman - otherwise Your Son is a Murderer?"
Nope, that just didn't happen I guess because the Prosecutors aren't a pack of raging insensitive assholes. Or, they know the jury might perceive it. That and the fact that the screaming - which somehow occurred while George was being simultaneous suffocated, without getting any blood on Trayvon's hands - stopped right when the gun went off, while George claimed in his statements that he kept yelling and talking after he fired - not knowing if he'd actually hit Trayvon or not.
You don't have to trust either mother, you just have to compare what Zimmerman claims to what the tape shows actually happened. And as his own defense attorney said today, if it wasn't Zimmerman's voice screaming - he's guilty. Period.
Either way, One group sees the case one particular way. Another group see it as another example of the rise of Black Entitlement. For every rationale argument one side might make, the other has two as to why things are truly the other way around. Just as it was during the OJ Trial.
To some this is conjured, Phony Racist accusations against Poor George Porgie Zimmerman who was just trying to protect the neighborhood - in which he can't even name all three streets - when a black thug CRIP wannabe viciously attacked him. The only Racism in America is all the hands-outs and special Governmental favors all the darkies get fat and lazy on. And then when one of their little thug-lets gets what he brought on himself all the apes in the jungle start threatening to RIOT!!!
You see, (some) white people and Cops and Arch Conservatives and Rabid Gun Owners are not the racists - YOU Black People ARE with your welfare checks and all your Black on Black Crime. Why don't you clean up your own house and leave us alone? This trial is just a political ploy to appease the jungle-bunnies before they revolt for not getting enough goodies out of our pockets, see?
But they're not bigoted. Nope. Not a bit. Just like Fred Goldman's rant about Johnny Cochran wasn't a tiny bit racist, nor is Robert Zimmerman's book about the racism of Obama and Eric Holder who he says were too busy investigating George to stop the Boston Marathon Bombing - and or course - the NBA. (Yes, again - the NBA!) They're just distraught parents who never cared about Race before, never even thought about it - but are now shocked, shocked to discover how Racist Black People Are against their sons.
Yeah. Ok. Sure.
Whether Zimmerman is found guilty or not guilty, these issues won't be resolved. These resentments won't go away. The case didn't create them, if anything, it only made the more visible. Some will believe he was rail-roaded others will believe he got away with it no matter the outcome.
What won't happen, is that the hard feelings and bitterness - the sense of entitled injustice - will begin to wash away and soften. That there will be a healing, a cleansing of these ongoing centuries of judicial wounds.
No matter what, one side will feel victory, the other side will feel cheated - robbed and the cycle of finger-pointing will continue.
Unless...
Unless we admit the either side has a point. That knee-jerk presumptions of guilt are just as harmful when unfairly thrown against a person of color as they are against a person acting under the color of authority.
Yes, people have agendas. Yes. people hide what they're really doing, hide what they really want. They hide who they truly are.
But not everyone.
Not every black guy has a huge chip on his shoulder. Not every cop is out the bash some niggers. We have to be willing to err on the side of the benefit of the doubt. We have to have the courage it take to risk the possibility that our worst fears just might be true - but go ahead and act as if they aren't anyway until we have proof.
IMO that's where both Trayvon and George failed. They both acted on their worse fears, their worse instincts. They BOTH acted in Terror, not in Courage.
Abuse of Authority shouldn't have to become personal before people start to give a crap, just as much as suspicion of the police - without evidence - shouldn't be people's default position whenever there is a controversial case at hand.
That's ultimately why we are where we are. And changing that, is ultimately the only way we can fix the festering wound that beating of Rodney King left. That the acquittal of those officers left. That the subsequent RIOTS left. That the OJ Trial Left.
That this trial will leave.
Courage, is our only hope. Do we have it, or would we rather keep pointing fingers?
If we don't find a way to gin some courage up, we'll have far more Trayvon's and far more Zimmerman's to look forward too in the future. And that's the real tragedy here.
Vyan