Posted on 04/17/2012 11:27:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Trayvon Martin’s shooter has a new lawyer. Mansfield Frazier hopes he’s advising his client to take a plea, since a protracted murder trial is the last thing we need.
As George Zimmerman faces murder charges for shooting Trayvon Martin, it’s worth asking if America is in danger of facing Rodney King, Part II?
That’s what I see down the tracks: If this case goes all the way to trial, it’s a train wreck waiting to happen. The time is now for strong hands to take the helm and steady the ship of state—not to mention our national racial, political and legal discourse. The paramount concern has to be to avert a large-scale racial calamity.
As Touré recently wrote, if sane adults are not careful, deliberate and measured in the handling of the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman affair, a dark time could descend upon America.
Look what’s already festering on the streets of Sanford, Florida. On the one hand we’ve got the three stooges of the New Black Panther Party running around Sanford, spouting off crazy ideas and becoming a total embarrassment to more thoughtful and reasoning blacks who simply want justice. On the other we’ve got the equally clownish neo-Nazis, goose-stepping around on their self-appointed mission to protect the white race. In this environment it wouldn’t take much to ignite the racial power keg we’re sitting on. One false or ill-conceived move in this case could allow the loony inmates—not Zimmerman’s current neighbors, but those who are imprisoned by their long-simmering racial hatreds—to fan the incendiary flames of bigotry into full-blown conflagrations of violence across the land.
As someone who watched the King riots unfold from a Los Angeles motel window (and sometimes from the balcony, when we weren’t too afraid to venture out), I’m here to tell you it was a nightmarish time. Thick, acrid black smoke from hundreds of fires hung over the L.A. basin for days as young, armed blacks and Hispanics roared around in open convertibles and jeeps, wearing bandannas and brandishing all sorts of weaponry. We could hear gunfire both in the distance and nearby. Stores that hadn’t been set on fire the first day were looted by the second, and by the third day TV stations were warning of an impending food shortage. A body lay in the gutter on Crenshaw Boulevard for the better part of two days before National Guard troops removed it.
We don’t want to go back there. Fortunately Zimmerman’s new attorney, Mark O’Mara, appears to comprehend the broader implications and potential danger of the situation, and seems well qualified to negotiate a fair outcome for his client, and indeed for the rest of us. He has the calm demeanor of a law professor, and speaks in measured, but not calculating, terms. His first comments seemed designed not to convince anyone of his client’s innocence, but rather to take the heated rhetoric down a few notches. He cautioned that everyone should allow the justice system to work.
So what would a fair outcome look like? To my mind, the government offers Zimmerman a plea deal that has him back on the street within this decade, and he accepts it quietly. That seems like a conclusion most reasonable Americans could live with. Of course, no matter how long or short any sentence may be, there will be those who disagree, some vehemently.
If O’Mara were successful in brokering such a resolution, he should be viewed as nothing less than a savior. A protracted murder trial of George Zimmerman is the last thing this country needs right now. America can only dodge so many racial bullets, and a not-guilty verdict in this case could very easily turn the racial cold war into a very hot one.
Of course, for such a plea scenario to work, Zimmerman will need to listen more to O’Mara than to any of the other voices clamoring for a piece of him. He’s in isolation right now, presumably for his own safety, but a side benefit is that it keeps the more rabid right-wingers from getting inside his head and convincing him to take the case to trial, based on the belief that no matter what the evidence shows, in Florida at least one juror will never vote to convict. Unfortunately, this reasoning is not crazy. The South, after all, is still the South.
But after a few weeks of isolation and the counsel of O’Mara, Zimmerman may decide going to trial isn’t in his best interest. If O’Mara is as savvy as he seems, he will probably inform his client of the stark legal facts: The state overcharged him with murder 2 for two reasons: it’s a bargaining chip to force him to accept a lesser charge, and a means to keep him locked up pretrial. The way the legal system is designed, it’s difficult for someone being held in custody to win acquittal. Even if he went to trial and managed to get a hung jury, the state would surely retry him (multiple times, if necessary), until they get a conviction or he’s spent more time in the county lockup than he would have spent in prison if he’d just pleaded guilty in the first place. And even if he were acquitted, let’s not forget the specter of a federal indictment being handed down.
In all of this, the upcoming bail hearing is key: If the judge doesn’t grant bail, Zimmerman had better start listening real intently to his lawyer.
The wild card is his father, Robert, who has so far sounded like a knee-jerk far-right ideologue. In an interview he said, "I never foresaw so much hate coming from the president, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP," and this was before Obama said anything about the case! It will be virtually impossible to keep Robert Zimmerman away from his son, which means he’ll have ample opportunity to whisper Stand Your Ground rhetoric into his ear, possibly ginning up Zimmerman’s courage and convincing him to go to trial in spite of the danger of being convicted.
We all need to pray that Mark O’Mara is successful in bringing about a fair outcome for his client, for justice, and, more important, for America.
Kenya, maybe.
“An 85-year-old woman was sexually assaulted and battered to death by a home invader who also shot her 90-year-old husband in the face with a BB gun.”
MAYOR Tom Bradley & “Rep.” Maxine Waters stood in the AME church in Inglewood and said:
“NO JUSTICE—NO PEACE!!”
I never did understand why they both were not indicted for inciting a riot.
Bradley was one of the most corrupt persons this country has ever had and no one dared say a word because he was black. His daughter was a life-long crinimal, also. He did his best to keep her record hidden....
AMEN
Nothing like an ‘unbiased’ opinion, is there???
Move the trial out of Florida—maybe to Laramie, Wyoming, and then see what kind of verdict they get.
Keep the names of all the jurors secret for the next 50 years.
If jackie Kennedy can keep secrets about her husband’s assassination secret for 50 years, so can we.
I don’t see one single reason for Zimmerman to accept any kind of a plea deal or any amount of prison time.
Loved these guys.
I worked at Washington & Vermont when the earlier Watts riots happened. Had to go to work or not get paid.
Scary stuff. One black tried to toss a grenade down the air conditioning ducts onto the 2nd floor where about 80 of us were working.
Shots—multiple-— fired. Grenade guy dead. Shooter was our maintenance guy—who had survived Hitler. No charges of any kind.
I was there that day & I can still hear the shots & the running footsteps.
We should use the upcoming riots as an opportunity to eliminate the worst elements of American society.
I mean, they’re right there - self-identified, and self-convicted, right? Bring out the automatic weapons, the millions of rounds of ammo and the AFVs those police departments have acquired...”””
AMEN
Many are getting prepared. They are convinced that Obama is trying to destroy this country & fomenting a black on white race war is something he thinks he can manipulate & escape from himself.
Maybe-——Maybe not.
Does this man, no matter how “well intentioned” he may be (I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt) not realise that it is NOT justice of any kind to hand down a sentence, whatever it may be, based upon the threat that blacks may riot and loot of it’s not enough to their liking? What if nothing less than the death penalty will do? How is it “justice” to base a legal outcome on threats of violence? Will whites get the same opportunity to influence an outcome -say, in the appeal of the Channon/Newsome case if we don’t like the verdict or the sentence? What does that do to our legal system forever after?
They never existed. It was just something someone in Trayvon Martin’s family claimed he had.
That large scale racial calamity won’t be the one he thinks it will be.
Bill O’Reilly & Trayvon Martin family interview should have never happen (Unintentional Laff Riot)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/2873273/posts
Mansfield Frazier lies. Obama had spoken out to say Trayvon looked like he could be his son before Robert Zimmerman spoke out. Mansfield doesn’t like Robert Zimmerman’s defense of his son because its effective and calls out the race baiters. So, there are riots. Lelt them burn down their ghettos again. This time, let them live wallow in their destruction.
So, a bunch of savages will try to burn down their neighborhoods. Big deal.
Also wonder if the woman was aware of his advertised opinion .. LOL !
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