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The release of evidence in George Zimmerman’s murder trial quickly made a mockery of his second-degree murder charges, and threw a further layer of shame upon media and political opportunists who misrepresented a tragic, but fairly straightforward, case of lethal force employed in self-defense. It is remarkable to take stock of this evidence and realize that it supports every single aspect of Zimmerman’s statement to the police. His injuries are consistent with his account of physical assault by Trayvon Martin. Martin’s gunshot wound occurred at the very short range described by Zimmerman, demolishing fantasies about a racist mall-cop wannabe stalking...

President Obama talked about “racism” at Morehouse College this weekend. The timing is interesting because the trial of George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin in February 2012, will begin in June. Zimmerman is Hispanic and Martin was black. President Obama stated at Morehouse, “We know that too many young men in our community continue to make bad choices. Growing up, I made quite a few myself. Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency sometimes to make excuses for me not...

State prosecutors in the case against George Zimmerman are pushing to keep Zimmerman's attorneys from bringing testimony about Trayvon Martin's past during the trial. The state said in motions filed on Friday they want to prevent Zimmerman's attorneys from bringing up Martin's personal life, including his school records, previous suspension from school, fights, text messages sent prior to his death unless related to case and his social media use. The motion also says the state wants to prevent the defense from using Martin's toxicology report, which showed the level of marijuana in Martin's blood the night he was shot and...

While watching George Zimmerman's immunity hearing online in late April 2013, Chip Bennett took satisfaction seeing Florida prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda flail away at the one blog that has given him fits from the beginning. "BDLR alleges that The Conservative Treehouse doxed Witness 8," Bennett commented. "Double shot!"

ORLANDO—Is it time for humans to get their own black box? That’s the provocative question behind an ambitious project by four undergraduate engineering students from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, presented at this weekend's Cornell Cup in Orlando, Fla. Over the course of a school year, the Amherst team built a prototype “black box for humans” that you could carry around wherever you went, and could be activated to record audio of your surroundings in case you ran into trouble. That audio recording—heavily encrypted, completely tamper-proof and admissible as evidence in a U.S. courtroom, per the Amherst team—would hypothetically...

As harsh as that variation on a theme might sound, it is more disturbing still that this has become one of the primary policy devices of the American left to advance their political agenda. Most know the famous admission by Rahm Emanuel regarding a good crisis, but few of us can confess to the foresight to predict just how cravenly this overt policy of exploitation would come to be implemented. That it has been practiced at the expense of the populace and the security of our country is a fact, but the truth remains too distasteful for some to fully...

FINALLY, PRESIDENT Obama has spoken as a black man. It wasn’t entirely on his own initiative, but a question he was asked about Trayvon Martin left him no choice. When he finally spoke, he began haltingly, as if his words were taking him out on a high wire with no net below. This was risky. He said the safe things first: that the death of 17-year-old Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman in a Florida suburb was a tragedy. He said he sympathized with the parents, and that various law enforcement agencies should diligently investigate the matter. Then he...

The new Trayvon Martin Memorial was established at the Goldsboro Welcome Center on Historic Goldsboro Boulevard in Sanford. It features Trayvon Martin’s name on a headstone and 10 other Sanford area residents who family members say were killed unjustly

An arbitrator on Wednesday ruled in favor of a former Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue captain who was demoted after he posted comments to Facebook about Trayvon Martin following the teenager's shooting death. Brian Beckmann was demoted in May 2012 after posting: "I and my co-workers could rewrite the book on whether our urban youths are victims of racist profiling or products of their failed, (expletive), ignorant, pathetic, welfare dependent excuses for parents." A blogger published the post, which sparked protest in Miami's African-American community.

A year ago Feb. 26, neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., and within a month every sentient person on the planet knew “Trayvon” by name. What they did not know was Martin’s background. Sanford Police Department (SPD) investigator Chris Serino, for instance, said publicly of Martin, “This child has no criminal record whatsoever.” He called Martin “a good kid, a mild-mannered kid.” The media almost universally sustained this tragically false narrative. Martin had the seeming good fortune of attending school in the Miami-Dade School District, the fourth-largest district in the country and...

(snip) “As a result of last year’s Trayvon Martin shooting, a company offered for sale a target of a faceless silhouette wearing a hoodie with his hands in his pockets, one of which was holding two objects, these objects in the hand were non-threatening and the target was something that I viewed as a no-shoot situation,” he said.

On the anniversary of her son’s arrest in the killing of Miami teen Trayvon Martin, Gladys Zimmerman wrote an open letter criticizing the justice system that she says failed her family. The letter from the mother of George Zimmerman, who faces trial in June in the fatal shooting of Martin, was written in Spanish and was translated and posted to the Twitter account of her older son, Robert Zimmerman Jr. on April 11th, one year after the younger Zimmerman, 29 and a former neighborhood watch volunteer, was charged with second degree murder for killing Martin. The initial decision by Sanford,...

PORT CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A police officer accused of bringing targets resembling Trayvon Martin to a gun range has been fired.

Ahead of the trial of George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin's father, Tracy Martin, told CBSNews.com that he wouldn't have lost his "heart and soul" had Zimmerman not pursued his son. "Had he just simply obeyed what the dispatcher was telling him, I wouldn't be here today, Trayvon would be getting ready for graduation," said Tracy Martin. Zimmerman acknowledges shooting Trayvon Martin to death last February, after reporting to local police in Florida that the 17-year-old appeared suspicious. A police dispatcher urged Zimmerman not to pursue Martin, who was African-American and wearing a hoodie at the time, but Zimmerman ended up in...

Trayvon Martin's parents have settled a wrongful death claim, reportedly for more than $1 million, against the Florida homeowners association where their son was killed. [snip] Under the terms of the settlement, Trayvon's parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, agreed to drop their wrongful death claim as well as claims for pain and suffering, loss of earnings and expenses. [little more at link]

<p>Attached to a state filing in the case against George Zimmerman on Thursday was a newly public piece of evidence from the young woman who says she was on the phone with Trayvon Martin just before his death.</p> <p>Prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda's new pleading included as an exhibit a letter, apparently written by the young woman dubbed "Witness 8," to 17-year-old Trayvon's parents less than a month after he was shot Feb. 26, 2012.</p>

SANFORD – The judge in the George Zimmerman case this week signed orders, requiring the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to release to defense attorneys the biographical profiles agents did on Trayvon Martin and key witnesses in the case, including his girlfriend. It's a written version of an order she made from the bench earlier this month. The information includes some criminal background information and other pieces of information likely to be useful to attorneys wanting to challenge the character of a witness. Prosecutors and an FDLE attorney earlier this month argued that the information should not be turned over,...

NBC doesn’t want to deal with George Zimmerman’s libel suit. In a Feb. 20 filing in the case, NBC Universal Media LLC asks a Florida circuit court to stay the case until the conclusion of Zimmerman’s June trial for second-degree murder of Trayvon Martin. --snip-- To recap Zimmerman’s case against NBC News: On the night that he shot Martin, Zimmerman called 911 and narrated his pursuit of the teenager in his gated community in Sanford, Fla. A March 27 edition of the “Today” show abridged the 911 tape, as follows: Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good....

The murder case against half-Latino neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman was dealt a devastating blow Tuesday, when prosecutors acknowledged that their star witness, the 19-year old former girlfriend of the late Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, lied under oath. The woman, who also told police she was on the phone with Martin shortly before his death, falsely testified that she was in the hospital on the day of Martin’s funeral — perhaps to garner sympathy. “In fact, she lied,” defense attorney Don West said. Prosecutors also acknowledged her lie, but were reportedly vague about whether they would charge the woman with perjury....

The case of the Florida man accused of fatally shooting unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin last year took two twists Tuesday at a monthly hearing attended by attorneys on both sides of the case. MyFoxOrlando.com reports defense attorney Mark O'Mara, who is representing the alleged shooter George Zimmerman, was seeking medical records for Martin's girlfriend. The girlfriend, known as Witness 8 in court proceedings, is considered to be a key witness in the case because she alleges she was on the phone with Martin before he was killed. In a recorded interview with the attorney for Martin's parents last March,...

Trayvon Martin's girlfriend, the state's most important witness in the George Zimmerman murder case, was caught in a lie, it was revealed Tuesday. It was not the first piece of misinformation tied to her, but it was the most damaging to date and left prosecutors in a very awkward position. They had to publicly acknowledge that their star witness had lied under oath and had to answer questions about what they intend to do about it. Reporters asked: Will you charge the 19-year-old Miami woman with perjury? The state's lead prosecutor, Bernie de la Rionda, gave an ambiguous answer: "You...

MIAMI — George Zimmerman, who is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin, is all but certain to take his case directly to a jury on June 10 and skip a highly anticipated pretrial self-defense hearing, his lawyer said Tuesday. At a “Stand Your Ground” hearing, the judge is tasked with weighing whether to grant immunity from prosecution under a Florida law that gives people who believe they are in imminent danger of being killed or seriously hurt the benefit of the doubt to protect themselves. A defendant who claims self-defense in Florida has a right to...

George Zimmerman's "stand your ground" hearing will not begin April 22 as planned, after his lawyer Mark O'Mara told a judge this morning he will not need the court time she'd set aside... Attorneys for George Zimmerman were expected to ask his judge this morning to order the state's most important witness, the young Miami woman who was on the phone with Trayvon Martin just before he was shot, to produce medical records. However, defense lawyer Don West made a startling claim shortly after the hearing began: The state had revealed, before the hearing, that there are no medical records....

Murder defendant George Zimmerman looks startlingly different from the last time we saw him in court. He reportedly gained a whopping 100 pounds because of the stress of the upcoming trial. The former neighborhood volunteer watchman charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of teen Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, in Sanford, Fla., reportedly always wears a bulletproof vest for fear of being killed. According to FoxNews.com, 29-year-old Zimmerman also wears a disguise when out in public, which is not very often, and lawyer Mark O’Mara claims his client is in constant fear for his life. “He never...

One year ago today, a bullet pierced 17-year-old Trayvon Martin’s heart and the pulse of our nation. When the general public initially learned of the tragic circumstances, a sense of outcry ensued as citizens struggled to reconcile the basic facts of the case with the law: George Zimmerman, 29, killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin — who was walking home from a 7-Eleven with Skittles and an iced tea, wearing a hoodie — because he looked “suspicious,” and the Sanford Police Department failed to arrest him. Throughout the past year, the controversy sparked continuous dialogue that evolved from a discussion on racial...

Demonstrators including actor Jamie Foxx gathered in New York and Florida on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, reviving a national discussion on gun laws and racial profiling. Neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot and killed Martin, 17, in the Orlando suburb of Sanford on Feb. 26, 2012, and initially went free based on his claims of self-defense. But a national outcry forced the city's police chief to resign and the governor to appoint a special prosecutor. Zimmerman now faces second-degree murder charges. He has maintained his innocence, and supporters say...

Keeping Hope A Lie – One Year Later: The Trayvon Martin story is on Legacy Media provided Life Support The million hoodie march is now a couple hundred race-baiting fools… gathering to beat their drums and demand mo’ money under the guise of ‘In-just-us’. Laughable at best… (AP STORY) Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, were joined by actor Jamie Foxx and a crowd of about 200 people on Tuesday evening in Manhattan’s Union Square Park. They lit candles and held a moment of silence at 7:17 p.m., the time Martin was fatally shot on Feb. 26, 2012. Now...

The anniversary of the killing of Trayvon Martin has led to a number of commemorative events in various cities around the country. The 17-year-old high school student was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida, on Feb. 26, 2012, sparking a national controversy. In the aftermath of the teenager’s death, there were a number of rallies in support of his family and denouncing racial profiling and gun violence. A candlelight vigil will be held on Tuesday evening at 6 p.m. in New York City’s Union Square Park, with a moment of silence to begin shortly after...

The Task Force on Citizen Safety and Protection released its final report on the controversial "Stand Your Ground" law -- and it recommends that it should not be overturned. The Task Force delivered their final report Friday morning to the Office of the Florida Senate President, Office of the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives and the Executive Office of the Governor. "The Task Force concurs with the core belief that all persons, regardless of citizenship status, have a right to feel safe and secure in our state. To that end, all persons who are conducting themselves in a...

The simple story — cops yawn when burly white vigilante stalks and kills unarmed African-American child for the "crime" of walking while black — shocked the conscience of much of the nation a year ago and touched off an explosion of indignant demagoguery. Trayvon Martin, 17, was walking through a Sanford, Fla., subdivision early on the evening of Feb. 26, 2012, headed from a convenience store to the home where he was staying with his father. Off-duty neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, 28, was driving to the grocery store when he saw Martin and called police to report that an...

CNN's Piers Morgan invoked the death of Trayvon Martin to support his case for gun control, but the brother of Martin's accused shooter George Zimmerman had a retort ready on Tuesday's Piers Morgan Tonight. "You would accept, would you not, that if your brother had not gone out armed with a gun that day, Trayvon Martin would be celebrating his 18th birthday today," Morgan first pressed Zimmerman. But Zimmerman responded with his side of the story: "You know, there's no telling what would have happened. We don't know if we would have been commemorating shortly the one-year anniversary that George...

Media coverage of the George Zimmerman shooting of Trayvon Martin has been skewed for months by wild charges of racism against George. NBC News infamously edited tape of Zimmerman to make it appear that he thought Martin was suspicious thanks to his race; CNN reported that Zimmerman had used a racial slur during his 911 call. That thematic stretched all the way to the White House, with President Obama suggesting that Zimmerman was acting out of racism, since as Obama put it, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” The truth is far different. Not only was Zimmerman...

WASHINGTON – A Florida congresswoman on Tuesday introduced a resolution honoring Trayvon Martin, the Florida teen whose slaying a year ago this month stirred national controversy. Rep. Frederica Wilson, a South Florida Democrat, introduced a resolution “honoring the life of Trayvon Martin, urging the repeal of Stand Your Ground laws, and calling on the United States government to address the crisis of racial profiling,” according to a statement from her office. “Today, Trayvon Martin would have celebrated his 18th birthday,” the statement read. “We all know the tragic circumstances surrounding his murder: Trayvon was racially profiled, chased, made to fight...

Buying a ski mask isn’t illegal, but could restricting their sale help prevent crime? The notion is stirring debate among some Northwest Washington residents after reports of robberies committed by men wearing ski masks. The frequency of the robberies also has caught attention of police, who say one neighborhood crew is frequently purchasing masks at a local sports store for the express purpose of committing robberies. “They clearly are a problem. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see it being mentioned in all the reports,” said Faith Wheeler, an Advisory Neighborhood Commission member from the Takoma neighborhood in Northwest. And while police from...

Jerome McCorry organized a protest against a gun show, claiming that the gun show made it too easy to buy guns. Why did that worry him? Perhaps because because the easy availability of guns might have made his career as a rapist more dangerous. (via Instapundit) Outside of Bill Goodman’s Gun and Knife Show, people were protesting the sale of assault weapons. Those are the guns which the proposed bill would ban inside Hara Arena. “We know that guns are being sold on the floor inside Hara Arena illegally” said Jerome McCorry. “No background checks no identification of any kind.”...

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 84 years old on Jan. 15 if he hadn’t been killed in Memphis, Tenn., at 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, at age 39 by an assassin’s bullet. Trayvon Martin would have turned 18 years old this coming Feb. 5 had he not been shot and killed Feb. 26, 2012 in Sanford at 7:17 p.m. while walking from a store to an apartment in a gated community. How both deaths galvanized a nation was explored on Jan. 17 during a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. banquet in Daytona Beach. Derrick Henry, Daytona’s...

DAYTONA BEACH -- The parents of Trayvon Martin are presenting a scholarship in their son's name during a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration in Daytona Beach. Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin were scheduled to join attorney Benjamin Crump for Thursday's annual banquet, hosted by Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration for Florida, Inc., at the Hilton Oceanfront Hotel to honor the civil rights leader. Trayvon's parents planned to present the scholarship to a local high-school senior. Crump is giving the keynote address. Trayvon Martin would have graduated from high school this year...

One of the most important defense witnesses in the George Zimmerman murder case – the one who told police he saw Trayvon Martin straddling Zimmerman and "throwing down blows on the guy kinda MMA-style," was quietly brought to the Seminole County Courthouse Dec. 11 and deposed, according to new court paperwork. The man, identified in court records only as "witness 6," was a neighbor who told authorities he heard and saw the fight. By identifying the clothes they wore, he told police that Zimmerman was on the bottom, was being beat up and was crying for help. Zimmerman is the...

Trayvon Martin's mother is going to join Florida lawmakers to announce a bill that would repeal the state's Stand Your Ground Law. The announcement is scheduled to happen at 11:30 a.m. in Tallahassee. The bill, HB 4009, was filed on Jan. 9, 2013. Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon's mom, will be there along with the Martin family attorneys. George Zimmerman, the man accused of killing Trayvon Martin, has used the Stand Your Ground Law as his defense in the shooting.

America the beautiful, with all its celebration of democratic freedoms, has become a place where children are gunned down in their first-grade classrooms, and teenagers are killed walking home with Skittles and iced tea. The latest blight on the nation's social consciousness is a massacre of unconscionable proportion: A lone gunman, identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, entered a Connecticut elementary school last week and used a semi-automatic rifle to unleash carnage by killing 20 children, all age 6 or 7, and six adults -- schoolteachers and staff. Lanza had killed his own mother in her home, reportedly shooting her in...

With race relation issues in Sanford, there's been a secret peacemaker visiting the city. For the first time, the a Sanford project manager is speaking out about it. When George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin back in February, it sparked plenty of protests, exposing a problem with race relations in the City of Sanford. "They're not going to go away, so it's not time to be the ostrich in the sand," says Sanford Senior Project Manager Andrew Thomas. Among all the commotion, there were peacemakers in the crowd, and at least one continues to keep coming back. Thomas says...

Remember when ABC obtained a police station surveillance tape which supposedly showed no injuries to George Zimmerman, thereby allegedly disproving his claim that he was being beaten when he shot Trayvon Martin? The Martin family lawyer along with plenty of left-wing blogs (including a once-famous photo analyst) used that video to proclaim Zimmerman’s guilt. Among those leading the charge against Zimmermanw as a totally out of control Lawrence O’Donnell, furious that Zimmerman’s lawyer at the time refused to sit for an abuse session with O’Donnell: (VIDEO AT LINK) Subsequent to that, additional photos and medical evidence were released showing that...

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - A color photograph of George Zimmerman with a bloody, swollen nose taken on the night he shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin last February was posted on the Internet on Monday by Zimmerman's legal defense team. As the photo began to be circulated widely by the news media, lawyers on both sides disagreed about its significance to the second-degree murder case against Zimmerman. "It's not a game changer," Zimmerman lawyer Mark O'Mara told Reuters. But O'Mara said the photo was significant in that it shows vividly the injuries Zimmerman incurred during his confrontation with...

The graphic photo, taken by police the night of Zimmerman and Martin's fatal encounter, was previously released as a blurry black-and-white image. posted about an hour ago

George Zimmerman's legal team has asked a judge to force an attorney for Trayvon Martin's family to turn over to the defense a recorded interview with the witness described as the teen's girlfriend. According to Benjamin Crump, an attorney representing Trayvon's family, the girlfriend was on the phone with 17-year-old Trayvon moments before he was shot by Zimmerman on Feb. 26. At issue is a recorded interview Crump conducted with the girl, identified in prosecution documents as Witness 8. Crump played a portion of his talk with Witness 8 at a press conference in late March. Crump has said that...

<p>The parents of Trayvon Martin have been saluted by Ebony magazine.</p> <p>Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton were named Ebony Power 100 honorees. So was Benjamin Crump, their attorney, at a celebration last week in New York.</p>

A Florida judge has denied a prosecutor’s request for a gag order to prevent George Zimmerman’s attorney from posting documents and other information online. [Snip] In her two-page order Monday, Circuit Court Judge Debra Nelson wrote that she found no "overriding pattern of prejudicial commentary" and noted that a dozen media companies that had opposed the order were right when they argued that the state had failed to demonstrate prejudice. Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda had argued that Zimmerman’s lawyer, Mark O’Mara, has used a website set up to assist Zimmerman and social media sites such as...

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) - A judge ruled Friday that attorneys for a Florida neighborhood watch volunteer can inspect the school records and social media postings of the unarmed teenager he is accused of murdering.

A judge ruled on Friday that attorneys for George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch leader charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, can have access to the dead teen's school records and social media accounts. Circuit Judge Debra Nelson, who is the new presiding judge in this highly publicized and emotional case, said that Zimmerman's attorneys can subpoena Trayvon Martin's schools for his discipline records but must keep anything they obtain private. "I think that you're entitled to those records," Nelson said during the hearing at the Seminole County Courthouse in Sanford, Fla. The judge also granted...

SANFORD – Hours before George Zimmerman will return to court for a hearing on his request for Trayvon Martin's school records, the teen's parents accused Zimmerman of needlessly attacking their slain son's character. "I feel that Trayvon's school records are not relevant in this case," Trayvon's father Tracy Martin said this morning, adding that Zimmerman's medical records, also a pending issue for today's hearing, "are very relevant in the case." "It is wrong to subpoena his records on so many levels," said Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump, who called the defense request "the old classic method of attacking the victim."