Zimmerman in Police Custody
April 15, 2012
Topics: Gun Control;
George Zimmerman has been arrested and officially charged with second degree murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida. Zimmerman, who had been in hiding because of a $10,000 bounty put on his head by the New Black Panther Party, contacted police and turned himself in after hearing that he was being officially charged. He is now in police custody in Sanford Florida, and is presumably safe from potential vendettas.
Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey stated that there is adequate evidence for his arrest .
Second degree murder is defined as murder that was committed intentionally, but was not planned or premeditated. Zimmerman has stated from the beginning that he acted in defense of his life, which is fully legal in all states.
The difficulty in this case will be to differentiate between murder and self defense. Obviously a murder was committed because Trayvon Martin is dead. The only question will be whether Zimmerman killed him in self defense or not. In the United States, all citizens are guaranteed the presumption of innocence, meaning that the prosecutor will have to prove Zimmerman was NOT defending himself when he killed Martin.
Many legal experts were surprised by the 2nd degree murder charge. It was widely believed that if charges were brought forward, they would be the charge of manslaughter, which is a lesser charge. If Zimmerman is found guilty, Florida law would give him a sentence of about 25 years in prison.
However, the state will first schedule a pretrial hearing in which the judge will determine whether there is adequate evidence to proceed to a full trial. If the judge determines that there is enough evidence to warrant a trial the case will proceed to trial. If the judge does not think the evidence is substantial enough, the charge will be dropped and Zimmerman will be free.
The hearing date has not been publicly announced yet, but Zimmerman’s lawyers stated that it would take place sometime this week.
What do you think? Did Zimmerman commit a crime, or did he simply defend himself? Do you think the state of Florida was right to arrest him? Do you think the hearing will set him free, or proceed to a trial?
#1 from Darneli Hernandez on September 27, 2012 at 7:57 pm
George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, but is not in jail? Honestly my opinion is when you kill someone, you should not exist either. He should be in jail, but he claims it was self defense. After doing some research, I made up my mind that it was really his fault. Trayvon was a teenager, yet George looked at him like a criminal. He obviously went after him because he was black and was wearing a hoodie. George was the Florida neighborhood watch captain doing his job. As soon as he saw Trayvon, George suspected he was up to something. He reported his sighting to the 911 dispatcher, but the dispatcher told him not to follow Martin. Well George did it anyways and Martin got furious. George says Martin punched him in the face and slammed his face to the sidewalk. I doubt that's what happened. George probably cursed at him and accussed him of something Trayvon did not do. Trayvon probably started screaming and George got mad that he did something to him first. That's when all these punches started to swing and that's where George gets, "it was self defense." Trayvon was unarmed, but George was not. George was so selfish to pull out that gun and shoot Trayvon. How could he? He did not have to resolve the problem with killing Trayvon. George should have not followed him in the first place. He is racist and thoughtless. It is said that over the past six years, George made a series of 46 emergency calls of complaints about unruly people at the pool, potholes, dumped trash, and kids playing in the street. George had focused on specific suspects; the majority of them were young black man. I really wished Trayvon survived the shot, that way he could tell us what a horrible man George Zimmerman is.