Two
weeks into the George Zimmerman trial the debate has intensified over whether
Florida state prosecutor Angela "tough on Crime" Corey and her team is helping
or hurting their case against Zimmerman with their witnesses. The string of
witnesses has offered a mixed bag of both damning and corroborative testimony against
and for Zimmerman that has been more than enough to the send a red flag up. Though
Zimmerman is not a police officer being prosecuted for misconduct, he's the
closest thing to it without a badge. And that conferred on him some of the same
perks that cops tried for misconduct get in hyper racially charged cases where
the victims such as Trayvon Martin are young African-American or Hispanics.
The
two biggest are the top flight defense attorneys that defend police officers or
those with some legal standing. They routinely twist and turn prosecution
witnesses and their testimony inside out. They use a storehouse of techniques
from subtly playing on racial stereotypes to dredging up the often checkered
personal histories of prosecution witnesses to impugn their character,
veracity, and integrity. This template has been employed with near textbook
lethal efficiency by Zimmerman's defense attorneys.
The far bigger perk, though, for defendants
such as Zimmerman are often the prosecutors. They are loath to bring charges
against police officers or those that have close ties with the police that are
accused of misconduct. More than a decade ago the U.S. Civil Rights Commission
in its landmark study," Who's Guarding the Guardians," of the conduct of police and prosecutors in
civil rights cases, told exactly why. It cited the traditionally close
relationship between district or county attorneys and police officers, who
usually work together to prosecute criminals, the difficulties they have in
convincing grand juries and trial juries that a police officer did not merely
make an understandable mistake, but committed a crime; and the lack
of information about cases that could be prosecuted or systems for reviewing
possibly prosecutable cases .
These hurdles were plainly evident in the
moments after Martin was gunned down. Zimmerman was not arrested, his
statements largely were accepted without corroboration, and photos after the
fact of his alleged injuries at the hands of Martin were widely distributed,
and the leaks about Martin's alleged bad behavior while silent about Zimmerman's
run-ins with the law. Then there was the initial decision by Sanford police
officials in consort with local prosecutors not to file charges against
Zimmerman.
The testimony of the first prosecution
witnesses stirred the controversy. One virtually fingered Martin as the
aggressor. And one Sanford police officer strongly hinted that he thought
Zimmerman was telling the truth about his version of the confrontation with
Martin and that an audiotape of the police dispatcher call seemed to support
it. Another one tried to shoot down the notion that Martin was racially profiled
by Zimmerman. Prosecutors hammered both on their statements and got them to
partially back away from them. One was so prejudicial in favor of Zimmerman
that the judge even ruled that it could not be admitted. But the jury still
heard the officer's supportive words of Zimmerman.
The way around the often ingrained reluctance
of local prosecutors to prosecute cops or individuals such as Zimmerman or
prosecute tepidly has been to appoint a special prosecutor supposedly who can
be independent, objective, and with no close ties to law enforcement or those
close to law enforcement in a city or county where the cops have been accused
of misconduct. That's why Corey was chosen
to prosecute Zimmerman. But the U.S. Civil Rights Commission noted that the
appointment of a special prosecutor does not guarantee that police officers
accused of wrongdoing will be prosecuted and ultimately punished. In many
cases, the special prosecutor is another county or district attorney selected
from a neighboring jurisdiction that may be subject to the same biases and
partiality as the original prosecutor. The Commission cites numerous
examples where special prosecutors have been appointed in high profile cases to
eliminate real or perceived bias by local prosecutors for the defendants yet
the prosecution has still failed to get a conviction.
The conventional wisdom is that a hard line law and order prosecutor such as
Corey will pull out all stops to nail a Zimmerman. But the mish mash testimony
from the prosecution witnesses against him can't be casually dismissed when there's
the ever present danger that jurors can interpret confused testimony from prosecution
witnesses to mean that it has not proven its case against a defendant beyond
the high standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. The job of Zimmerman's defense
attorneys is to create just enough doubt to win acquittal or at the worst play
for a hung jury. The absolute disastrous thing that can happen in these cases
is for the prosecution to do anything that can be construed by jurors as aiding
and abetting the defense. This is even more imperative in a touchy, polarizing,
high profile, racially charged trial.
The
prosecution needs its best A game to insure a conviction in these type cases. Without
second guessing the Zimmerman's prosecution's choice of witnesses and testimony
or trial outcome, the jury as always in these cases is out on how well the prosecution
does its job.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His
new ebook is America on Trial: The
Slaying of Trayvon Martin ( Amazon ).
He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the
Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson
Report on KTYM 1460 AM Radio Los Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica
Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
