![]() The deadly encounter took place on February 26, 2012, as Martin walked back to his father’s fiancee’s house through the rain from a Sanford convenience store. “I think that from now on, if there is someone who wants to follow someone with a gun, I think they’ll think twice about it.” “I don’t want them to be discouraged because I think they may have saved the life of another child,” Jackson said. Martin family attorney Natalie Jackson commended the millions of people who signed an online petition “not in an effort to persecute George Zimmerman, but in an effort to say a black 17-year-old child should be able to walk home from the store and not be shot.” He said the country “absolutely” needs to have a conversation about whether young black males are treated differently in the criminal justice system – but said that conversation is a separate topic from what happened the night Zimmerman and Martin met. “I think things would have been different if George Zimmerman were black for this reason: He never would have been charged with a crime,” O’Mara said. Prosecutor Angela Corey said Martin was unfairly viewed as a criminal before he was shot.Īmid the national debate about whether Zimmerman racially profiled Martin, defense attorney O’Mara suggested his client was actually profiled by critics. “So we have to have very responsible conversations about how we get better as a country and move forward from this tragedy and learn from it.” “The whole world was looking at this case for a reason … We’d be intellectually dishonest if we didn’t acknowledge the racial undertones in this case,” Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump said. The trial may be over, but the race debate surrounding the case rages on. “For Trayvon to rest in peace, we must all be peaceful.” “I think he has more reason now than ever to think that people are trying to kill him because they express they’re trying to kill him, all the time, every day, on my Twitter feed, on the Internet,” Robert Zimmerman told CNN’s Piers Morgan.īut Crump said everyone should stay calm, especially for Martin’s sake. When asked if George Zimmerman will keep the gun he used to shoot Trayvon Martin, his brother said he has good reason to. said his brother “is going to be looking around his shoulder for the rest of his life.” “He has to be very cautious and protective of his safety because there is still a fringe element who have said, at least in tweets and everything else, that they want revenge – that they will not listen to a verdict of not guilty,” defense attorney Mark O’Mara said. In the immediate aftermath, they appeared to have gotten their wish – even though the Internet erupted with outrage.īut now that Zimmerman is a free man, his defense and his brother fear for his safety. None of the jurors wanted to speak to the media after the verdict.īoth sides of the case asked for peace after the verdict. ![]() Ultimately, they believed Zimmerman wasn’t guilty of either charge. ![]() ![]() To convict Zimmerman of manslaughter, the jurors would have had to believe he “intentionally committed an act or acts that caused the death of Trayvon Martin.” That charge could have carried a sentence of up to 30 years in prison, though the jury was not told of that possible sentence. For second-degree murder, the jurors would have had to believe that Martin’s unlawful killing was “done from ill will, hatred, spite or an evil intent” and would be “of such a nature that the act itself indicates an indifference to human life.”
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