Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire More Hurdles With DOJ Civil Rights Invention

Plus...one has to weigh the likelihood a sitting Fed Florida Grand Jury would even consider a true-bill following the news that's been reported the past few days including the fact that all 6 jurors emphatically agreed race had no role in this dynamic.
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Holder to audience: �I share your concern� about the Zimmerman case

July 15, 2013 by Allahpundit


I still think it�s 90 percent probable that no federal charges will be filed, but I�ll grant you a 10 percent chance that he brings a case in the full expectation that Zimmerman will be acquitted. That was basically what Corey and the Florida prosecutors did. The first duty of the prosecutor is to cover his/her own ass politically. If charges are filed and the jury acquits, hey � at least they gave it the ol� college try.

Key words here from the Moses of our time: �Unnecessary shooting death.� Is that what the Florida jury found? The confrontation between Martin and Zimmerman was unnecessary, but if you�re letting a guy off on using lethal force in self-defense, by definition you�ve endorsed his view that the shooting was necessary, no?


Of course, as this celebration unfolds, we are also mindful of the pain felt by our nation surrounding the tragic, unnecessary shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida last year � and the state trial that reached its conclusion over the weekend. As parents, as engaged citizens, and as leaders who stand vigilant against violence in communities across the country, the Deltas are deeply, and rightly, concerned about this case. The Justice Department shares your concern � I share your concern � and, as we first acknowledged last spring, we have opened an investigation into the matter.

Independent of the legal determination that will be made, I believe that this tragedy provides yet another opportunity for our nation to speak honestly about the complicated and emotionally-charged issues that this case has raised. We must not � as we have too often in the past � let this opportunity pass. I hope that we will approach this necessarily difficult dialogue with the same dignity that those who have lost the most, Trayvon�s parents, have demonstrated throughout the last year � and especially over the past few days. They suffered a pain that no parent should have to endure � and one that I, as a father, cannot begin to conceive. Even as we embrace their example and hold them in our prayers, we must not forego this opportunity to better understand one another and to make better this nation we cherish.

Moreover, I want to assure you that the Department will continue to act in a manner that is consistent with the facts and the law. We are committed to standing with the people of Sanford, with the individuals and families affected by this incident, and with our state and local partners in order to alleviate tensions, address community concerns, and promote healing. We are determined to meet division and confusion with understanding and compassion � and also with truth. We are resolved, as you are, to combat violence involving or directed at young people, to prevent future tragedies and to deal with the underlying attitudes, mistaken beliefs and stereotypes that serve as the basis for these too common incidents. And we will never stop working to ensure that � in every case, in every circumstance, and in every community � justice must be done.

�Independent of the legal determination that will be made� sounds to me like he�s preparing people for a letdown. With good reason:

[Some] experts said it would be legally inconsistent for the Justice Department to consider filing criminal charges against Zimmerman under the federal Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. Generally, that law prohibits someone from �willfully causing bodily injury� to another person because of his race, color, religion or national origin.

�If the state jury had been persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman caused bodily harm to Trayvon Martin because of Martin�s race, it would have almost certainly convicted Zimmerman of second-degree murder, which requires proof of �ill-will� or �malice,�� said Scott Srebnick, a prominent federal criminal defense attorney in Miami. �So, to bring a federal civil-rights prosecution against Zimmerman, the attorney general would essentially be second-guessing the state jury�s verdict as opposed to vindicating a different or broader federal interest.�

It�s not just the jury�s determination that Zimmerman didn�t act with ill will. It�s the FBI�s determination too, as Ed noted this morning. This is why I think Holder will eventually back off, after a few months have passed and this has fallen off the left�s radar: Waiting to prosecute him after the state verdict, with the DOJ�s own police force having found little to support a civil-rights case, would smell too rancidly political even for Obama and Holder. Why chance it? If they want to mobilize lefties with hot-button racial issues, they�ve got the Supreme Court�s Voting Rights Act decision and the amnesty bill to make magic with. We�ll have a better idea of what they�ll do once the first few polls about the verdict come back. If it splits along racial lines, with strong support for Zimmerman among white voters, congressional Democrats in vulnerable jurisdictions will get nervous about a new federal trial and quietly ask O to drop it.

By the way, has any prominent Democrat mentioned the vigilante threats against Zimmerman in passing in their statements about the case? I�m struck by how much of a non-person Zimmerman is in Holder�s statement, even though he�s now been cleared in court, has been smeared relentlessly in the media as a racist contrary to the findings of Holder�s own police force, and both he and his family are living under threat of death. (Obama�s statement yesterday calling for �calm reflection� is as close as we�ve gotten, I think.) I realize he�s the villain in this racial passion play, but he�s a U.S. citizen who committed no crime according to a jury and is being targeted for criminal reprisals daily. Maybe a word or two from �Moses,� however perfunctorily, that Zimmerman�s a human being too and people should respect the process?

Isaac - Looks like MOM is positioning for sanctions and/or malicious prosecution?

I'd like to see MOM and Zimmerman turn all this talk of civil suits back around on the lot of them.

http://news.yahoo.com/zimmermans-lawyer-calls-prosecutors-disgrace-profession-025529776.html

That's for damned sure.

The one thing that strikes me about the talk of "unnecessary shooting" under the pretext of the situation not being that which would cause imminent fear of death or great bodily injury, is that, apparently, we as a country have been pussified as to what actually constitutes a harmless beating, and what is a major azz whoopin.

If only they didn't have all this anti-bullyism stuff in school, kids would be able to get a benchmark on the extent of beatings they should accept as happenstance.

Maybe the school system is to blame.

An armed society is a polite society. Had Trayvon been a polite boy, he'd be alive today. Best to be polite.

Holder, the DOJ, and their minions are implacable foes. Since they have all the money in America to work with, they can, and will, push the envelope legally.
If they lose, they win. If they win, they win. No matter how it works out for the Zimmerman family, they lose.

Emphasis mine.

Spot-on.

Had Trayvon been armed, GZ would be dead. None of us would have heard about it.

Well said. Very true.

He may well have been dead, because a handgun is a more efficient tool for victimization than a fist or a sidewalk, but that doesn't take away from the fact that an armed society is a polite society, because were everyone armed, in short order impolite behavior, like exhibited by Trayvon that night, will result in the elimination of his kind (i.e., the grossly impolite) from the gene pool.

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DoJ sending trial balloon about demurring on Zimmerman?

July 16, 2013 by Ed Morrissey



In the aftermath of the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the White House tried to assure angry supporters of the Trayvon Martin family that the investigation would continue. Eric Holder yesterday told a luncheon that �I share your concern� over the �tragic, unnecessary shooting death,� while members of Congress pushed the Department of Justice to take some kind of action to address the situation. Today, though, the Washington Post hears from sources within the DoJ that federal action is all but impossible:


Current and former Justice Department officials said Monday that bringing civil rights charges against George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old in Florida, would be extremely difficult and may not be possible.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. vowed to continue a federal investigation of the matter, but other officials said in interviews that the government may not be able to charge Zimmerman with a federal hate crime because it�s not clear that he killed Martin because of his race.

The weakness of the evidence compounds the political problems facing President Obama and Holder, who are under mounting pressure from many liberal and African American groups to bring a federal case against Zimmerman after a Florida jury acquitted him Saturday of second-degree murder and manslaughter.

Actually, it�s more clear that race was not a motivating factor. The FBI determined that already in its report, picked up by The Smoking Gun and published over the weekend. One of the jurors in the case emphasized that last night in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN:


The six-member jury that acquitted George Zimmerman did not believe race played a role in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, the first juror to speak publicly about the trial said Monday night.

The juror, identified only as Juror B37, told CNN�s Anderson Cooper that she and the other jurors believed the screaming voice captured on a 911 recording belonged to Zimmerman, and lent little credibility to a key witness who spoke to Trayvon on the phone before he died. �

So far, however, the FBI has found no evidence that racial bias was a motivating factor in the Feb. 26, 2012, shooting. Agents investigating the case last July determined that Zimmerman had not expressed racial animus at any time before the confrontation with Trayvon in a Sanford housing complex.

That eliminates the hate-crime lever for federal intervention in the case. The jury and the DoJ�s own investigation both concluded that Zimmerman didn�t have the kind of animus required by those statutes, and a further prosecution would not only yield the same reasonable-doubt acquittal � especially after introducing the exact same weak case that the state of Florida had � but also will create even more political damage from its failure.

Generally speaking, anonymous sources from any administration that appear in the Post or the New York Times fall into two categories: whistleblowers and launchers of trial balloons. The latter get sent out to their contacts in the media to release sensitive information on the administration�s terms. That seems to be the purpose of this leak, too. After stoking expectations for forty-eight hours of some kind of meaningful action by the administration, the DoJ appears to be casting a healthy dash of cold water on those prospects.

Bloomberg�s editorial board expresses indignation over the result of the trial, but warns the DoJ to back off:


Now that a Florida jury has acquitted George Zimmerman of second-degree murder in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the U.S. Department of Justice has resumed its inquiry into whether Martin was the victim of a hate crime. The investigation may be necessary and even worthwhile. The answer to the question of whether Zimmerman should be retried in federal court, however, is clear: No.

The Justice Department�s civil-rights investigation, which was put on hold while Zimmerman�s criminal trial was under way, could theoretically uncover new information. And a federal case against Zimmerman might provide a brief catharsis for millions of Americans outraged that an unarmed teen was shot dead, without any criminal penalty imposed on the man who pulled the trigger.

But outrage is not a legal strategy, and catharsis is not something the justice system is especially well-equipped to provide. Pursuing a federal case would ultimately prove both unproductive and unwise.

The DoJ has already conducted an investigation into those issues and come up empty. As Zimmerman was not acting as an agent of the state, there is a good argument that the DoJ doesn�t have a role in this kind of case in the first place, especially after the state has prosecuted for the core act and lost. It�s time to take this advice and end the discussion.

If so, I bet this REALLY ticks off the AIC.. He was pizzed when he couldn't get more gun control.. He'll be just as pizzed that he won't get any race charges on GZ.

But in reality - it ain't over till it's OVER..

Hoping you're more right on this than you were on Snowden being a Chinese spy.

Just don't know if Obama/Holder are willing to do the proper thing under the law and as a result have the news cycles go back to covering all the scandals and poor economic news for the next year leading up to mid-term elections.

Spy? He's certainly a criminal and a traitor so don't know why you're going there. Lastly, he's seeking asylum in Russia as we speak.

You going to send him a housewarming present?

Or it's a deflection morphing into we did our best but Congress needs to act to protect our black youth. The Black Caucus would be on board as well as the other usual suspects. Pretty brazen but that hasn't stopped them yet. On the state level they are already twisting it against stand your ground, which is a non sequitur.

On the state level they are already twisting it to repeal stand your ground
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The Governor (Scott) appeared on TV yesterday and said that issue is dead. What evidence do you have to the contrary?

Had Trayvon been armed (assuming with a pistol), it would have been illegal since he was a Juvenile.

MSM, it's been all the chatter on MSNBC and not so much on CNN. In the political arena, not legal.

Just a poster of Stevie Wonder refusing to do concerts unless SYG is repealed, with a picture of Trayvon talking to Jaba da Hut, with the lyrics "I just called to say, There's a creepy ass cracker following me" under it.

This.

The Administration has gotten all the mileage it can from this, and wants to leave the stink behind.