The Privilege of Not Having to Follow Jury Instructions

Posted by Melvin Bray on July 16th, 2013 filed in Useful Perhaps

If you could never wrap your brain around the concept of systemic privilege, here’s one stark, uncoded and concrete example. In her interview with Anderson Cooper, Juror B37 from the George Zimmerman trial for the death of Trayvon Martin admits to ignoring the judge’s instructions to disregard the Sanford police detective’s testimony that he found Zimmerman credible when he interviewed him. She also volunteers that there was debate among the jury as to whether a conviction of manslaughter can be predicated on all actions leading up to the death of Trayvon or should it just consider what happened at that moment. Now the Florida Criminal Jury Instructions Handbook, 2012-2013 Edition, Section 7.7, clearly states the prosecution must prove:

“(Defendent) intentionally committed an act or acts that caused the death of (victim).”

Oddly enough, it was never disputed that George Zimmerman randomly and falsely labeled Martin a criminal, branded him a threat to Zimmerman’s personal safety, hunted him down after expressing contempt for “assholes” who “always get away” and then used deadly force to make sure it didn’t happen this time. The only thing up for debate was who threw the first blow and, strangely, did Martin at some point gain the upper hand. Now it’s one kind of privilege that one can freely admit to doing multiple terrorizing things over the course of several minutes that provoke a fight–except possibly throw the first punch and/or win the entire time–and then kill the person they had spent minutes threatening, yet not be found guilty of inexcusable, unjustifiable “acts that caused the death of the victim.”

However, it’s a totally different privilege to be able to get on television after acquitting the killer and announce that, by the way, my decision was based on (1) disregarding the judge’s instructions that a detective’s assessment as to Zimmerman’s credibility was not admissible, (2) disregarding the judge’s ruling that the cries for help could not be definitively attributed to either Zimmerman or Martin (disregarding the only other witness to the start of the fight all together) and (3) disregarding jury instructions as written–and half the country won’t find that problematic at all! Now THAT’S some privilege!!  And what makes it systemic is that somehow it doesn’t call into legal question the credibility of the entire judicial proceedings.

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