

Your Mail 8-4-13: Zimmerman not at fault ... Individual rights assured

2:02 PM, Aug. 1, 2013  |  Comments
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Regarding the Aug. 1 letter to The Town Talk from Leonard Ford Jr. about the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman trial, which acquitted Zimmerman of all charges.

Ford asks for this verdict to be a "rallying call for us to commit to the struggle for equity for all." While I have personally come to the side many times on racial issues mostly in favor of blacks, I believe that this verdict was a correct one. I saw Martin as the aggressor and Zimmerman as basically a good person, not only as someone who isn't a racist, but someone who has a decent history of having good relations with blacks. I saw Zimmerman as trying to do something about a bad problem involving break-ins and robberies in his neighborhood. I saw Martin as a teenager whose behavior and life were definitely in a downward spiral.

Martin surprised Zimmerman and was putting a pretty good beating on Zimmerman. Zimmerman was obviously yelling for help, but no one came to help. Zimmerman was left having to use his weapon to stop the beating and possibly save his life.

The one thing that I believe may need to be reconsidered is the controversial "Stand Your Ground" law in Florida.

I sympathize with people of color who get profiled and who are on the opposite end of suspicious looks or false accusations. However, I don't believe that this was the case in the Martin/Zimmerman situation.

Greg Thibeaux


Individual rights assured

In baseball, if a runner and the ball arrive at the base at the same time the runner is safe because a "tie goes to the runner." It's a built-in advantage because running is harder than throwing.

Because the state is so massive and its resources unlimited, the citizen before the state is beaten before the fight begins when charged with a capital crime.

Such was the fear that the citizen would be falsely jailed through ignorance or corruption that many built-in advantages for the single citizen against the behemoth of the state were laid down in the Constitution.

The object of this is so that the state has a hard time putting innocent people to death. Clearly new DNA testing evidence has proven those measures clearly are not functioning as well as one would hope.

Under law a jury must find innocent anyone charged with a crime that the state cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt committed an illegal act.

In some states if you're carrying a gun and get in a fight and start losing the fight and think you're in danger of great bodily harm or death, you can pull your gun and kill the other person in self-defense.

I don't like the idea of guilty people going free, but I like less the idea an innocent might be unfairly punished, the latter evil being so compound a tragedy. Our entire legal foundation is built on the sovereignty of the individual.

Damian Brumley



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