Trials Can Be Murder

I've never been involved in a criminal trial in any capacity. But I've known others who were jurors in such trials, including in the most serious of all criminal allegations -- first-degree murder -- and their recounting of events in the jury room is enough to make one wonder whether a jury of "twelve good men and true" is always concerned with determining guilt or innocence.

Mind you, I don't have a better approach to offer. Indeed, the jury of twelve private citizens is historically the most reliable bulwark against the overreaching State. As long as the punishment of a criminal rests with a jury, none of whose members may be a government official or employee, the State has no power the citizenry cannot override at will. But there have been cases in recent memory in which the focus of the jury was open to dispute.

One might be in progress even now: the trial of George Zimmerman for second-degree murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Commentators of every disposition have lined up to give their opinions on this case. Most are quite certain of the outcome, though the trial has experienced several notable reversals in its short run and the defense has yet to begin its case. Bombshells such as the recent indictment of lead prosecuting attorney Angela Corey for destroying evidence in the case haven't swayed the "pro-conviction" pundits one iota. Neither have the "pro-acquittal" opinion-mongers been swayed by testimony from Jacksonville, Florida medical examiner Valerie Rao that Zimmerman's injuries, reputedly inflicted by Martin before the fatal act, were "insignificant."

Both these communities of opinion have based their positions on a presumption they will not explicitly state: that the jury's verdict will not be overly influenced by the jurors' conclusions about Zimmerman's guilt or innocence.

And they just might be right.

Consider the trial, two decades ago, of O.J. Simpson for the murder of his estranged wife and her friend. The circumstantial evidence was stunningly one-sided: If evidence could convict in the absence of a jury, Simpson would have gone down for murder one. Yet the jury acquitted him. Observers drew every conclusion under the Sun, but the predominant evaluation was that the majority-black jury was simply unwilling to convict a black sports icon of Simpson's stature for murder.

The Zimmerman trial might prove to be the inverse of the Simpson circus.

There have been many threats, both open and subtle, of an explosion of interracial violence should Zimmerman be acquitted. The prospect of riots like unto those that followed the original Rodney King Affair trial cannot be waved aside. Indeed, such riots might not be confined to the state of Florida.

There's an equally distasteful inverse approach as well: should Zimmerman be convicted, which at this time would be against the weight of the evidence and the testimony of the available witnesses, blacks might regard it as a license for lawbreaking, including a declaration of "open season" on neighborhood watch volunteers. Not all such volunteers patrol armed.

Add to this the effect on the perceived reliability of the judicial system, should the verdict strike the general public as determined mainly by race-relations considerations. That system has taken enough body blows in recent years that just one more strong one might cast it permanently into disrepute.

A final thought: When a juror drifts away from the testimony, the evidence, and the conclusions to be drawn from the aggregate thereof, and focuses instead on "the good of society," or any partial approximation thereof, he is no longer concerned with justice. Justice is about the redress of violations of rights -- individuals' rights, not the mythical well-being of some mythical collectivity that can't even be intensively defined.

Which is why I find the optimism of well-known gun-rights commentator John Lott -- "the Zimmerman trial is already over" -- to be unfounded, unwise, and unreliable, no matter what fate George Zimmerman's twelve peers might ultimately decree.