The Zimmerman Verdict: No Surprises, Few Heroes, Many Villains

I am not someone who has followed State of Florida v. George Zimmerman with rapt, 24/7 attention, or even 8/5 attention. But it was easy for me to predict to a friend who asked me last Friday that there would be an acquittal. How could a jury possibly find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, after all, when the state’s own witnesses seemed to help the defendant’s case as much as the prosecution’s?

The saga had many villains and few heroes. The foremost villains were the media — for more on that, see Linda Chavez’s pre-verdict column here – and the state of Florida, which may have mismanaged the way it handled the initial investigation, and certainly acted irresponsibly in bringing a prosecution it could not have expected to win, just to appease the gods of political correctness. Neither of the purported protagonists — George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin — was heroic or villainous; the principal quality of each in the sad, tragic affair was an instinct for poor judgment.

And heroes? Hard to find any — except for the six jurors, who did the right thing in the face of what must have been significant pressure at least to “compromise” and find Mr. Zimmerman guilty of something.

It was an unedifying experience for the country. There are too many with a wedded interest in denying the fact that America offers amazing opportunities to all and that our interracial relations are today astonishingly good — but the death of Trayvon Martin and prosecution of George Zimmerman gave them the national platform. And they will not relinquish it easily.

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There’s a good discussion here by an employment-law expert of the Supreme Court’s decision on university admissions preferences in Fisher v. University of Texas and the issue of employment discrimination. The bottom line: “the law simply abhors preferences, quotas and hiring less-qualified individuals. There is no real ‘affirmative action’ (as that term is commonly known) under the law for hiring, or promotions. Always remember — discrimination of any form is discrimination – in favor of or against any one group.”

That’s exactly right. Many employers seem to think that, because universities are (barely) allowed to weigh race in pursuit of “diversity,” companies are, too. Not so. See also my EEOC testimony on this from a few years back.

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The Washington Post had a story recently about a poll it conducted with ABC News that found the public disapproving of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder by a margin of 51 to 33 percent. The question asked was: “Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down a key part of the federal law overseeing voting rights for minorities?” But what if the public had been asked, “Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that all states should be treated equally under the federal law overseeing voting rights for minorities?”

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Finally, you can listen here to a recent debate I had with Professor Theodore Shaw about the use of the “disparate impact” approach in civil-rights enforcement. Mr. Shaw is the former head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, now a law professor at Columbia University. The disparate-impact approach makes defendants liable for practices that are nondiscriminatory by their terms, in their intent, and in their application — so long as they have disproportionate racial results. So, for example, a landlord who refuses to rent to convicted drug dealers can be held liable for violating the civil-rights laws if this practice has a disproportionate effect on this or that racial group, even if the policy is not intended to discriminate and is enforced evenhandedly. A bad approach, I hope you’ll agree — but one that Mr. Shaw (and, more disturbingly, the Obama administration) enthusiastically support.

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