There’s a lot to be learned from the tragic death of Trayvon Martin.
Martin, a black 17-year-old, was walking home through a gated community in Sanford, Fla., Feb. 26. A man named George Zimmerman, a volunteer with the neighborhood watch, called the police to report a suspicious person in the neighborhood. On the 911 recording, you can hear the dispatcher tell Zimmerman not to follow Martin. Zimmerman responded: “They always get away.”
Zimmerman followed Martin in his car, and there was a confrontation. Zimmerman shot and killed Martin. Zimmerman has admitted to killing Martin, but claims it was self-defense. Martin was unarmed. He was carrying a package of skittles and a bottled of iced tea.
Zimmerman has not been arrested or charged with any crime.
Many are calling the killing an issue of race. Martin was black, and some wonder if he was killed for being black in a gated community. Zimmerman, for those wondering, is Hispanic. Some have labeled the killing a hate crime, and others suspect Zimmerman would have been arrested if he was black, or if Martin was not. There’s some truth to it — the Sanford police department has been accused of racial discrimination before, as when it waited weeks to arrest one of its lieutenant’s sons, caught on video assaulting a black man. And Zimmerman’s statement that “they always get away” lends even more weight to the argument. Zimmerman probably would not have pursued Martin had Martin not been black. But race isn’t the whole story.
Why hasn’t Zimmerman been arrested? The Sanford police chief said they cannot arrest Zimmerman, because he claims the killing was in self-defense, and they have no probable cause to believe otherwise. At the heart of the story are Florida’s gun use laws. Not gun ownership regulations. Zimmerman was licensed to own a gun, and the gun was also licensed. Zimmerman had every legal right to own a gun. Whatever you think of America’s gun problem or the gun control issue, the problem here is not that the law allowed Zimmerman to own a gun, but that it encouraged him to use it.
Florida has something called the “Stand Your Ground” law. It says that people in violent confrontations have the right to defend themselves without first trying to retreat, and protects them from civil and criminal prosecution. The law has good intentions — it was designed to let women protect themselves from domestic violence. Unfortunately, the law has a major flaw. Unlike other self-defense laws, it doesn’t require those who claim it to prove in court that they were defending themselves. Anybody who claims self-defense in Florida is protected from prosecution unless there is some cause to doubt the claim. This means that in situations where there are no witnesses, such as the Martin case, whoever shoots first can’t be prosecuted, as there is no evidence to show they were not defending themselves.
Many are outraged by Martin’s death. They believe the failure to arrest Zimmerman represents racial bias on the part of the police. It turns out the answer may be simpler. In Florida, the police can’t legally arrest a confessed killer.
Max Bartlett can be reached at [email protected].