Mississippi Burning & Treyvon Martin (George Zimmerman). Law Essay

The Popular on Trial: Corrupting Morals
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The Popular on Trial: Corrupting Morals
Introduction
On 14th July 2013, Zimmerman was declared not guilty, facing charges of murdering Treyvon Martin. This ruling, to some, was considered victory for the new type of civil rights era. Many Americans claimed that Zimmerman’s acquittal represented persecution of lawful gun owners as the new civil rights battle (Giroux, 2012). As such, George Zimmerman became their icon. A similar case is presented in the U.S. vs. Cecil Price et al. film, whose central focus is the power struggle existing between whites and blacks in Mississippi. The film shows blacks being oppressed by whites. The two cases present a case of the popular on trial and how morals are corrupted in the society. Whereas Zimmerman is acquitted after murdering Treyvon in Treyvon vs. Zimmerman, blacks are oppressed by whites in the Mississippi burning case, with both scenarios showing corruption of morals in form of the struggle for civil rights in the society.
Human Rights, Civil Rights, and the case of Treyvon vs. Zimmerman
A section of the American community considered the acquittal of George Zimmerman as a travesty of justice, a current iteration of Jim Crow, in which a white shoots a black innocent person dead and walks scot-free. In this case, what angered the citizens was the fact that Trayvon Martin was unarmed at the time of the shooting (Bergold, A. N., & Kovera, 2020). The remaining population treated the verdict as the beginning of another form of civil rights movement, arguing that it was a gun freedom movement which was under trial in the Zimmerman case. In this case, the state showed willingness to ignore the available hard evidence and carry prosecution what the police had initially considered an open and shut case of self-defense.
During the case, prosecutors argued that Zimmerman had evil in his heart and overstepped his legal boundaries after choosing to follow Trayvon and then shooting him on that rainy night in February. However, those who supported Zimmerman argued that he had a civic duty to carry out following the 9/11 scenario in America (Miller, 2020). Currently, crime and safety concerns have beoce increasingly important, leading to crime rates dropping further.
The overarching theme of this case and the acquittal of Zimmerman is the manner in which the ‘siege mentality’ emerges and tends to drive the American society apart, to such an extent that Zimmerman and Trayvon traded gun fire and blows instead of ironing out their differences through a respectful inquiry. Their exchanging of blows represents the division in the society as well as the animosity between black and whites due to the struggle of civil rights in the society.
It is also worth noting that in much of the debate conducted after the verdict, the issue points out to the nervous interactions between guns and race, and it is fueled for the various black-on-black killings which have taken place in such areas as Chicago and the alleged cases of racial profiling by Zimmerman (Miller, 2020). In this regard, the struggle for civil rights is based on the evidence that Zimmerman followed Trayvon Martin, who was not armed at the moment, for no tangible reason. In his defense, Zimmerman claimed that his decision to follow and shoot Trayvon was informed by Trayvon looking like a criminal. However, the fact of the matter is that racial profiling was the motive of the murder, and Trayvon was killed because of his skin color.
The issue has sparked division, with some commentators claiming that the publicity, the shooting, and the eventual trial of Zimmerman highlighted a form of sun-setting and cultural settling of the civil rights groups and movements. In addition, the Supreme Court had declawed the Voting Rights Act in the run-up to Zimmerman’s trial (Miller, 2020). Such issues emerged at a decision period when the community was making efforts to tackle the issue of self-defense and liberalized gun rights more vigorously and from a different frontier. During this time, the focus was to ensure that civil rights were observed and prevent possible cases of corrupting morals in the society.
The public conversation on race during that time tilted towards a more enlightened position regarding civil rights and corruption of morals. However, the conversation on guns seemed to remain extremely regional, conflicted, divided, and socioeconomic in all conceivable ways (Jones, 2020). The issue of gun policy is becoming a constant presence in the society due to all the tragic reasons that the society was aware of. In most neighborhoods, corrupting morals in regard to gun use and misuse was mainly associated with the lack of agreement on gun policy.
During the trial of Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin, prosecutors at times seemed to be trying to respond to existential questions rather than giving the relevant facts to prove the defendant’s guilt to the jury, beyond any reasonable doubt. The prosecutor in this case was John Guy, and at some point asked the six jurors, “what is that when a grown man, frustrated, angry, with hate in his heart, gets out of his car with a loaded gun and follows a child?” All the jurors were women and five out of the six were white. This marked the beginning of the deliberation that took place for 16 hours before it was completed on a Saturday night (Masullo Chen, Fadnis, & Whipple, 2020). This question shows that the prosecutor shied off from giving facts to the jurors and instead posed rhetorical questions to them, one of the reasons that the case was eventually determined in the favor of Zimmerman. Other questions that showed the prosecutor’s failure to pull the right strings is “a stranger? In the dark? And shoots him through his heart? What is that?" In such a court proceeding, the lone task of the prosecutor was to prove that Zimmerman had a case to answer and prove his guilt. However, this failed as the prosecutor could not convince the jurors of Zimmerman’s guilt.
However, despite the fact that the big picture of the visuals in this case echoing some of the past civil rights battles in the country, a section of the American society believed that the Zimmerman trial could instead help in bolstering the bold assertion that was made by the National Rifle Association in which lawful gun owners should not be prosecuted. This implies that a Zimmerman acquittal was bad news to the gun prohibition lobby which was also against the theory of self-defense in using guns.
It is also notable that gun owners do not enjoy when citizens obtain their won that they can use to protect themselves, highlighting an instance where armed individuals pose no danger, and also that firearms in the right hands are equally all good (Hester, Payne, & Gray, 2020). Modern times have shown that there is an increasing number of individuals successfully utilizing firearms for self-defense without obtaining the appropriate documentation and licenses, a circumstance which appears to be to the gun control community, since owning a gun requires one to be licensed. However, those owning guns without licenses are also an illustration of moral decay and lack of ethics in the society. This issue is being regulated as it could result in more cases of misuse of guns.
Zimmerman supporters argue that their country over-reached, setting hatred in Zimmerman's heart, even when there was none in his heart. Zimmerman shot Trayvon at a time when he should have been working. However, Zimmerman evaded local check out protocols to follow Trayvon, whom he had branded as questionable. He looked at Trayvon and assumed that he looked like a criminal who was escaping law enforcement officers. As a result, he followed him for a short distance before shooting him dead. Zimmerman’s action, besides being considered as one of corrupting morals in the society, has been used as an example of the police using excessive force against blacks.
But besides all of his intentions and also potentially debatable activities, Zimmerman proved to be an authorized gun operator who had the right to move from his own car in their neighborhood and poke around and see if there is any trouble (Hester, Payne, & Gray, 2020). The jury said when he sensed fear of his own life, he used lethal force to defend himself as under Florida law. This marked the beginning of what was considered the controversy that has since surrounded this case. Whereas Zimmerman has the right to own a gun and do patrols to monitor security, there were no justified criteria that he used to determine that Trayvon was a law offender or presented any danger to him. In any case, Trayvon was not armed whereas Zimmerman had a gun in his hand.
The issue of corrupting morals in this case is evident because a number of the involved from the film consider the verdict to be contrary of justice for Trayvon. Their argument and perspective is also based on the things they know about the nasty flavor of racism, especially in regard to the way the American society views young ...