George Zimmerman has been found not guilty in the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin. The all women jury delivered their verdict after 16 hours and 2 days of deliberations.

Martin’s parents weren’t in the courtroom, but Zimmerman’s were.

NBC News:

A Florida jury found George Zimmerman not guilty on Saturday night.
Zimmerman, 29, said he was acting in self-defense when he shot the unarmed Trayvon Martin, 17, in the chest during an altercation in a gated community of Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26. 2012.

He was not charged for 44 tumultuous days in which the case generated large protests in several cities, turned a hooded sweatshirt like the one Martin wore into a symbol of solidarity, and drew the attention of President Obama, who said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

As debate over race, guns and Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law swirled, a special prosecutor appointed by the governor announced April 11, 2012 that Zimmerman was being charged with second-degree murder – a move that his supporters said was meant to quell the public outcry.

Martin’s killing sparked an outpouring of emotions and national polarization. Websites clamored for the arrest of Zimmerman. A left-right, liberal-conservative split developed. You could almost tell a website of new or old media pundit’s position on the case by where they were ideologically. Liberals tended to view Zimmerman as a cop wannabe who was more like a Barney Fife with deadly consquences. Conservatives tended to assume Martin was a thug out for no good in roaming around the neighborhood and that Zimmerman had to shoot him to save his own life. Fox News become the George Zimmerman information channel with Zimmerman giving an exclusive interview to conservative talker Sean Hannity. Zimmerman raised more than $400,000 for a topflight defense team via the Interent, while the Martin family had the considerable resources of the state of Florida to press it’s case.

It raised the issues of the impact and wiseness of Florida’s stand-your-ground law, what constitutes self-defense — and, as prosecutors asked, whether Martin himself was acting in defense in battling an adult following a teenage in the middle of night…following him despite his efforts to evade him.

The Martin case was controversial from the beginning. His parents couldn’t find their son and only found out a day later that he had been killed. Zimmerman had not been arrested which sparked howls of outrage and Internet petitions. One Internet website ran a photoshopped photo of a white Martin and a black Zimmerman, suggesting that a white Martin would have been treated differently. Others have strongly disagreed with this argument.

CNN has this fact sheet on the case.

The Huffington Post:

As attention around the case mounted before the trial, details emerged about the teenager and the man involved in the fatal confrontation.

It turned out this wasn’t Zimmerman’s first run-in with the law. He had previously been accused of domestic violence by a former girlfriend, and he had also previously been arrested for assaulting a police officer. More controversially, in July 2012, an evidence dump related to the investigation of Martin’s death revealed that a younger female cousin of Zimmerman’s had accused him of nearly two decades of sexual molestation and assault. In addition, she had accused members of Zimmerman’s family, including his Peruvian-born mother, of being proudly racist against African Americans, and recalled a number of examples of perceived bigotry.

The national focus on the case also brought into question, for some, the character and life history of Trayvon Martin. As time passed, websites like The Daily Caller found Martin’s posthumously scrubbed Twitter page, which featured the teen at times tweeting profanities and showing off fake gold teeth. To some, these behaviors, along with the hoodie Martin wore the night he was killed, were an indication that he was something other than an innocent teenage boy who was shot while walking home from the store. To others, the attention paid to Martin’s tattoos, gold teeth and hoodie were symptomatic of the same kind of stereotyping and profiling that led to Zimmerman’s assumption that the teen was “up to no good.”

While much of this background information proved inadmissible at trial, the characterizations of the two men helped drive an often racially charged polarization on the issue at the heart of the case — whether the killing of Trayvon Martin was self-defense or murder.

USA Today:

The verdict is the culmination of a case that captured the nation’s attention and will undoubtedly be imprinted in America’s history. The not guilty verdict means the jury of six women found that Zimmerman justifiably used deadly force and reasonably believed that such force was “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm” to himself- Florida’s definition of self-defense.

The women decided Zimmerman didn’t “intentionally commit an act or acts that caused death” or demonstrate a “depraved mind without regard for human life” –Florida’s definitions of manslaughter and second degree murder, respectively.

“Its means there was reasonable doubt,” said Susan Constantine, a jury consultant and body language expert who attended Zimmerman’s trial regularly. “They just could not put the pieces together.”

The case has gripped the nation since the shooting happened on Feb. 26, 2012. Police initially did not charge Zimmerman with a crime, citing Florida’s “stand-your-ground” law, which allows someone who believes they are in imminent danger to take whatever steps are necessary to protect themselves.

Protests ensued in several cities, including New York, by supporters of Trayvon’s family. Many protesters voiced the opinion that Trayvon was targeted and killed for racial reasons. Trayvon was black and Zimmerman is Hispanic.

“You have a little black boy who was killed,” said Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the parents of Trayvon. “It’s going to be reported in history books and 50 years from now, our children will talk about Trayvon Martin’s case like we talk about Emmett Till.”

Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black young man, was tortured, murdered and grossly disfigured in Mississippi after being accused of flirting with a white woman.

And what are the prospects for Zimmerman now? CNN:

The acquittal of George Michael Zimmerman, 29, means he’s a free man and will be able to walk out of the courthouse because he’s no longer in police custody.
He will be free, if he chooses, to leave Seminole County, Florida. But one of his attorneys, Mark O’Mara, has said that Zimmerman is a marked man and lives in fear for his life.

In fact, during court proceedings, Zimmerman didn’t disclose where he had been residing for more than a year, and he dared to venture outdoors only when in disguise. Zimmerman also wore body armor.

“I believe his life is at risk, and I don’t say that for dramatic effect,” O’Mara said before the verdict. “There are a lot of people who think George killed Trayvon Martin for racial reasons, even though nothing supports that. And if they feel that anger enough, they could react violently.”

It’s doubtful that Zimmerman would be able to return to his pursuit of a career in law enforcement. He was enrolled in Seminole State College at the time of the February 26, 2012, shooting.

One expert advised against such a plan for Zimmerman.

“That is the absolute worst thing you can do,” said Mike Paul, a reputation management counselor in New York. “It might be your old passion. My advice would be, you need to find a new passion. And it needs to be helping people in a very different way, a way that is much more compassionate, not just involving law enforcement.”
Zimmerman — who is married but has no children — may choose to resume his career in mortgage insurance or in an undergraduate education.

CNN:

The verdict caps a case that has inflamed passions for well over a year, much of it focused on race and gun rights.

The six-person jury — all women — had three choices: to find Zimmerman guilty of second-degree murder; to find him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter; or to find him not guilty.

The jurors deliberated for 16½ hours total, including 13 on Saturday alone, before delivering their verdict.

When he learned his fate, a subdued Zimmerman had little visible reaction. His face was mostly expressionless. He turned and shook one of his attorney’s hand before sitting back down. His parents, Robert and Gladys Zimmerman, were seated nearby, but Martin’s parents were not in the courtroom.

Earlier in the day, the jury had asked the court for clarification on its instructions regarding manslaughter. The jury couldn’t have even posed such a query a few days ago: Judge Debra Nelson ruled Thursday, over the defense’s vehement objection, to include manslaughter as an option for jurors, in addition to a second-degree murder charge.

To convict Zimmerman of manslaughter, the jurors would have had to believe that he “intentionally committed an act or acts that caused the death of Trayvon Martin.” That charge could have carried a sentence of up to 30 years in prison, though the jury was not told of that possible sentence.

For second-degree murder, the jurors would have had to believe that Martin’s unlawful killing was “done from ill will, hatred, spite or an evil intent” and would be “of such a nature that the act itself indicates an indifference to human life.”

Ultimately, they believed neither. And that means Zimmerman can walk free.

JoanMar on The Daily Kos:

This is too much.
Heartbroken.
Sick to my stomach.
Spare a thought for Tracy and Sabrina tonight.
RIP Trayvon.
Gone but never forgotten.

SOME TWEETS:

VIDEO:
The moment the verdict is read:

UPDATE:
—Zimmerman verdict triggers emotions (Chicago Tribune)

As news of the George Zimmerman “not guilty” verdict filtered through Chicago, people in the city reacted with strong emotions.

Outside ABC 7 studios on Michigan Avenue, several passersby stopped and stared at television screens as news of the verdict broke. Some in the gathering crowd stood with their arms folded, shaking their heads in apparent disgust as the words “not guilty” scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

“If you think about it, he was going to walk,” said Chicagoan Mary Smith, 40. “The justice system – it is what it is.”

Nearby, fellow Chicagoan Edgar Rodriguez, 23, watched the crowd reaction from the sidewalk’s edge.

“I’m surprised,” he said of the verdict, “not because I wanted him to be guilty. It seemed like his fault.”

Local Twitter feeds, meanwhile, erupted with indictments against the U.S. justice system, praise for Zimmerman and, even, calls for more guns in the country.

“Today #TrayvonMartin was found guilty by a jury,” one post read. “The entire justice system has failed him.”

A group of African American clergy planned to hold a press conference Sunday asking for peace and calm, a precaution against what some leaders predicted would be a strong reaction among blacks in the coming days.

Goddamit

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 14, 2013

—Al Sharpton:

“I think that this is an atrocity,” he said. “It is probably one of the worst situations that I have seen.”

Sharpton also called it “a sad day in the country” and “a slap in the face to those that believe in justice in this country.”

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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