Trayvon Martin and the American Lynch-Mob Mentality

By David A. Love, Guardian UK

08 April 12

Prosecutorial misconduct, police corruption and 'stand your ground' laws are part of the lingering lynch-mob mentality.

he shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, has exposed the issue of official misconduct, as police have failed to arrest, and prosecutors have refused to indict, George Zimmerman, Martin's self-professed killer. Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer, claimed Martin looked suspicious and that he shot him in self-defence. Although a federal investigation is under way, Martin's parents have asked the US department of justice to investigate possible meddling by the state's attorney's office with investigations by Sanford police the night of the killing. Martin's family believe that state attorney Norm Wolfinger and Sanford police chief Bill Lee overruled the recommendation of the chief homicide investigator that Zimmerman be arrested and charged with manslaughter. Further, the "stand your ground" law implicated in this case enables vigilantes who wish to perform private, extrajudicial executions and become a legalised lynch mob. The law breaks with centuries of legal tradition by allowing a person to "stand one's ground" and use deadly force wherever he or she feels threatened, without a duty to retreat.

First enacted in Florida and now adopted by at least 21 states, the law is promoted by the powerful National Rifle Association and the American Legislative Exchange Council, or Alec. Alec is a Koch brothers-funded organisation of rightwing legislators throughout the country, responsible for anti-union, voter suppression and forced transvaginal ultrasound legislation in various states. Alec is supported by corporations such as ExxonMobil, Wal-mart, AT&T, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, UPS and until recently, Coca-Cola.

As the "stand your ground" law enables vigilantes and lynch mobs who operate outside the justice system, the system also provides cover to insiders, including renegade prosecutors who stand in the way of justice. With broad discretion but little accountability, prosecutors at their worst become vigilantes.

According to the Veritas Institute and the Innocence Project, Texas prosecutors are not disciplined for their misconduct. Between 2004 and 2008, prosecutors committed error in 91 cases. Yet in 72 of those cases, the convictions were upheld on the grounds of harmless error, while 19 cases were reversed due to harmful error. Only one prosecutor was disciplined by the Texas Bar Association between 2004 and 2011, for a case before 2004.

A similar Veritas Institute study of California found that between 1997 and 2009, state prosecutors engaged in misconduct in criminal trials 707 times, ranging from withholding evidence to intimidating witnesses. Sixty-seven prosecutors committed gross misconduct, including a deputy district attorney who withheld evidence that kept an innocent man behind bars for a murder he didn't commit. Only six California prosecutors were ever disciplined.

Last year, the Texas county and district attorney association (TCDAA) honoured Navarro County district attorney Lowell Thompson. His achievement was preventing a court of inquiry into the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. Willingham, very likely an innocent man, was executed in 2004 for an arson death that killed his three young children, despite evidence that the fire was accidental.

Michael Morton spent 25 years of a life sentence for the murder of his wife until last year, when DNA evidence proved his innocence. Morton's lawyers learned that Ken Anderson, the Williamson County, Texas prosecutor, did not disclose evidence in 1987 that would have cleared him. A court of inquiry later this year will determine if Anderson, who is now a judge, engaged in misconduct.

John Thompson spent 14 years on Louisiana's death row because evidence proving his innocence was hidden away in the Orleans Parish district attorney's office all of those years. A jury awarded Thompson $14 million - $1 million for each year he was wrongfully imprisoned due to prosecutorial misconduct. However, the conservative US supreme court found the prosecutor was not liable, and overturned the award.

And in Missouri, Reggie Clemons, who is black, sits on death row for the 1991 murder of two young white women, and the rape of one of them. There was no evidence linking Clemons to the crime, and the case has been marred by accounts of police torture, false testimony and incompetent defence counsel. In addition, the prosecutor, assistant circuit attorney Nels Moss, intimidated witnesses and unlawfully excluded black prospective jurors. Moss was held in criminal contempt and fined for his misconduct in the case, and two federal courts characterised his actions as "abusive and boorish". Moreover, a rape kit and lab reports from one of the victims was concealed in police headquarters for years and never introduced at trial.

Prosecutorial misconduct, foot-dragging and corruption by local police, and toxic "stand your ground" laws are part of an epidemic of a vigilante spirit within the US justice system. Whether a lynch mob acts from within or without the courts, the outcome is equally disturbing. And when individuals are allowed to take matters into their own hands - determining the outcome of their own choosing in a case, unaccountable and with impunity - that vigilante spirit, in turn, betrays the justice system's association with lynching. US courts became window dressing for a racist mob mentality, and the death penalty a "legal replacement" for the lynchings of a bygone era.