Blood On the Leaves

By Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker

14 July 13

he not guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial came down moments after I left a screening of "Fruitvale Station," the film about the police shooting death of Oscar Grant four years ago in Oakland. Much of the audience sat quietly sobbing as the closing credits rolled, moved by a narrative of a young black man, unarmed and senselessly gone. Words were not needed to express a common understanding: to George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin, the seventeen-year-old he shot, fit the description; for black America the circumstances of his death did.

The familiarity dulled the sharp edges of the tragedy. The decision the six jurors reached Saturday evening will inspire anger, frustration, and despair, but little surprise, and this is the most deeply saddening aspect of this entire affair. From the outset - throughout the forty-four days it took for there to be an arrest, and then in the sixteen months it took to for this case to come to trial - there was a nagging suspicion that it would culminate in disappointment. Call this historical profiling.

The most damning element here is not that George Zimmerman was found innocent: it's the bitter knowledge that Trayvon Martin was found guilty. During his cross examination of Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, defense attorney Mark O'Mara asked if she was avoiding the idea that her son had done something to cause his own death. During closing arguments, the defense informed the jury that Martin was armed because he weaponized a sidewalk and used it bludgeon to George Zimmerman. During his post-verdict press conference, O'Mara said that were his client black, he would never have been charged. At the defense's table, and in the precincts far beyond it where donors stepped forward to contribute the funds that underwrote their efforts, there is a sense that George Zimmerman was the victim.

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