You Could Say They Found Someone Guilty. Just Not Zimmerman.

I know there are people who believed that George Zimmerman would be acquitted all along, or just never let themselves hope that a jury might, in the end, find the slaying of a 17 year old boy a criminally objectionable act, but I did hope. Not that it's good for much. To me, they had it from Zimmerman's own mouth that he wanted to stop one of those "assholes" from getting away. He told the 911 dispatch that he was following this kid. The police were on their way. They didn't need Zimmerman to be on this kid, but he was. He got out of the car, and as for the events that transpired between then and the shot, the only word we really have is Zimmerman's.

Because the other person who was at the scene from start to finish is dead, and can't speak for himself.

So what did the jury believe? I know the media is bound to coax statements from them and get some kind of answer about "reasonable doubt", but I can't help but feel like the real answer is something they would, not one of them, say aloud:

Trayvon Martin was guilty.  In their eyes, George Zimmerman had to be acting in self-defense, because, really--look! Just look!

And that pisses me off, because Martin never should have been on trial. This never should have been about his right to be on the street, or to wear a hoodie, or to be black, or to breathe. It should have been about whether the defendant knowingly drew a gun on that victim with the intent to kill him. And for the life of me, I don't see anything reasonable about doubting that that was what the gun was for.

I was livid the other day when FOX News personality, Geraldo Rivera, stated that the ladies of the jury would, had they been armed, killed Trayvon Martin even sooner than Zimmerman had. Who was he to say that? What sense did that even make? Wouldn't I, a middle-aged white lady myself, have not even gotten out of the car? Wouldn't I have seen he was young enough to be my own son, and just hope he got himself home to the people waiting there for him?  And now Geraldo is at least half-right about how that jury would have looked at a young black man. And I am just sad. Sad for the family who never got their young man back home. Sad for the jury who sat in judgement, not over the killer, but the slain.

I'm sad for the prosecution, who have nothing to congratulate themselves over, because between all us on the internet? I think they half-assed it. I'm sad for the defense team of George Zimmerman, because they will live with themselves and I don't even get that. Except Don West. He looks like he can. I hope that's an act.

I'm sad even for George Zimmerman and his lying wife and the gun-loving closet racists that will fete him for the near future. Because they just got all their wrongness justified and why start seeing where this was a miscarriage of justice now?

But I am crying for Trayvon, because that young man is in his grave, and this trial spat on it. He was someone, and who and what he would become we will not ever know. Because Zimmerman only saw a "fucking punk". And then six people who sat through this trial and wanted to get on home to their families--agreed.