There is deliberate separation between a head of state, the writers of laws, and the judges who interpret them. These separations of powers are to protect the interests of “the little guy” who could not hope to oppose them all at once.
All good reasons why the Zimmerman case should offend us.
When a Head of State personally identifies with a victim (“if I had a son…”) even before the trial, he has publicly robbed the accused of his presumed innocence. When police chief Bill Lee (who decided the evidence was inadequate to charge Zimmerman) claims he was fired for not laying charges, that’s a red flag. So is a Justice Department bankrolling rallies “demanding justice” for the victim. Can DoJ truly claim to be acting impartially?
Whatever happened to the professionalism that once had leaders saying “I cannot comment on a case that is before the courts”?
When a jury of his peers acquits a defendant of all charges, his name is officially cleared. Whatever the public reaction, officials are obligated to respect the verdict. And yet, after his acquittal, the prosecution’s one-word description of Zimmerman in an interview was “murderer”. A man declared innocent by a jury of his peers has the RIGHT not to be slandered in such a way. If it were you acquitted of serious charges, would you want to be called guilty? Is guilt established by bare accusation, now? Heaven forbid!
And here it gets really messy. The government clearly objects to the jury’s verdict. So now what? Attorney General Eric Holder — the same “king-is-law” official who singled out the homeschooling family’s refugee status for revocation — has announced its Zimmerman witch-hunt. They are actively fishing for something to charge Zimmerman with and have set up a dedicated email for that purpose.
It doesn’t even matter if you think he’s stone-cold guilty. A free citizen has a government soliciting snitches; it is groping for something — anything — for which to convict Zimmerman. That isn’t America, that’s Cold-War Soviet Russia.
Maybe you think it’s justified, somehow righting a wrong, or that it doesn’t really matter. But we live in a time with drone strikes, IRS political shakedowns, NSA wiretapping and the hacking of journalists’ email — innocence is now no defence at all.
Will you still be indifferent when they turn their witch-hunt … on YOU?
