Zimmerman: Federal Hate Crime Indictment?
I really hate to be a party pooper, but I don’t see this happening. I know, some of you are holding out hope that the Department Of Justice (DOJ) might come through in the interest of justice. But the truth is that, such an indictment in this case is unlikely. Given the evidence as we all now know from the over 200 pieces of evidence, and the testimony of 56 witnesses in the state case, Eric Holder will not bring George Zimmerman up on those hate crimes charges. I really hate to be the pessimistic asshole to ruin your day, but I have to tell you like it is.
Seriously, they would have better luck finding Louis Farrakhan in a strip club making it rain on Jewish girls. But hey, I could be wrong on this; heck, you never know. It’s unlikely and you never know. Shoot, they might produce photos of Zimmerman in a white robe with a pointy hood on his head, along with a Swastika armband doing a Nazi salute just before he pulled the trigger to kill an unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Hey, stranger things have happened:
Washington (CNN) — In the emotional aftermath of the Trayvon Martin killing last year, Attorney General Eric Holder signaled the unlikelihood of filing federal hate crimes charges against admitted shooter George Zimmerman.
“For a federal hate crime, we have to prove the highest standard in the law,” Holder said in April 2012, 45 days after Zimmerman shot the African American teenager in what was depicted by civil rights groups as a racially motivated killing.
In words that now sound prescient, Holder described to reporters that day how “something that was reckless, that was negligent does not meet that standard.”
“We have to show that there was specific intent to do the crime with requisite state of mind,” he said.
Zimmerman’s acquittal of state murder and manslaughter charges on Saturday showed the Florida jury rejected that he intended to kill Martin for any reason, including the racial motivation necessary for federal charges that he violated Martin’s civil rights.
[...] Because Zimmerman is a private citizen, he can only be charged with a hate crime in terms of civil rights violations under federal law, said David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Florida who now is in private practice.
To successfully prosecute Zimmerman, the Department of Justice would have to show that Zimmerman “caused the death of Trayvon Martin solely motivated by/because of his race or color,” Weinstein told CNN in an e-mail, adding: “This element was absent from the state trial and quite frankly doesn’t exist.”
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