Gadfly reporter Geraldo River told a Fox News interviewer Sunday the special prosecutor in the George Zimmerman case should never have brought charges against Zimmerman.
I could not disagree more. In an era when the public distrusts all politicians -- including prosecutors and even the U.S. attorney general -- I think this is precisely the sort of case that should have been decided by a jury of our fellow citizens. And remember, both the prosecution and defense had the power and the right to select the jurors they wanted, and exclude those they didn't want.
I am not expressing my personal opinion as to whether Zimmerman was guilty or not guilty. Nor do I condone any misconduct by the prosecutor, such as withholding exculpatory evidence. But in her decision to have the matter tried by an impartial jury, the special prosecutor did precisely the right thing.
In my years as an assistant state's attorney, and later as a circuit court judge, I came to have very definite opinions about bringing charges or not bringing charges.
Prosecutors can decide whether to charge and, if they do, to charge the greatest offense or a lesser offense. This is called "prosecutorial discretion."
Most often, the prosecutor makes that decision himself. But he also can present the matter to a grand jury and give it the option of whether to change and what charges to bring. Either way, it is a one-sided presentation; the defense gets to say nothing.
Under our system of justice, however, one thing is clear: While a prosecutor or grand jury may charge, and while a president or a governor may demand an individual be brought to justice, it is the petit jury, the trial court jury, that is the sole finder of fact. It is the petit jury that weighs the evidence and evaluates the credibility of witnesses. And it has the great advantage in that it hears all the relevant evidence -- both prosecution evidence, as well as defense evidence.
The national press has spent a great deal of time inveighing against the "stand your ground" provision in Florida's law of self-defense. I look at the Martin-Zimmerman case rather as a traditional self-defense case. And I look at our self-defense statute and believe the Florida jury decided its case under similar principles.
The Illinois statute provides:
" A person ... is justified in the use of force which is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm only if he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or another, or the commission of a forcible felony."
Our statute does not mention "a duty to retreat." But where retreat is a reasonable option, or where retreat would render unnecessary the need to use deadly force, I believe an Illinois jury would be justified in finding no self-defense.
That being said, when your head is being pounded against the ground, and the next blow driving your head against the concrete may produce death or great bodily harm, and where retreat appears impossible, the reasonable and necessary course may well be to shoot your assailant to save your own life.
That is why I think the Florida special prosecutor did the right thing in bringing this case before a jury. Indeed, I see many reasons for doing so:
1. This was a racially charged case.
2. An unarmed young man, who may or may not have been an aggressor, was shot to death.
3. A petit jury exists to determine the facts, to judge credibility of witnesses, to draw reasonable inferences from proven facts, and to act as the sole judge of the facts. (This excludes the judge, the police, prosecutor and even the president of the United States as appropriate judges of the facts.)
4. The case is tried in an adversarial setting with the prosecutor doing his best to prove guilt, and the defense doing its best to establish reasonable doubt or innocence. The jury will get the fullest possible presentation of evidence, and will be assisted by arguments of counsel in understanding the evidence and showing them the inferences to be drawn from it, as well as the court's instructions as to the law.
5. The jury, with its six-person collective memory, is better able than any one individual to sort through the jumble of evidence and decide:
a. Whether Trayvon Martin's mother was telling the truth when she testified that her son was screaming for help, or whether Zimmerman's mother was telling the truth when she testified her son was screaming for help.
b. Which of the witnesses were most credible, and to compare and weigh the testimony of each witness.
c, Whether from all the facts, Zimmerman had an intent to murder, or an intent to defend himself.
d. Whether Zimmerman was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm.
e. Whether Zimmerman's use of deadly force was reasonable.
f . Whether it was necessary.
g . Whether Martin was pounding Zimmerman's head against the concrete, and whether in doing so Martin was committing a forcible felony.
In short, in a case of this nature, the best way to find the truth is to put the matter before an impartial jury, assisted by an impartial judge and competent attorneys.
In this case, the jury was freely chosen by both the prosecution and defense. Nothing suggests that the jury harbored an iota of bias or that their verdict was anything but on the law and the facts.
Posted Online: July 17, 2013, 11:00 pm - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea
Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Why the Senate Immigration Bill Is Nuts
Your wife, while preparing a salad, seriously cuts herself with a knife. She bleeds all over your kitchen. What do you do first? Try to stop the bleeding? Or wipe up the blood from the floor and sink?
Immigrants from Mexico and Central America are pouring across our open Southern border. What should Congress do first? Shut off the flow of illegal immigrants? Or worry about giving them a "pathway to citizenship?"
Eight U.S. Senators, inanely referred to as "The Gang of Eight," have cobbled together a 1,200-page bill which purports to solve "the immigration problem." (America's first immigration bill ran a page and a half!) Does it close the border? Not exactly.
Instead, according to Fox News,"The measure voted on (June 24, 2013) ... would double the size of the U.S. Border Patrol at a cost of around $30 billion and complete 700 miles of fencing. At the same time it sets out a pathway to citizenship for some11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally, who would be permitted to get permanent resident green cards only once all the border changes had been put in place, about a decade after enactment of the legislation. The Department of Homeland Security already has fenced off 651miles of the 1,969-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico. If 700 more miles are fenced off, 1,351 miles would be fenced off, leaving 618 unfenced.
Do fences work? Ask the Israelis.
In early 2013, Israel completed a 144-mile section of fence along its southern border with Egypt to keep out "illegal infiltrators." It is 16 feet high and is augmented with barbed wire, surveillance cameras and radar. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Wall Street Journal, states that illegal crossings have declined 99.9 percent from 2,000 per month to only two. The 144-mile section cost $416 million. (So, what would 1,318 miles of fence cost?)
The new Israeli fence is separate from the fence that runs along the West Bank, which began in 2003. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, "During the 34 months from the beginning of the violence in September 2000 until the construction of the first continuous segment of the security fence at the end of July 2003, Samaria-based terrorists carried out 73 attacks in which 293 Israelis were killed and 1950 wounded. In the 11 months between the erection of the first segment at the beginning of August 2003 and the end of June 2004, only three attacks were successful, and all three occurred in the first half of 2003."
In 2002 alone, Israel suffered 55 suicide bomber attacks that resulted in 220 deaths. As the West Bank fence was completed, both attacks and deaths declined. By 2005, there were but seven attacks which took 22 lives. In 2006, there were four attacks that killed 15. In 2007, there only was one attack that took three lives. According to the Israeli Security Agency, there were no suicide attacks in 2009 and 2010.
The U.S. would not be building a fence to stop suicide bombers. But if a fence can stop Muslim fanatics determined to plant bombs in Israel, even at the cost of their own lives, it certainly should be able to stop Mexican men, women and children trying to escape Mexican poverty and drug violence from entering the U.S.
A U.S. fence also would have a second critical use. It would make it far more difficult for Mexican drug lords to send their drugs, violence and agents into our country. If you think this isn't a major problem, consider the words of Jack Riley, special agent in charge of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's Chicago office:"While Chicago is 1,500 miles from Mexico, the Sinaloa drug cartel is so deeply embedded in the city that local and federal law enforcement are forced to operate as if they are on the border."
Our open southern border facilitates the transport of deadly illicit drugs into our country. It allows the cartels to send in their hitmen. And it allows them be become rich and powerful enough to control governments.
If drug operatives are easily crossing our open border, why can't Muslim terrorists? Does it make any sense that we leave our border unfenced, while our National Security Agency is reading the emails and monitoring the other Internet traffic of every American in a effort to keep the country safe from Muslim terrorists? This is nuts!
It's like barring the front door, while leaving the back door and windows open!
Sadly, it appears, that in the eyes of the Senate and the President, that illegal immigrants and narco-violence "specialists" less are worthy of less government scrutiny than are law-abiding Americans using the internet!
Our immigration policy should not exist to create little "Democrats" or little"Republicans" or to provide a power base to keep politicians in office who put party over country.
We are a nation of immigrants. Our doors are not closed. Every year, America admits over a million immigrants legally. A spreadsheet prepared by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that no other nation even comes close.
Our immigration policy should have two goals: First, close the border to illegal immigration, Mexican drug violence and potential terrorists; then, once that is done, create a fair bipartisan path to citizenship for those who are here illegally but who haven't created felonies and/or do not pose a danger to this country.
Posted Online: July 06, 2013, 11:00 pm - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea
Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea
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