The Colosseum Of Courtroom Cretins

American mainstream media is a Colosseum of cretins.

Take the attorney for the Trayvon Martin family, Jasmine Rand. Ms. Rand objected to the acquittal of Mr. Zimmerman, in the case brought against him by the State of Florida, by declaring the following to Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren: “I have a greater duty beyond being an attorney and that is to be a social engineer.” Jasmine further asserted that the Jury had not listened to the evidence and had not followed the law. Since she and “millions of people” did not like the manner in which the law of the land related to the evidence on hand—a relationship the jury grasped well—Rand was of the mindset that her mandate as an officer of the court was to “march” to reverse the verdict.

Rand’s bio details, displayed at the law firm of Parks & Crump, L.L.C., indicate that she “received her juris doctor degree from Florida State University College of Law” and that she “served on the Black Law Students Association board and won its Outstanding Member of the Year Award in 2007.” Jasmine is also “adjunct professor at Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University.”

Old-school—likely high IQ—Greta Van Susteren was rattled. “Deeply disturbed,” as the understated lawyer-turned-TV host put it. She inquired as to what grounds young Jasmine had for her claims against the Zimmerman jury. Was the jury not vetted by the prosecution and the defense alike? What evidence had Jasmine stumbled upon that the jury had missed, probed Van Susteren, Socratically.

When no coherent answer was forthcoming—and seized by passion for certain verities she had clearly taken for granted—the older woman, whose law degree is from Georgetown University, and whose undergraduate degree is in science, proceeded to explain to Ms. Rand how the American legal system was supposed to work. I paraphrase:

A jury of citizens is presented with the evidence in trial. A judge then instructs the jury on the law. The jury is trusted with applying the law as stated by the judge to arrive at a decision based on the facts presented as evidence in trial.

The “Rules for Deliberation” imposed on this jury also specified that: 1) “This case must be decided only upon the evidence that you have heard from the testimony of the witnesses and have seen in the form of the exhibits in evidence and these instructions.” 2) “This case must not be decided for or against anyone because you feel sorry for anyone, or are angry at anyone.” 3) “Your verdict should not be influenced by feelings of prejudice, bias or sympathy. Your verdict must be based on the evidence, and on the law contained in these instructions.”

A rattled Greta kept going:

“You know as I know that the millions of people who may not like the decision did not watch the case, didn’t sit in the courtroom, didn’t weigh the evidence, and didn’t listen to jury instructions. What you’re talking about is just noise. Social manipulation. Justice is presented in a courtroom. That’s why we have a court system so that both sides are presented with the opportunity to be heard. I don’t know what ‘social engineering’ is but justice is presented in the court room.”

In the course of doing her journalistic due diligence, Van Susteren stumbled upon another falsity peddled by the administration’s front man, Attorney General Eric Holder, mass media and the rest of the “Racial Industrial Complex.”

The slick-tongued Holder had told his primary constituency, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, that “people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat,” and that “‘Stand Your Ground’-style laws —such as the one that figured into the George Zimmerman case—’undermine public safety,’ and ‘create dangerous conflicts in our neighborhoods.'”

Why then did the “Instructions read to the Zimmerman jury by The Honorable Debra S. Nelson, Circuit Judge,” state the reverse? Again, I excerpt from Justice Nelson’s instructions on the “Justifiable Use of Force”:

“If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in anyplace where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

It just so happens that Zimmerman was unable to retreat. As the facts showed, conclusively, Tryavon Martin was atop, pounding Zimmerman into the ground. By trial’s end, the prosecution no longer disputed this unassailable fact.

Holder’s lie was compounded by the fact that, as Van Susteren discovered in the course of digging in federal statutes, the law generally recognizes the right of the person who is not the aggressor to stand his ground. The concept of standing your ground is a fundamental basic right of self-defense.

Exclaimed an exacerbated Van Susteren:”The whole thing of stand your ground is confusing everybody. It is just [plain] self-defense.”

My exhibit 2 of the Idiocracy elite is Glenda Hatchett, of the CNN brain trust. Not only does Judge Hatchett lack knowledge and feel for law, but she struggles with analytical and deductive thinking. This has not stopped the woman from becoming judge and host of the indubitably lucrative “Judge Hatchett.”

It is a shame that the July 12 CNN transcripts can’t convey the look on Judge Alex Ferrer’s face when Hatchett ventured the following:

Hatchett: “… I did have an interesting question today. Someone said to me, well, judge, why didn’t George just pull his gun and say, ‘I’m the neighborhood watch, stay where you are until the police gets here.’ I mean, he’s the one who has the gun. Why didn’t he do that?”

Ferrer: “He doesn’t have a right to do that because that would be an aggravated assault. … he would have [no] legal right to pull a gun on somebody who’s not committing a crime.”

Judge Hatchett “thinks” that George Zimmerman would have been acting within the lawful purview of a neighborhood watchman had he held up an innocent young man at gun point.

Greta Van Susteren was having a hard time with the realization that her beloved law was increasingly held hostage by the likes of Jasmine Rand, Esquire. Countless are the human exhibits this column could present for the case that the elephant in the courtroom is an Idiocracy elite. And that, like very scary prosecutor turned CNN commentator Sunny Hostin, this Idiocracy elite lacks the ability to separate the political constructs (racism) to which it is wedded from the facts of a case brought in a court of law.

If the trial of George Zimmerman taught us anything at all it is that debate in mass media is monopolized by a noisy, all-powerful elite of idiots to whom reason is racism.

©2013 By ILANA MERCER
WND, Economic Policy Journal &
American Daily Herald
July 19