Outrage grows in US over Zimmerman’s acquittal

Rev. Anthony Evans, president of the National Black Church Initiative, speaks to the media during a demonstration asking for justice for Trayvon Martin, outside the Department of Justice in Washington yesterday. Right:  Demonstrators angry at the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin shout at a police officer in Los Angeles, California. 

Agencies/Washington

Protests grew yesterday over the not-guilty verdict in the racially charged Florida death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, as hundreds of thousands of people signed online petitions demanding that federal authorities pursue charges.

Tens of thousands marched in New York, Los Angeles, Washington and other cities at the weekend to demonstrate against the six-person jury’s verdict on Saturday.

By yesterday, more than 600,000 people had signed a petition urging Attorney General Eric Holder to file federal civil rights charges against the neighbourhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, a Hispanic-American, who was acquitted on all charges.

“The most fundamental of civil rights - the right to life - was violated the night George Zimmerman stalked and then took the life of Trayvon Martin,” the petition says.

Zimmerman’s lawyers claimed he had acted in self defence after Martin, whom he had been stalking in a car and then on foot, attacked him. Under Florida’s “stand your ground law,” such a killing is legal.

Barbara Jenkins of Winfield Park, New Jersey, who signed the online petition, wrote that Martin was also defending himself against “a hostile person.”

“Trayvon was within his right to defend himself. If Trayvon had shot Zimmerman, this case would have been totally different and this country knows that!” she wrote.

More than half the signatures - 340,000 as of 1500 GMT - came in through the website of the country’s premier civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a spokeswoman said.

She said the crush of signers had crashed the website over the weekend.

The remaining signatures - 266,000 as of 1700 GMT - came in through Moveon.org, which posted the same petition.

In addition to the possibility of federal prosecution, Zimmerman could also face a wrongful death lawsuit in civil court.

President Barack Obama appealed for calm following the acquittal. The angry protests highlight simmering racial tensions.

Demonstrators held noisy rallies in several US cities.

At least six people were arrested in Los Angeles early yesterday when riot police broke up an “unlawful assembly” in Hollywood near the CNN building.

To the chants of “No justice, no peace!” a separate crowd blocked traffic on an important freeway elsewhere in the giant metropolis, local media reported.

Memories are still fresh of the deadly April 1992 riots in Los Angeles, which broke out after a similar racially-tinged trial.

The most numerous rally on Sunday was in New York City, where several thousand - including families with children - marched to Times Square under the watchful eye of police.

Many in the multi-racial crowd brandished signs bearing a portrait of Martin, while some, despite sweltering July heat, wore “hoodie” sweatshirts as the teen did the night he was killed.

“I am appalled,” said Carli VanVoorhis, a 21-year-old hairdresser.

“The man was armed, the kid was not, and the man with the gun got away,” she said. “If we say it was not a racial issue, we would be lying.”

“We have a big problem with race, and another problem is guns,” said protester Rodney Rodriguez. “If Zimmerman didn’t have a gun, he couldn’t have killed Trayvon Martin.”

Fellow protester Derreck Wilson, 46, said the group had come “to say in a peaceful way why we are angry. We are angry, scared and anxious.”

“It’s cathartic,” he said.

“We all have the same desires. I want to be able to have my son to come home,” added Wilson, who came to the protest from the traditionally African-American neighbourhood of Harlem.

The case has pitted those who believe that Zimmerman killed Martin in self-defence, and those who believe it was a murder sparked by racist assumptions.

Obama, the first black US president, urged Americans to step back and accept the trial verdict.

“We are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken,” the president said in a statement. “I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son.”

Zimmerman was accused of pursuing Martin through a gated community in the town of Sanford and shooting him during an altercation on the rainy night of February 26, 2012.

The defence successfully argued that Zimmerman fired his handgun in self-defence after the teen wrestled him to the ground and was slamming his head against the pavement.

According to Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law, people who fear for their lives can use deadly force to defend themselves without having to flee a confrontation.

“We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this,” Obama said. “As citizens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin.”

Obama last year spoke emotionally about the case, noting that if he had a son he would “look like Trayvon.”

The racial divide was evident in Sanford pastor Valerie Houston’s Sunday sermon.

“Dr (Martin Luther) King (Jr) stated, the daily life of the Negro is still in the basement of the Great Society,” she said. “And today I state, the daily life of my people is still enslaved to a white supremacist society.”

Martin’s parents - father, Tracy, and mother Sybrina Fulton - asked the public before the verdict to respect the trial outcome, and afterwards gave thanks for the outpouring of support they received over the past year.

Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump declined to say whether they would file a civil lawsuit against Zimmerman, but said “they are going to certainly look at that as an option.”

“They deeply want a sense of justice. They deeply don’t want their son’s death to be in vain,” he told ABC News’s This Week.

Trial juror hopes to write a book

One of the six jurors in the George Zimmerman trial hopes to write a book explaining why the all-women panel had “no option” but to find Zimmerman not guilty of murder in the shooting of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, the literary agent hired by the juror said yesterday.

Unidentified juror B37 signed with Martin Literary Management, an agency based in Mercer Island, Washington, the firm’s president, Sharlene Martin, said in a statement.

The juror wants to write the book with her husband, who is an attorney, Martin said.

On Saturday, the jury found Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watchman, not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the Feb. 26, 2012, shooting death of Martin, who was 17.

Jurors declined to comment after the verdict, and their identities have remained anonymous under a judge’s order.

Juror B37 has been described as a mother of two who grew up in a military family and used to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Martin’s death ‘unnecessary’, says Holder

AFP/Washington

US Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday lamented the “tragic, unnecessary” shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin and called for a dialogue on issues raised by the killing.

But Holder, speaking to an African American sorority, was silent on whether the Justice Department would pursue civil rights charges against George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer acquitted late Saturday of Martin’s killing.

“The Justice Department shares your concern - I share your concern - and, as we first acknowledged last spring, we have opened an investigation into the matter,” Holder said.

“Independent of the legal determination that will be made, I believe that this tragedy provides yet another opportunity for our nation to speak honestly about the complicated and emotionally-charged issues that this case has raised,” he said.

White House spokesman Jay Carney, meanwhile, said President Barack Obama would not involve himself in the decision about whether to press federal charges.

“He has no opinion to express about the disposition of how the Justice Department would look at this,” said Carney.

“He did speak about it in personal terms, and I think his statement yesterday reflects how the loss of a young person is a source of great anguish and pain for the parents of that person, for the community where that young person lived, and for the whole country.”

Obama appealed for calm on Sunday after the verdict was handed down in Florida, setting off a wave of angry protests in US cities.

“We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this,” Obama said.

“As citizens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to honour Trayvon Martin.”