“Anyone who can parse this—in written form, never mind by ear—qualifies for a Supreme Court nomination”
by digby
Alternet features an interesting piece on the Trayvon Martin case in which it compiles some lawyers’ complaints abut the process. I’m not a lawyer so I can’t really comment as to whether these are valid, although they sound reasonable to this layperson.
I did want to note one of the complaints however, because I wrote about it on the day of the verdict:
Is the explanation of the not-guilty verdict as to manslaughter that the jury thought it is legal for a man with a gun to initiate an altercation with an unarmed boy and shoot him dead if he starts to lose the fight and fears for his own?”
The Florida law deciding this case is abysmal, Ingber said, noting that this added to the jury’s confusion during deliberations, and in getting the charge from the judge. “Try reading the instructions. [18] Really try. I did,” he wrote. “I am an attorney and thought I knew what the elements of manslaughter were until I read this. Anyone who can parse this—in written form, never mind by ear—qualifies for a Supreme Court nomination.”
“But it’s even worse,” he continued, saying these were yet more prosecutorial blunders. “During deliberations the jury, having only the legal smarts of a mere circuit court judge, asked for clarification as to manslaughter but never received them. Why was that?”
I thought it was very odd that the jury asked for clarification of the manslaughter instructions and couldn’t get it. I read those instructions and even as someone who reads a fair amount of complicated text I was stymied as to what it was supposed to be saying. Those jurors weren’t lawyers and those instructions were clear as mud, especially since both sides had been arguing a second degree homicide case and not a manslaughter case.
Anyway, it’s an interesting article. I assume that there are just as many lawyers out there who believe the case was argued, judged and decided correctly — that’s how the adversarial system works. But for many of us out here in layman’s land, there is just something terribly wrong about a man with a concealed, loaded weapon getting out of his car against the instructions of the police department, shooting an unarmed teen-ager and getting completely away with it. Sometimes the legal system’s great complexity works against common sense logic and I still think it did so in this case. It was legal and followed all the rules so we have no means to object. But that doesn’t mean justice was served.
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