Equal Justice. What is that?

Is life as fair as some claim it to be?  As we look at race and the criminal justice system we can clearly see a pattern of destruction.  Let us take a clear look into the Trayvon Martin case. Trayvon Martin was shot and killed while he was walking home from a convenient store. The man who shot Martin was George Zimmerman whose ethnic background is Hispanic.  Zimmerman states that Martin repeatedly punched him in his nose and punched him in his face and had his head against the sidewalk.  Zimmerman said that he began yelling before he acted in self-defense which was shooting Trayvon.  Mr. Zimmerman was charged with second degree murder on April 11^th but was acquitted after three long weeks of testimonies.  The six women jury denied that Mr. Zimmerman man slaughtered Mr. Martin for any other reason than self-defense, which means that he was found not guilty of second degree murder and he was acquitted of manslaughter.  Now let us take a look back and see that the jury for the Martin case was six white women; meaning that there was not one black person on the board.  The jury was in Zimmerman’s that Zimmerman believed that the hoodie wearing teenager was criminal and Trayvon was the one who initiated the fight in which led to his own death.  Now there were no witnesses to see this attack between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, so how can the jury so easily side with Zimmerman with the few pieces of evidence that they had.  In the book Rethinking the Color Line, Gallagher (Michelle Alexander) a lot of different things. Alexander talks about race as a factor.  She simply states that not only does race play a key role in things but gender, age, attire and location has to do with it a great deal as well.  Race is simply used as a factor in discretionary decision making.  The book also tells us that police departments believe that racial profiling exists only when race is the sole factor.  Now if you ask me when the police came on the scene when Zimmerman called them they could see what Martin had on and they were basically on Zimmerman’s side the entire time.  To them it was just another African American put away.  I just do not understand our Justice system.

Now what if? What if the tables were turned? What if Trayvon Martin who is black had shot Zimmerman who is Hispanic for the same exact reason as before “Self-defense” hmmm? Would we be so quick to side with Trayvon Martin who feared for his life just like Zimmerman had in the real incident?  I do not believe so.  All because race has everything to do with how our criminal justice system works and that is just the way those things go.  Prime example is the McNeil vs. Epp case.  In which was the case of the black man who was wrongfully convicted in the self-defense shooting of a white man.  A question that the article stated was could this be an issue of the criminal justice system mistreating a man simply due to his race.  The color of your skin matters !!!

Link to Trayvon Martin article's

 (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/us/george-zimmerman-verdict-trayvon-martin.html?_r=0)

(http://ireport.cnn.com/open-story.jspa?openStoryID=767394#DOC-778929)

Link to the McNeil vs. Epp case (http://buserror.hxr.us/2011/01/black-man-wrongly-convicted-in-self.html)