MORE ON THE ZIMMERMAN VERDICT

Angela Corey has been roundly criticized for her handling of the George Zimmerman case. Those on the right side of the political spectrum feel she should never have filed the charge to begin with, and those on the left seem to think she bungled the case. In this blog I will give my analysis of her filing decision.

Before filing any charge the prosecutor must be able to answer three questions: (1) Has a crime been committed? (2) Did the defendant commit it? (3) Can I convince a jury that the defendant committed it? Unless these three questions can be answered in the affirmative, the case should not be filed. Simply knowing the defendant committed the crime is not enough, you must have a reasonable prospect of convicting the defendant at trial. Usually the thorniest of these three questions is the third. Sometimes you have a firm belief in the guilt of the defendant, but you realize that you have a marginal case which may or may not be enough to satisfy a jury. What do you do?

Here is what I think happened. It may not have happened this way, but I know how prosecutors think and this is the process I would have gone through to arrive at a decision to file charges. We begin with Corey satisfying herself that the answer to the first two questions is a resounding “Yes.” She then asks herself the third question and the answer is not “Yes,” it is “Maybe.” She believes that justice cannot be done unless the defendant is convicted and punished. This sort of case is what is known among prosecutors as “a chase which has to be tried.” I have worked through this process several times in my career and arrived at a decision to file charges. In some cases I achieved a conviction, and in others the defendant was acquitted. I well remember the last case of this nature that I lost. The judge consoled me after the trial with the comment “It was a case which had to be tried.” I would not be surprised to find out that someone knowledgeable of the system has consoled Corey with the same words.

If you think Zimmerman was not guilty of murder you may criticize her decision to file as ill-advised, but there is no ground for criticizing it as improperly motivated. Corey foresaw the firestorm of criticism which would come in the wake of an acquittal. Corey knew that a no-file decision would have minimized the flack. Facing such a situation and having an opportunity to minimize damage with a no-file, her decision to file charges was a courageous act.

MORE MEDIA HITS ON THE ZIMMERMAN/MARTIN CASE

I continue to get inquiries concerning the Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman case. Here are the latest ones to make the web:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-04-12/george-zimmerman-charges-trayvon-martin-shooting/54191768/1

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20120412/GPG0101/304120035/Zimmerman-charged-Trayvon-Martin-death

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-04-11/corey-florida-prosecutor-trayvon-martin/54189310/1

NOTE: This is a repost. The previously posted hyperlinks malfunctioned.

A PROSECUTOR'S DUTY

My phone rang off the hook this afternoon with calls from various media representatives seeking my comments on the recent developments in the Trayvon Martin case. Although trial lawyers are seldom at a loss for words, one question that I was asked left me almost speechless. How did I feel about the indictment? Although I am not a Vulcan, I try to banish my feelings when approaching a murder case. Prosecutors  learn to suppress their feelings when evaluating a case. Emotion clouds judgment, and judgment should be crystal clear when making decisions in matters of life and death.

I can, however, express my feelings about how State Attorney Angela Corey has performed her duties so far. Governor Scott threw her a political hot potato when he assigned her to this case, and she has managed it with grace and dignity. Listening to her at the press conference this afternoon, it was clear that she has scrupulously adhered to the ethical and professional requirements of the office of prosecutor. Having known her as a colleague for over a quarter of a century, I expected no less from her.

I did not see the entire conference, but from what I saw she handled the sniping, confrontational questions of some of the media representatives extremely well. She said what had to be said and refused to divulge information which was better left unsaid, and she maintained her composure in the face of questions that seemed to be designed to ignite controversy.

One question which particularly irritated me was the oft-repeated "Why did the investigation take so long?" The short answer is, it didn't. Not arresting Zimmerman on the night of the shooting was probably the best thing that happened for the building of a case against him. Had he been arrested that evening, the prosecution would have been scrambling to hastily put together the case ahead of certain very short procedural deadlines set out in the Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure. With Zimmerman unarrested, the only deadline which the prosecution had to work against was the statute of limitations--and there is no statute of limitations for second degree murder. The prosecution had an opportunity to move slowly and deliberately and put together the best possible case before making an arrest.

In my 29 years and 10 months as a prosecutor, I never had a homicide case suffer because the defendant wasn't immediately arrested, but I had several crash and burn because the defendant was arrested too soon.

Angela Corey has done an excellent job so far, and I expect that she will continue to do an excellent job.

MORE ON "STAND YOUR GROUND"

I'm getting a lot of inquiries from the media concerning the Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman case and particularly on Florida's "Stand Your Ground Law." Here's one of the latest:
http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/03/kill_at_will_laws.html

THE COURT ROOM OR THE NEWS ROOM?

Departing from my usual habit of studiously ignoring 24 hour news channels, I watched one today. I saw an anchor ask Angela Corey if she knew where George Zimmerman was, and then act as though Corey had committed malfeasance in office when she said she did not. It's not the chief prosecutor's job to keep track of potential defendants, and it's no reflection on Corey because she didn't know. I prosecuted for almost 30 years and the only time I knew the location of one of my defendants was when he was in jail. As long as he came to court when summoned, I had no desire to know where he was.

Then I saw a "former prosecutor" ranting about how horrible it was that Zimmerman had not been arrested. If she would think back to her days as a prosecutor, I am sure she could come up with a number of good explanations for why the arrest hasn't been made yet. Unless a defendant was a severe flight risk, I was seldom in a hurry to make an arrest.

The police department, which felt it had good and sufficient reasons to delay the arrest, has felt the heat of the media frenzy and begun leaking details which tend to explain why they weren't eager to make an arrest before they got their case more thoroughly investigated. If I were the prosecutor on the case, I would be upset that this information has been disseminated, but I fully understand that the police felt they were acting in self defense.

Interestingly, one newscast I saw cherry picked a single fact from the leaked information to televise and ignored all the other leaked information. Instead of running the relevant facts, they decided to air the completely irrelevant fact that Trayvon Martin had gotten into trouble over some marijuana residue in his backpack.

One would suspect that the media is working to aggravate a situation which is volatile enough already. This case needs to be tried in the court room, not the news room. We all need to just take a deep breath, calm down, and wait to see how the case unfolds. There will be plenty of time to critique the police and prosecutors after the case is over.