Recently, some peace has been had by the Family of Trayvon Martin as state prosecutors have announced they will be charging George Zimmerman with second-degree murder, the highest offense that could be charged. This comes after the ill-received announcement that no grand jury was to be used in deciding whether or not to charge Zimmerman with anything. Now that those fears have been put to rest, the Martin family can breath a short sigh of relief. Recently arrested and being held at the Seminole County jail, he is currently waiting for court proceeding and bail to begin. The Miami Herald has a good step by step of what happens next legally:
"• George Zimmerman faces a charge of second-degree murder with a firearm, a first-degree felony punishable by a minimum of 25 years in prison and up to life behind bars. The charge is a non-bondable offense, which means Zimmerman does not have the immediate right to post bail.
• He will be booked into a Seminole County jail and should appear Thursday in court for a first hearing and arraignment.
• Zimmerman will certainly plead not guilty and his defense attorney has said he will ask that his client be allowed to post bond and be released from custody.
• Within 15 days, prosecutors must start providing Zimmerman’s defense attorney with “discovery,” the first witness statements, police reports and photos that will be used as evidence against him. Most of the evidence will be released to the public and media, although the substance of any of his confessions can be withheld before trial.
• Once all the evidence has been provided to Zimmerman’s defense team, his lawyer can file a motion for immunity under Florida’s Stand Your Ground self-defense law. A judge must hold an evidentiary hearing and decide by a “preponderance of the evidence” whether Zimmerman was acting in self-defense.
• If a judge denies his motion for immunity, a date will be set for a trial in front of a jury. Zimmerman’s defense attorney could also ask for a “change of venue,” meaning he could be tried in a different county in Florida if a judge deems pretrial publicity has been so overwhelming that it is impossible for the defendant to get a fair trial."
The trial of George Zimmerman will no doubt be one of high profile, as people across the country have voiced their support for the Martin family and against Zimmerman through protests, walk-outs, and marches. Much like in the Casey Anthony case a while back, it seems that in this case George Zimmerman has already been tried by the media. The majority opinion on the case is that this is a travesty of justice and that he's obviously guilty. Not that I'm saying he is innocent, the evidence does seem to indicate he acted with menace, but I'm saying that America as a whole needs to recognize that there's already been too much of a decision on the case already and that we need to wait for the courts of law to figure it out.
" George Zimmerman, accused of murdering unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, was once an anonymous loan officer in a Florida suburb. He is now a reviled symbol of racial profiling, vigilante justice and everything broken about race relations in America.With the notoriety that has come from press coverage, there is no doubt in my mind that at the very least he will be convicted of some crime, and when he is the whole nation will know about it.
Whether or not Zimmerman deserves that onus, a pending trial may be a vehicle for the nation to sort publicly through some of these issues. But on a personal level, Zimmerman has been the focus of so much media coverage and extraordinary public vitriol that legal experts say an impartial jury may be difficult to find to weigh his claim of self-defense for the shooting.
"We have to worry about his ability to get a fair trial," said Gabriel J. Chin, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. "There is a risk that he's convicted based on media impressions and popular sentiments rather than evidence."
Zimmerman can seek a bail hearing under Florida law, but his notoriety has diminished his chances for release, at least in the immediate future. On Thursday, Mark O'Mara, Zimmerman's defense attorney, said he would wait at least a few weeks before seeking bail, in an attempt to "calm this case down."
Zimmerman's arrest and incarceration on Wednesday marked the beginning of a new chapter in a case that has raised questions about much more than the murky circumstances around the killing of an unarmed teenager. For many, the case has come to represent all of the injustices faced not just by blacks in Sanford but by minority communities across the country, where issues of racial profiling, 'stop and frisk' searches and police brutality remain hot button issues.
Without mass rallies and media attention, the shooting would have very likely gone unremarked on the local crime blotter. Instead, Martin's case has become a cause, a national phenomenon with competing interests often drawn along racial lines. Meanwhile, the case could prove pivotal in the fight to repeal Florida's controversial Stand Your Ground laws.
In the process, Zimmerman's life has been threatened, and lawyers and national media have dragged the skeletons of Zimmerman's violent past out into the light. Posters made from a 2005 mugshot of Zimmerman -- looking chubby and bleary-eyed in a jail-issued orange jumpsuit -- have been hoisted at rallies and protests.
Everyone from the president of the United States to former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson have weighed in on the case, with Tyson saying of Zimmerman in an interview Thursday with Yahoo Sports that "it's a disgrace that man hasn't been shot yet." "
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