George Zimmerman is Not Evil

Impact

On Wednesday afternoon, State Attorney and special prosecutor Angela Corey announced that George Zimmerman will stand trial for Murder 2 for the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The case for weeks has been billed as a racial hate crime by the media, portraying Zimmerman as a cold-blooded killer who stalked, beat, and then shot an unarmed teenager because he was black. Fueling this narrative was a seemingly endless parade of conflicting stories and evidence that became so convoluted, discussions of the case right here on PolicyMic were handicapped by the fact that two people would be arguing the case with two entirely different sets of information forming their viewpoints.

However, while the case had strong opinions in both directions here, the media did a thorough job of virtually lynching Zimmerman, and multiple organizations jumped on the case. NBC doctored the 911 call on the Today Show to make Zimmerman appear racist. The New Black Panthers put a $10,000 bounty on his head. The Justice Department opened their own investigation, with Attorney General Eric Holder once again showing that he's not above over-reacting by intentionally searching for federal violations beyond the scope of the state attorney. Pundits on PolicyMic, in the comments sections, eviscerated the very character of Zimmerman, even to the contrary of waves of new information that disputed them.

Meanwhile, Trayvon Martin's own mother stands as a paragon of level-headedness, when many would argue she has the least reason to be. She is in stark contrast to the hordes of strangers, absent in entirety from the investigation, who have been thirstily calling for his blood over the last month. Like most of us, defending Zimmerman without absolutely declaring his innocence, she too, believes that Zimmerman, regardless of his guilt or lack thereof, did not set out to murder her son for being black that night, but rather "it just got out of control and he couldn't turn the clock back."

When the trial concludes, it's very possible Zimmerman may leave a free man. It will be hard to prove that Zimmerman targeted, tracked down, and started a fight with Trayvon Martin. But even if he is completely innocent of any wrongdoing, the media and alarmists have seen to it that he will never live in peace, ever again.