The petition link(s).
It looks like the only recent one (quite often there seem to be multiple petitions, splitting the votes).
90,760 to go by August 13.
Justice is restarting its investigation - http://www.nytimes.c...s-death.html?_r=0
[...]
In a statement on Sunday, the Justice Department said that now that the state criminal trial was over, it would continue its examination of the circumstances in the shooting. ÂExperienced federal prosecutors will determine whether the evidence reveals a prosecutable violation of any of the limited federal criminal civil rights statutes within our jurisdiction, the statement said.
The department sets a high bar for such a prosecution. Three former Justice Department officials who once worked in the departmentÂs Civil Rights Division, which is handling the inquiry, said Sunday that the federal government must clear a series of difficult legal hurdles before it could move to indict Mr. Zimmerman.
ÂIt is not enough if itÂs just a fight that escalated, said Samuel Bagenstos, who until 2011 served as the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the division. ÂThe government has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant acted willfully with a seriously culpable state of mind to violate Mr. MartinÂs civil rights.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. hinted at those challenges last year.
ÂWe have to prove the highest standard in the law, Mr. Holder said at a news conference in April 2012. ÂSomething that was reckless, that was negligent, does not meet that standard. We have to show that there was specific intent to do the crime with the requisite state of mind.Â
[...]
ÂThere arenÂt that many of these cases, and it is not because the government is not being vigilant, said William R. Yeomans, a former chief of staff in the Justice DepartmentÂs Civil Rights Division. ÂIt is very difficult to establish a defendantÂs state of mind.Â
Given the things reported about Zimmerman's comments in the call with police and his initial interview with the police, determining his state of mind shouldn't be too difficult in this case...
Our way of choosing juries contributed to the result. It used to be (e.g. in Colonial Williamsburg times) that a jury of your peers meant a collection of people who knew you and your character. If the state were to lock you up, your guilt or innocence was judged by people who knew you. Now, anyone who keeps up with the news and is an informed citizen is (nearly) automatically excluded from juries in notorious cases. It's likely that a far higher percentage of Black potential jury members paid attention to the case than Whites or Hispanics, shrinking their odds of being picked (even if there were no other intentional bias against them).
I'll be surprised if they go ahead with a civil rights case against him, but I do think this needs to be addressed in federal court. A civil case would be an alternative, but not as good as a federal civil rights case.
My $0.02.
[edit:] The NAACP had a petition earlier in the day - https://donate.naacp...l-rights-petition - over 450k signatures when I last checked.
Cheers,
Scott.
