In the aftermath of the jury acquittal of George Zimmerman on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the killing of Trayvon Martin, defense attorney Mark O’Mara blasted the media and racial advocacy groups for stumping for Zimmerman’s arrest and conviction. “Things would have been different for George Zimmerman if he was black for this reason: he would never have been charged with a crime,” O’Mara stated to CNN on Saturday night. “If only those who decided to condemn Mr. Zimmerman as quickly and as viciously as they did would have taken just a little bit of time to find out who it was they were condemning, it never would have happened. And it certainly wouldn’t have happened if he was black, because those people who decided that they were going to make him the scapegoat would not have.”

On Friday evening, O’Mara said that lawyers for Trayvon Martin’s family, including Benjamin Crump, “victimized” Zimmerman. “George Zimmerman was victimized by a publicity campaign to smear him, to call him a racist when he wasn’t, and to call him a murderer when he wasn’t,” O’Mara said.

Zimmerman’s safety remains in danger, O’Mara continued. “He has to live mostly in hiding, he has to protect himself from that periphery that still believe that he’s some racist murderer or acted in a bad way,” O’Mara told CNN. “I think that he’s probably concerned about living in central Florida and never having a normal life, and that’s unfortunate. His life will never be the same…I don’t know which is the one who’s going to walk down the street at the same time George does. They know what he looks like; he doesn’t know what they look like.”

O’Mara lashed into the fact that the media had misinformed the public, as well. “Half of the country is going to be upset with the verdict. It’s absurd. And it’s absurd that 75% of the people who were asked about whether or not George Zimmerman could get a fair trial a month before the trial started said no. That should never happen in our country. There shouldn’t be 1% of our population who believes that anybody cannot get a fair trial.”

Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).