From the NYT:

By ERIC LIPTON



WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Sunday that it was restarting its investigation into the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin to consider possible separate hate crime charges against George Zimmerman.



The federal inquiry, which was started shortly after the shooting last year but had been delayed while the state criminal trial in Florida was under way, was being restarted after civil rights leaders called on the Justice Department to re-examine the case. The leaders said Sunday that they remained convinced that the shooting had a racial element. Mr. Martin, 17, was black.

“There is a pattern of George Zimmerman making dozens of calls to 911 over several years, frequently about young men of color,” Benjamin T. Jealous, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., said in an interview on Sunday. . ...



Zimmerman is guilty of disparate impact in noticing things. Noticing things is a hate crime.

But the Obama administration’s Justice Department has been cautious in its use of the expanded law. In 2010, for example, it turned down calls by civil rights leaders to file charges in New York City in the 2006 death of Sean Bell, a 23-year-old black man who was fatally shot by police officers outside a Queens club just hours before he was to be married.



Yeah, but that's merely the little old NYPD. The Zimmerman Menace is the main threat to civil rights.



Earlier, Newsday reported:

The U.S. Justice Department, which opened an investigation into the George Zimmerman case Sunday, could charge him with federal civil rights violations, local attorneys said. While a Florida jury found neighorbood watch volunteer Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder, a federal probe would examine whether he violated Martin's civil rights when he fatally shot him Feb. 16, 2012, in Sanford, Fla. To prove such violations requires a different standard of evidence and law than what was used in the state case against Zimmerman. So a federal prosecution would not be double jeopardy, they said.

Robert Valli, a Garden City-based civil rights attorney said if a probe proceeds, the local federal prosecutor would likely seek a grand jury indictment on charges that Zimmerman violated the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Valli said potential charges would be the government's "version of a homicide charge, coupled with the intention to do so because of the person's membership in a protected class."



Constitutionally speaking, wouldn't it just be simpler for Obama to order a drone strike on Zimmerman's condo?