The Trayvon Martin case was a virtual perfect storm of bad facts and bad decisions. Trayvon Martin was a violence prone teenager who beat a man he didn’t know nearly to death before he was shot and killed. George Zimmerman has proven himself worthy of a life sentence if felonious douchebaggery were in the penal code. Anti-gun zealots blamed Florida’s ‘stand your ground’ law even though under any legal regime in the nation Zimmerman would have been justified in shooting Martin– stand your ground hardly applies when someone is sitting on your chest. NBC doctored a 911 call to create a racist motive on the part of Zimmerman, who suddenly became a “white Hispanic.” Barack Obama, our race-baiter-in-chief, jumped in the middle of a developing criminal case and declared Martin looked like the son he never had enough ambition to sire. The race-industrial industry set up shop in the community. An utterly gutless Rick Scott waived common sense to appease the carefully generated anger. And Angela Corey was appointed the prosecutor for the case.

She took on the role as a pudgy avenging harpy rather than that of an independent prosecutor of a murder trial. She dismissed an empaneled grand jury and charged Zimmerman with second degree murder… mind you that even in the earliest moments of the case we knew Martin had been sitting on Zimmeran beating him in the face when the fatal shot was fired. As I wrote at the time:

She has threatened to sue Harvard if it did not fire Alan freakin Dershowitz after he pointed out her lack of legal acumen and ethics. In Florida she is something of a legend for threatening her critics. Her lack of concern for the rule of law was almost immediately apparent. Shortly after she received the case she gave a press conference in which she disclosed that she was not seeking justice, but “justice for Trayvon”: Corey: The first thing my team and I did upon being appointed was to meet with Trayvon’s family and pray with them. “We opened our meeting with prayer.” Also, Ms. Corey thanked “all those people across this country who have sent positive energy and prayers our way,” and she asked them to continue to pray for Trayvon’s family and for her team. “Remember, it is Trayvon’s family that are our constitutional victims….” In short, the press conference seemed calculated to declare Zimmerman guilty before an investigation was completed or a trial conducted, conduct, which the article notes, runs counter to Florida law and American Bar Association professional standards. During the course of the trial her office operated as expected: unencumbered or restrained by any sense of justice or fair play and without respect for the rule of law. Evidence was suppressed. White jurors were pre-emptively struck until the judge forced a halt. Her office leaked false information with the apparent intent of poisoning the jury pool. During the course of the trial her staff virtually encouraged the jury to vote their sympathies instead of using the evidence. The avalanche of buffoonery was capped off by an eleventh hour attempt to convict Zimmerman of murder by way of child abuse, a charge conjured out of thin air, and something so outside the bounds of conduct that even the marionette who acted as judge could not countenance it.

And Zimmerman was not the only person to feel the irrational zealotry of this bovine avenging angel. Marissa Alexander, a black woman, drew a 20-year sentence for firing a warning shot to deter an abusive spouse. No one was injured. She did the same for a 65-year-old veteran who was being menaced by a gang in front of his house. He also fired warning shots into the ground, he injured no one, and drew a 20 year sentence.

Last night, Florida voters showed they had tolerated this vicious bitter crone for a long as they could stomach her and they sent her packing.

Melissa Nelson, an unknown corporate lawyer and former prosecutor three months ago, cleared her path to become one of the most powerful and influential figures in Northeast Florida on Tuesday night when she easily defeated incumbent 4th Judicial State Attorney Angela Corey. The election caps a dizzying rise for Nelson and an equally shocking fall for Corey, one of the most polarizing political figures in Jacksonville history who generated national attention and enormous criticism for her prosecutions of George Zimmerman, Marissa Alexander, 12-year-old Cristian Fernandez and many others. Corey will depart office in the first week of January as the first incumbent state attorney in modern history to lose a contested election.

Sometimes the system works. If the voters are awake and paying attention.