I have been slow to respond to the killing of Trayvon Martin, because I did not want to rush to judgment, before having sufficient evidence to justify an opinion. In my opinion, the killing was a murder, it was a racially motivated hate crime, and the police tried to cover it up. Here is a small part of the evidence on which I based these opinions.

…As the world now knows, the 17-year-old Martin walked to a store in Orlando to buy some snacks on the night of February 26. George Zimmerman, a volunteer Neighborhood Watch captain, thought the boy looked suspicious and called 911. The 911 operator told Zimmerman to keep his distance — police would be sent — but there was a confrontation between Zimmerman and Martin. Martin was killed with a single shot to the chest. Florida authorities have not arrested Zimmerman, and federal authorities recently joined the investigation. The legal question at the heart of the case involves Florida’s so-called "stand your ground" law, which the legislature passed, at the behest of the National Rifle Association, in 2005. Before that time, Florida law resembled that of most other states; during confrontations, individuals had a duty to retreat rather than to respond to provocations. Under the new law, a person is allowed to use deadly force if he is in a place he has a right to be and feels reasonably threatened with serious harm. In this case, then, the question is whether Zimmerman was in such a place and felt reasonably threatened. The 911 operator told Zimmerman to keep his distance from Martin, but Zimmerman had a right to be on the street. That’s where neighborhood watch volunteers work… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <CNN>

This account by CNN appears biased towards Zimmerman, as even the Florida law does not justify his acts, because there was no provocation from Martin. In fact the evidence is clear that the provocation came from Zimmerman only.

A pinned, unarmed victim, screaming for help is hardly provocative.

Overall the best coverage I have seen came from Lawrence O’Donnell who covered it in two segments. In the first segment he discusses the racist overtones of this crime with Corrine Brown and Jasmine Rand.

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I agree with Lawrence. When I first heard the tape I thought the word Zimmerman used was "coon". However there are apparently two different tapes of the same conversation, one of which omits the section containing the racial slur. Though I cannot say for certain, it think it far more likely that the police doctored that tape, because it’s far more difficult to fake such an insertion than it is to remove a portion of the tape.

In the second, he discusses the "Stand your ground" law with Arthur Hayhoe, Jasmine Rand and Karen Finney.

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While I also consider this a bad law, I don’t think it justifies the shooting, as I stated earlier. The evidence of overwhelming that Zimmerman was the aggressor throughout. Reviewing his other 911 calls to police make it clear that, anytime he saw a black person in the community, he assumed criminal intent. That the same officer previously covered up a hate crime, makes it more likely that he did so here as well.

Although I cannot say that Zimmerman even was a Republican, I have often said that the violent rhetoric employed by Republican politicians and pundits has made such crimes more prevalent, and the party’s pandering to racism certainly added fuel to this fire as well.