National

Justice Dept.: No Federal Charges in Trayvon Martin Death

Published

10 years ago

February 25, 2015

This image provided by the Seminole County Sherif’s Office shows former neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman after he was arrested Monday, Nov. 18, 2013, in Apopka, Fla. Authorities said they responded to a disturbance call at a house earlier in the day. (AP Photo/Seminole County Sheriff`s Office)

JENNIFER KAY, Associated Press
ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

MIAMI (AP) — George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin in a 2012 confrontation with the teenager, will not face federal charges, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

The decision, announced in the waning days of Attorney General Eric Holder’s tenure, resolves a case that focused public attention on self-defense laws and became a flashpoint in the national conversation about race two years before the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting.

Zimmerman has maintained that he acted in self-defense when he shot the 17-year-old Martin during a confrontation inside a gated community in Sanford, Florida, just outside Orlando. Martin, who was black, was unarmed when he was killed. Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic.

Once Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder by a state jury in July 2013, Martin’s family turned to the federal investigation in final hopes that he would be held accountable for the shooting.

That probe focused on whether Zimmerman could be charged with a federal hate crime in the killing and whether he willfully deprived Martin of his civil rights, a difficult legal standard to meet. Federal investigators, who independently conducted dozens of interviews, ultimately determined there was insufficient evidence to prove Zimmerman killed the teenager on account of his race.

“Our decision not to pursue federal charges does not condone the shooting that resulted in the death of Trayvon Martin and is based solely on the high legal standard applicable to these cases,” Vanita Gupta, the Justice Department’s top civil rights lawyer, said in a statement announcing the decision.

Zimmerman’s attorney, Don West, was on a flight and couldn’t immediately comment on the decision. A call to Zimmerman’s cellphone went directly to voicemail.

Martin’s parents were too distraught after their meeting in Miami with Justice Department officials to speak with reporters, said their attorney Ben Crump, who called the decision a “bitter pill to swallow” even though it was expected.

“What they told his family and I was that because Trayvon wasn’t able to tell us his version of events, there was a lack of evidence to bring the charges. That’s the tragedy,” Crump said.

The February 2012 confrontation began after Zimmerman observed Martin while driving in his neighborhood. Zimmerman called police and got out of his car and approached Martin, who was returning from a store while visiting his father and his father’s fiancee at the same townhome complex where Zimmerman lived.

Prosecutors contended that Zimmerman was profiling Martin and perceived him as someone suspicious in the neighborhood; Zimmerman did not testify at his trial, but he earlier told investigators that he feared for his life as Martin straddled him and punched him during the fight.

Federal investigators said they examined the case under multiple civil-rights provisions, including ones that make it illegal to use force against someone based on their race and another that criminalizes race-based interference with a person’s federally protected housing rights. They said they conducted roughly 75 witness interviews, examined police reports and reviewed all of the evidence gathered during the state prosecution.

Tamara Rice Lave, a professor of the University of Miami’s School of Law, said the Justice Department conclusion was not surprising because there was no direct or circumstantial evidence that Zimmerman’s actions were motivated by race.

In a 911 call, as he followed Martin through their Sanford neighborhood, Zimmerman said the teenager “looks black.”

“But he doesn’t say the things that would make you think it was motivated by race,” Lave said. “He doesn’t call him the N-word.”

Black leaders in Sanford, where Martin was shot, also said they weren’t surprised by the decision.

“I was expecting this to happen,” said Turner Clayton, a former local leader of the NAACP.

The conclusion in the Zimmerman case comes even though Holder has made civil rights a cornerstone of his tenure. The Justice Department is moving to resolve a separate high-profile civil rights case: the August shooting by a Ferguson police officer of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. Holder has indicated that he plans to announce a decision in that case, which prompted weeks of protests, before he leaves the Justice Department in the coming weeks. In the Ferguson case, the Justice Department has been investigating whether the officer deprived Brown of his civil rights by using excessive force.

Days after Zimmerman was acquitted, Holder said he considered Martin’s death an “unnecessary shooting.” In a statement Tuesday, Holder echoed remarks he made in the shooting’s aftermath.

“Though a comprehensive investigation found that the high standard for a federal hate crime prosecution cannot be met under the circumstances here, this young man’s premature death necessitates that we continue the dialogue and be unafraid of confronting the issues and tensions his passing brought to the surface,” Holder said. “We, as a nation, must take concrete steps to ensure that such incidents do not occur in the future.”

___

Associated Press Writer Mike Schneider contributed to this report from Orlando, Fla.

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Fighting to Keep Blackness

BlackPressUSA NEWSWIRE — Trump supporters have introduced another bill to take down the bright yellow letters of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., in exchange for the name Liberty Plaza. D.C.

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6 days ago

March 7, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

As this nation observes the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, the words of President Trump reverberate. “This country will be WOKE no longer”, an emboldened Trump offered during his speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. Since then, Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell posted on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter this morning that “Elon Musk and his DOGE bros have ordered GSA to sell off the site of the historic Freedom Riders Museum in Montgomery.” Her post of little words went on to say, “This is outrageous and we will not let it stand! I am demanding an immediate reversal. Our civil rights history is not for sale!” DOGE trying to sell Freedom Rider Museum

Also, in the news today, the Associated Press is reporting they have a file of names and descriptions of more than 26,000 military images flagged for removal because of connections to women, minorities, culture, or DEI. In more attempts to downplay Blackness, a word that is interchanged with woke, Trump supporters have introduced another bill to take down the bright yellow letters of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., in exchange for the name Liberty Plaza. D.C. Mayor Morial Bowser is allowing the name change to keep millions of federal dollars flowing there. Black Lives Matter Plaza was named in 2020 after a tense exchange between President Trump and George Floyd protesters in front of the White House. There are more reports about cuts to equity initiatives that impact HBCU students. Programs that recruited top HBCU students into the military and the pipeline for Department of Defense contracts have been canceled.

Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing back against this second-term Trump administration’s anti-DEI and Anti-woke message. In the wake of the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, several Congressional Black Caucus leaders are reintroducing the Voting Rights Act. South Carolina Democratic Congressman James Clyburn and Alabama Congresswoman Terry Sewell are sponsoring H.R. 14, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Six decades ago, Lewis was hit with a billy club by police as he marched for the right to vote for African Americans. The right for Black people to vote became law with the 1965 Voting Rights Act that has since been gutted, leaving the nation to vote without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. Reflecting on the late Congressman Lewis, March 1, 2020, a few months before his death, Lewis said, “We need more than ever in these times many more someones to make good trouble- to make their own dent in the wall of injustice.”

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The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 5 – 11, 2025

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March 7, 2025

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Rep. Al Green is Censured by The U.S. House After Protesting Trump on Medicaid

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — His censure featured no hearing at the House Ethics Committee and his punishment was put on the floor for a vote by the Republican controlled House less than 72 hours after the infraction in question.

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March 6, 2025

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By Lauren Burke

In one of the quickest punishments of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the modern era, Congressman Al Green (D-TX) was censured by a 224-198 vote today in the House. His censure featured no hearing at the House Ethics Committee and his punishment was put on the floor for a vote by the Republican controlled House less than 72 hours after the infraction in question. Of the last three censures of members of the U.S. House, two have been members of the Congressional Black Caucus under GOP control. In 2023, Rep. Jamal Bowman was censured.

On the night of March 4, as President Trump delivered a Joint Address to Congress, Rep. Green interrupted him twice. Rep. Green shouted, “You don’t have a mandate to cut Medicare, and you need to raise the cap on social security,” to President Trump. In another rare event, Rep. Green was escorted off the House floor by security shortly after yelling at the President by order of GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson. Over the last four years, members of Congress have yelled at President Biden during the State of the Union. Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor-Greene was joined by Republican Rep. Lauren Bobert (R-CO) in 2022 in yelling at President Biden. In 2023, Rep. Greene, Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), and Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) yelled at Biden, interrupting his speech. In 2024, wearing a red MAGA hat, a violation of the rules of the U.S. House, Greene interrupted Biden again. She was never censured for her behavior. Rep. Green voted “present” on his censure and was joined by freshman Democrat Congressman Shomari Figures of Alabama who also voted “present”.

All other members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against censuring Green. Republicans hold a four-seat advantage in the U.S. House after the death of Texas Democrat and former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner yesterday. Ten Democrats voted along with Republicans to censure Rep. Green, including Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, who is in the leadership as the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “I respect them but, I would do it again,” and “it is a matter of conscience,” Rep. Green told Black Press USA’s April Ryan in an exclusive interview on March 5. After the vote, a group of Democrats sang “We Shall Overcome” in the well at the front of the House chamber. Several Republican members attempted to shout down the singing. House Speaker Mike Johnson gaveled the House out of session and into a recess. During the brief recess members moved back to their seats and out of the well of the House. Shortly after the vote to censor Rep. Green, Republican Congressman Andy Ogles of Tennessee quickly filed legislation to punish members who participated in the singing of “We Shall Overcome.” Earlier this year, Rep. Ogles filed legislation to allow President Donald Trump to serve a third term, which is currently unconstitutional. As the debate started, the stock market dove down over one-point hours from close. The jobs report will be made public tomorrow.