The Zimmerman Trial and the Question of Justice

If a fourth grader asked you to explain the concept of justice, how would you answer—given the attention span of a ten-year-old?

What is justice?

Is it tit-for-tat, an eye-for-an-eye?  Is it vengeance and revenge?  Does it involve remorsefulness and penance (from which we get the word penitentiary)?  Does it require personal change and correction (from which we get the term correctional institution)?  Or is it a simple matter of retribution, the idea of punishment plain and simple: You got to pay for what you did!

Notice: when we are the innocent victims of a crime, we want swift, sharp, and unmitigated justice with harsh and exact punishment?  But, when we are the guilty offender, we ask for understanding, personal consideration, and a review of mitigating circumstances, even leniency and compassion, if not mercy.

Perhaps this is why Lady Justice is often depicted as blindfolded, supposedly to represent unbiased, impartial, and non-prejudicial consideration, as she weighs the facts upon her scales?  There is to be no preferential treatment, neither to the powerful, nor to class or race or ethnicity, or any other possible prejudicial distinction between her citizens, when it comes to the pursuit of justice.

However, even children learn early on that real justice can be quite illusory and can often escape us.  A sibling bullies his sister without provocation of any kind.  The sister smashes her brother’s favorite toy in retaliation, just as mom or dad walks in the room.  The sister is held responsible and is severely punished for her deed while the brother’s instigating action is ignored.  The sister soon realizes that this is an unjust world within which we live.

Hence, justice is not simply about laws, legalities, and technicalities.  It is about people: about the need of interpersonal respect for the other, to take personal responsibility for one’s self, and to recognize our relational connectedness with each other.  Thus, a crime committed is first and foremost about personal harm that one has caused another, not just a matter of breaking a law and offending the State.  It requires a personal owning-up to the harm done to the other, and a recognition that, as a result of that harm done, one now has a personal obligation to make things right.  This is the language of Restorative Justice (See: The Little Book of Restorative Justice by Howard Zehr.)

Thus, with regard to the Zimmerman/Martin case, the State has been satisfied with its procedures and processes.  But the individuals and families involved—on both sides—are left unsatisfied and remain ill-at-ease.  Why?  Real and true justice has escaped them.  George Zimmerman continues to fear for his life, apparently receiving death threats from angry citizens who believe that he is truly guilty and that his guilt requires vengeance.  Meanwhile, the Martin family has been irrevocably damaged and hurt.  They will never see Trayvon again, this side of the grave—a direct result of George Zimmerman’s unwise choices and actions the night he fatally shot Trayvon Martin in what we are to understand was an act of self-defense.

In short, great personal harm has been done against the Martin family and no one seems to be in a position to make things right for this harm that has been committed against them, least of all George Zimmerman himself.  This is why so many believe that the system has failed to produce real justice.

Remove the State’s interests in this whole case.  Forget about certain Florida State laws, legalities, and technicalities for a minute.  And what do you have left: Two families that need to come to terms with each other.  Let’s grant that George Zimmerman truly reacted in self-defense at the moment he pulled the trigger.  Still, it is not as if he was purely innocent in the incident.  It seems apparent to most people that he minimally exercised poor judgment, took wrong action, and virtually instigated the whole initial conflict.  Thus, the least that Zimmerman could do on his part is to be receptive and open to directly hearing from the Martins, to directly embrace and give witness to their pain and agony, to personally and directly own, experience, and empathetically understand the impact that his fatal shooting of Trayvon has had and continues to have on the Martin family.  This is not asking for forgiveness or reconciliation; it is asking for ownership of one’s misguided behavior, ownership of some responsibility, and accepting some obligation and respect given to the Martin family.  However, that will never happen and can never happen, given the way our judicial system now works.

This is why few are pleased with the verdict and many are dissatisfied with its outcome.  There is no sense of real personal justice having happened.  There has been no real personal, relational accountability, no ability for either party to accept a kind of mutual and measured responsibility for a death that should not have happened.