I was aghast when I read the July 14 story “Zimmerman not guilty in slaying” by Associated Press reporters Mike Schneider and Kyle Hightower regarding the George Zimmerman acquittal.
Their reporting implies that Zimmerman was guilty as they misrepresented the facts of the trial and also by referring to Trayvon Martin again as “the unarmed black teenager.” The story had an accompanying photo of Martin who was obviously a few years younger at the time. Martin, in all physical respects, was a young man who could have been a middleweight boxer.
The real crime is that Zimmerman was charged with murder. The special prosecutor who filed these charges after all the other law enforcement agencies refused due to lack of probable cause should be disbarred, as was the infamous lead prosecutor Mike Nifong in the Duke University scandal several years ago. Erroneously claimed issues made that phony case of rape against members of Duke’s lacrosse team an additional wedge in race relations as does this Zimmerman fiasco.
Even with all the highly misstated evidence, the jury got it right.
Gary S. Smith
Vancouver
