One of the many memorable scenes in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises is the one where Commissioner Gordon is summoned before the villain Bane’s kangaroo court, presided over by Crane (Scarecrow). Gordon, looking at the angry lynch mob surrounding him, asks, “What sort of due process is this?” Crane responds, “Your guilt has been determined. This is merely a sentencing hearing.” 
The glaring injustice gives this particular movie scene some dark humor. What is not funny, however, is that many people seem to have wanted George Zimmerman, the man who fatally shot 17 year old Trayvon Martin, to be tried in just such a court, where his guilt would have been predetermined.
As merciless media bombardment has made clear, many people refuse to accept Saturday’s verdict finding Zimmerman not guilty of second degree murder and manslaughter charges. They insist that the ruling was unjust, racist and reveals that the American justice system is broken.
Just like the angry mob yelling “Witch!” in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, however, most of these individuals provide no evidence or specifics on how the justice system is supposedly broken or what race has anything to do with the verdict.
Instead of revealing a broken justice system, this verdict actually implies that the system is quite effective. Despite the national lynch mob demanding Zimmerman’s head, the jury did what it was supposed to do—examine the evidence and reach a decision based off that evidence. A statement released by four of the jurors said, “We did what the law required us to do (Time).”
But for the masses of people outraged at the verdict, uncontrolled emotion is overshadowing logic. Long before this case even went on trial, many in the media, especially on cable, suggested that Zimmerman was a racist “white” Hispanic (whatever that means) who had ruthlessly gunned down a harmless African American child. This became the official narrative, and straying from it left one open to charges of racism and heartlessness. Watching this narrative unfold on TV, many were drawn in, and soon everybody was a Harvard attorney putting in his or her two cents.
Eventually, this media-sustained drama trickled down, most likely through social media, to people who do not normally follow the news. “Justice for Trayvon” became the new “Stop Kony” movement as more and more individuals jumped on the bandwagon not because they truly had examined the facts and decided justice was lacking, but because it was trendy. Facebook and Twitter lit up with all the smart phone “activists” complaining about racism and injustice.
With so much pressure for a guilty verdict, it is amazing that the jurors were able to still keep an open mind and come to an opposite decision. Justice was blind to all of the public pressure, as it should be. In the jurors’ view, the prosecution failed to prove that Zimmerman did not shoot Martin in self defense, and the defense was able to instill reasonable doubt that manslaughter or second degree murder occurred. Unlike the incoherent mobs across the nation, these jurors actually saw the evidence, and we ought to have a little faith that it affected their decision. To claim that somehow all of these jurors are racists is irresponsible and juvenile.
So no, our justice system is not broken. It is not perfect, but it is as healthy as it can be. What will break the justice system, however, is the collective vigilantism we saw in the Zimmerman case where so many Americans unilaterally decided a person’s guilt based off no evidence.
Included here is the ratings-hungry American media which ignores most of the thousands of homicides that occur in the U.S. each year (16,259 in 2010 according to the CDC), while handpicking ones which can be molded into a serial drama. In the Zimmerman case, the headlines fed off racial tensions in the U.S. Now, with the verdict in, even more ridiculous claims are being made like it being “open season” for whites to shoot blacks.
Indeed, with the expansion of the internet and cable TV and the advent of new technologies like social media, we have seen a rise in virtual vigilantes who seemingly have little understanding or respect for the due process of law, upon which society is built.
Left unchecked, this vigilantism could one day break the American justice system for real. So let us get off from this emotional high and place ourselves in the shoes of someone on trial. Let us assume you are innocent. Would you want the jury to convict you even if they had doubts that you were guilty? Would you like to be judged and smeared for months in advance in the court of public opinion? If you answered no to these questions, then take a deep breath and let the legal system do its job from now on.
By Tony Bara
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