OK. I think I'm ready now.

Of all the parts of the law I understand- mostly civil, mostly commercial/litigation/bankruptcy within that- the part I least understand is the jury trial. I've done exactly one in going on 29 years- and it was a Disaster Area, despite being a modified version of the traditional model that kept it to one day of evidence, and my going-down-in-flames eventually became part of the New York Courts' promotional materials for the model (it's not searchable, but trust me, My Case is one of The Cases in there). All that's lacking is the case name and my mugshot with six darts shot through it.

Neither have I ever been inside a jury room. For roughly half my career, New York lawyers had automatic exemptions from being even asked to be jurors; since then, we're eligible, but never bloody likely to survive voir dire (the process by which both sides winnow the triers of fact to the six, or twelve, dumbest boxes of rocks they can get their hands on).  For whatever reason, even as Eleanor has been summoned at least twice since we moved here and the law changed, I've never even been asked. I'd volunteer for it, and would likely find it interesting, but I doubt I'd survive both sides' scrutiny.

On the other hand, I've seen plenty of jurors in transit in a variety of courthouses. You can spot them in the field by their JUROR sticky buttons (essential to ensuring the compliance with ethical rules by lawyers in their cases and not), by their frogmarching through courthouses into their respective jury boxes, and by their glazed eyes and overwhelming overwhelmedness by what they somehow managed not to get "out of" like most of their friends and relatives did.

Florida, I presume, operates under similar rules, and those rules, as well as the so-called "rule of law," are what led to the acquittal of a dude who was guilty of just as much sin as O.J. Simpson and got away with just as much as he did.

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When I heard the verdict, I related to a suggestion I'd heard at the end of last week, and posted that I felt a need to visit a historically black sanctuary on Sunday, to apologize for what my race, and class, and system had done to violate a dead black kid all over again. To which one friend- conservative, but thoughtful- replied:

Why? For following the law?

Well, yes,  they did. They followed a law, and history of laws, that trace back through the Scottsboro Boys, and Emmitt Till, and the Freedom Riders, and Martin Luther King, Junior himself- all of who suffered either loss of life or loss of liberty because creepy-ass-cracker Jim Crow legislatures rammed through laws against their interests.  Florida's "Stand Your Ground" statute was only the most recent in this long and sick history- aimed, not at the gangsta at the corner market, but at the limp-dicked white guy who couldn't deal with an African-American within the literal or perceived gates of his community.

(Don't believe me? Then tell me why Florida refused to give similar Stand Your Ground protection to a black woman, already given court protection from an abusive former spouse, who is now spending 20 years in the Stateville Prison for firing a gun above, not at, said spouse. Why this woman hasn't been pardoned in the wake of Georgie's acquittal is beyond me.)

Perhaps saddest of all in this True Crime story was hearing today about the upshot of "the question" Zimmerman's jury sent to their judge a good day before their ultimate acquittal.  For most of the trial, the People of the State of Florida focused on murder charges,  but the judge allowed them to consider manslaughter as a lesser-included offense.  So when these six white women sent out a question about the instructions applicable to a manslaughter verdict, it seemed they were heading to the land of compromise. 

Alas, no. The judge, likely fearful of a reversal on appeal and after stipulating to the answer with both the state's and the defendant's attorneys, refused to answer their question about the standard unless they asked a "more specific question."  Which, after all this time and negative publicity, they never did. They voted for the one thing that can't be reversed on appeal, and let dude off Scottsboro-boy-free.

But they got home in time Saturday night for the latest episode of Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo, so they've got that going for them, which is nice.

There remains the chance for a federal civil rights criminal trial (a la Rodney King post-bad-verdict), or a civil suit by Trayvon's family against the creepy-ass cracker (a la O.J. post-bad-verdict). But in an ideal, fictional world, there's an even more just solution, which somebody thought of before I did: