Race and crime: Trayvon
Mr Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, chose to stalk Mr Martin, an unarmed black teenager, through the subdivision where they both were staying. In the altercation that ensued, he shot him dead. But the jurors—none of whom was black—accepted his claim that he was acting in self-defence. Mr Zimmerman is now free and can reclaim his gun.
Nothing has happened like the Los Angeles riots of 1992, when four police officers were acquitted after badly beating Rodney King, a black suspect in a car chase. Then, 53 people were killed, 2,000 were injured and $1 billion-worth of property was destroyed.
Eric Holder, the attorney-general, also criticised the “stand your ground” laws adopted by roughly half the states including Florida, which absolve those who fear grave injury or death from any obligation to retreat before shooting someone in self-defence. Although Mr Zimmerman did not invoke certain rights under Florida’s law, the judge did explain its basic outline to the jury. The law does not allow the instigator of a violent confrontation to claim self-defence, but Mr Zimmerman maintained that it was Mr Martin who had attacked him, not the other way around, and there were no witnesses to contradict him.
Happily, incidents such as Mr Martin’s death are becoming rarer. The number of killings in which “stand your ground” is invoked in Florida has fallen in recent years. Although blacks are more likely to be attacked by strangers (of any race) than whites, they are less than half as likely to be attacked as they were 20 years ago. The odds of being attacked correlate more with age and income than race. And only 10% of violent confrontations involve a gun.
That is little consolation to Mr Martin’s family, or the many frightened black parents in America. Mr Watson, the pastor from Sanford, says he would not have thought twice about whether it was safe for his children to walk to the store alone before the shooting. Now, he says with a sigh, he would never let them.