Mississippi Burning & Treyvon Martin (George Zimmerman). Law Essay

The Popular on Trial: Corrupting Morals
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The Popular on Trial: Corrupting Morals
Introduction
On 14th July 2013, Zimmerman was declared not guilty, facing charges of murdering Treyvon Martin. This ruling, to some, was considered victory for the new type of civil rights era. Many Americans claimed that Zimmerman’s acquittal represented persecution of lawful gun owners as the new civil rights battle (Giroux, 2012). As such, George Zimmerman became their icon. A similar case is presented in the U.S. vs. Cecil Price et al. film, whose central focus is the power struggle existing between whites and blacks in Mississippi. The film shows blacks being oppressed by whites. The two cases present a case of the popular on trial and how morals are corrupted in the society. Whereas Zimmerman is acquitted after murdering Treyvon in Treyvon vs. Zimmerman, blacks are oppressed by whites in the Mississippi burning case, with both scenarios showing corruption of morals in form of the struggle for civil rights in the society.
Human Rights, Civil Rights, and the case of Treyvon vs. Zimmerman
A section of the American community considered the acquittal of George Zimmerman as a travesty of justice, a current iteration of Jim Crow, in which a white shoots a black innocent person dead and walks scot-free. In this case, what angered the citizens was the fact that Trayvon Martin was unarmed at the time of the shooting (Bergold, A. N., & Kovera, 2020). The remaining population treated the verdict as the beginning of another form of civil rights movement, arguing that it was a gun freedom movement which was under trial in the Zimmerman case. In this case, the state showed willingness to ignore the available hard evidence and carry prosecution what the police had initially considered an open and shut case of self-defense.
During the case, prosecutors argued that Zimmerman had evil in his heart and overstepped his legal boundaries after choosing to follow Trayvon and then shooting him on that rainy night in February. However, those who supported Zimmerman argued that he had a civic duty to carry out following the 9/11 scenario in America (Miller, 2020). Currently, crime and safety concerns have beoce increasingly important, leading to crime rates dropping further.
The overarching theme of this case and the acquittal of Zimmerman is the manner in which the ‘siege mentality’ emerges and tends to drive the American society apart, to such an extent that Zimmerman and Trayvon traded gun fire and blows instead of ironing out their differences through a respectful inquiry. Their exchanging of blows represents the division in the society as well as the animosity between black and whites due to the struggle of civil rights in the society.
It is also worth noting that in much of the debate conducted after the verdict, the issue points out to the nervous interactions between guns and race, and it is fueled for the various black-on-black killings which have taken place in such areas as Chicago and the alleged cases of racial profiling by Zimmerman (Miller, 2020). In this regard, the struggle for civil rights is based on the evidence that Zimmerman followed Trayvon Martin, who was not arm...