David McElroy

The reaction to the George Zimmerman verdict has been frustrating. Zimmerman’s supporters sound as though their team just won the Super Bowl. His opponents sound as though the verdict means it’s now legal to shoot black teens. The truth is far more complex, but the truth doesn’t make either side especially happy.

Some people have lost sight of what a criminal trial is. It has nothing to do with broad social problems or “sending a message” or even what the law should be. A trial is about whether a specific defendant did a specific thing and whether his actions violated the law in specific ways.

In Zimmerman’s case, there wasn’t any disagreement about the basic facts. Zimmerman admits he shot Trayvon Martin, but he laid out a credible case for why he believed he was in danger. He said Martin attacked him and he fired to defend himself. The prosecution didn’t come up with any credible evidence to contradict that story. Honestly, it seemed as though the prosecution had no case. It seemed as though it was a political prosecution.

As I wrote Friday, I don’t think Zimmerman is a murderer, but I also don’t think he’s a hero. He and Martin each had chances to back away from this confrontation and they each made unwise decisions that left Martin dead. The only question is whether Zimmerman’s firing of the gun when he did was legal as self-defense. There was no other real issue in the case. It didn’t matter whether he should have ever been suspicious of Martin. It didn’t matter whether he should have followed Martin. It didn’t matter whether he should have been out of his car.

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Since George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin last year, two dominant narratives have emerged about the case.

Many of Zimmerman’s supporters think he’s a hero. They see him as someone standing up to punks and criminals who terrorize peaceful neighborhoods. They see Martin as a young thug who was no good, even if he didn’t have any evil intent on the night of the shooting. They think it’s perfectly reasonable that Zimmerman followed Martin and reported his mere presence in the neighborhood as suspicious. These people assume that the thuggish Martin attacked Zimmerman and then Zimmerman killed Martin in self-defense.

Zimmerman’s opponents have an entirely different picture. They see Zimmerman as a racist white thug who went after a peaceful black kid who was minding his own business. (We’ll ignore the fact that he’s half Hispanic.) They see it as a clear-cut case of murder, because they say Zimmerman had no reason or right to report Martin to police, much less confront him in some way. Even if Martin threw the first blow, they think Zimmerman is a murderer because he’s the one who initiated the confrontation simply because he was suspicious of a black teen.

If you believe the first narrative, Zimmerman is a role model for standing up for civilized society. If you believe the second narrative, Zimmerman is a racist killer who deserves to be found guilty of murder.

I see both of those narratives as simplistic. As the trial wraps up — and the case could go to the jury today — I want to give a third narrative. It’s not one that’s neat and clean. It won’t win approval from either side of the racially driven stories. I think it’s reasonable, though.

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There’s nothing like thinking about death to focus your mind on how you really feel about life. I’ve been thinking about death a lot recently — for various reasons — and it’s left me loving life even more.

A couple of people have recently talked to me about wanting to die. That hits me hard, because I see both of them as having the capacity to have long and fulfilling lives ahead of them and because it’s so different from how I feel about life.

At the risk of sounding obvious, the specifics of life can be terribly difficult. I’m certainly not where I want to be. I don’t have the love or money or position or achievements that I’d like to have. I frequently don’t know how to get from where I am now to where I’d like to be — how to bring the vivid picture in my mind into being. But I’ve never lost hope. When Death comes for me, he’ll have to carry me kicking and screaming if he wants to take me.

Another reason I’ve had death on my mind this week is because of the death of a baby in a family on my street a week ago. The little boy was born six or eight weeks ago with serious problems. They were problems that could be fixed with surgery, but he had to get stronger to survive the surgery. He never got strong enough, so he died. His parents never got to hold him until the last moments when the life was slipping away from his tiny body.

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