One Law Professor's Take on Trayvon Martin's Killing and Probable Cause
Unless you’ve been living under a rock in far-faraway land, you’re well aware of the curious case of Trayvon Martin. I’ve shied away from blogging about it here because, frankly, I’ve been pretty outraged.
However, I thought I’d share the following article from The National Law Journal written by Jay Sterling Silver, a law professor at St. Thomas University of Law in Miami Gardens, Florida. I agree with him 100 percent.
Read through and let me know your thoughts!
From The National Law Journal:
. . .[P]olice are empowered to make “probable cause” determinations and arrest suspects at crime scenes, and do so thousands of times every day, to develop and preserve the evidence necessary to prosecute the case. The Sanford police, however, made little effort to thoroughly and immediately comb the scene, question the suspect and any witnesses, and confiscate evidence. . . .
The failure to take the suspect into custody for further questioning, i.e., to arrest the admitted killer standing over Martin’s body with a recently fired gun, was an egregious irregularity in police work that cannot be excused by hollow assertions of the absence of probable cause. The scene was dripping with probable cause, as it is traditionally defined in our criminal law. It requires, as any good cop or prosecutor or criminal defense attorney will tell you — and as the U.S. Supreme Court put it — only “reasonably trustworthy information” supporting a “prudent” belief that the suspect committed or is committing a crime. . . .
No leap of faith was required to reach this conclusion. The police knew that George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. He admitted to it. He’d followed the victim after being told by the police dispatcher not to follow him. Without knowing anything more, they needed only to conclude that the claim of self-defense by a 250-pound adult armed with a loaded gun who tracked and killed a 140-pound youth armed only with a pack of Skittles was inherently suspect. Police know, better than anyone else in the world, that suspects have an overwhelming interest in and habit of lying to save their own skin. . . .
Read the rest here.