By Phil Riske, managing editor | Rose Law Group Reporter
My favorite journalism professor taught us to use “not guilty” instead of innocent when reporting a trial. “Only newborns and puppies are innocent,” he said.
So, scratch the headlines that read O.J. was innocent of murder and, more recently, George Zimmerman innocent of killing Trayvon Martin.
O.J. has been in prison for several years now on a lesser crime. George Zimmerman is in a Florida prison near the same courthouse where he was acquitted this summer of murdering Trayvon Martin.
Zimmerman was busted Monday after a “domestic disturbance” with his girlfriend. He now faces a felony charge of aggravated assault and the lesser charges of battery domestic violence and criminal mischief.
“He’s in my house, breaking all my s— because I asked him to leave,” Samantha Scheibe told the dispatcher. “He’s got a freaking gun breaking all my stuff right now.”
Police detained Zimmerman on September 9 after his estranged wife told a 911 dispatcher he had threatened her and her father at her father’s house in Lake Mary, Florida. Later that month, Shellie Zimmerman told “she had doubts about her husband’s innocence in the Martin case.”
The Simpson and Zimmerman verdicts, as hard to accept as they are, do not warrant throwing the jury system out with the bath water. It is the way we do things in a democracy.
It also is the habit of people such as O.J. and George to believe they are immune from the law after their acquittals.
As we continue to rue the day when these thugs walked free, please continue to believe their day will come.
Will Zimmerman and O.J. ever stay out of trouble? Use the comment box at the end of the story.
