0 george zimmerman is a free man today. the former neighborhood watch volunteer found the not guilty in the shooting death in the unarmed african-american teenager. the verdict comes in the wake of more than 16 hours of jury deliberation and impassioned debate about the state of race in this country. the rally some feared might turn violent in the after math of the decision have largely remained peaceful across the country. both sides of the case had called for calm. more demonstrations are expected today. the parents of trayvon martin were not in the courtroom when the verdict was announced. his father tweeted, even though i'm brokenhearted, my faith is unshattered. the family attorney benjamin crunch had this to say last night. >> the whole world was looking at this case for a reason, and what people wanted to see as we all said how far we have come in america in matters of equal justice. and certainly as we have said, we'll be intellectually disho s dishonest if we didn't acknowledge the racial undertones. so we have to have very responsible conversations about how we get better as a country and move forward from the tragedy and learn from it. >> joining me as partner to mr. crunch, mr. parks, thank you for being here this morning. i want to talk to you first about the family. they were not in the courtroom as we just said. we have heard tweets from them. have you talked to them and if so can you give us a sense of where they are right now? not physically locateds but where they are emotionally. >> well, they're devastated. and when i gave the mother the message as soon as it happened, her response was, wow. this morning they have advanced a little bet more. and realize that the verdict is done and now they must move forward. they are very committed to moving forward action going the trayvon martin.org, to advance nonviolence against youth. so they are very committed to trayvon's leg gas i. and trayvon's legacy means so much to this country, in that hopefully he has made america more aware that all people are important, but also too that we is to be more mindful as to how we treat one another, how we profile one another, how we evoke our judicial process when things occur. all of those things will be part of trayvon's legacy. >> i'm interested, first of all, in whether moving forward includes perhaps a civil suit. >> well, we don't talk about that much publicly on our side of things. when we make those type of decisions, we don't sue insolvent people. we sue people -- it's an informed decision. so we don't -- that wouldn't be a very public situation when that decision is made, how we handle it, and we'll confer with our clients. we'll make that decision. right now, though, i think this verdict is so fresh, we don't have that second conversation not yet. i think right now it's really an important time for the country and the martin family to think about how we treat racial minorities, how our system delivers equal justice and what can we do to do better. there are a lot of different ways that can happen, whether it's lawmakers, lawyer, judges, whether it's law enforcement and how they go about their process. so we learn many different lessons. we saw things as simple as how people may have taken pictures of trayvon and miscued things. and there's a solution to that. i think maybe in the future people will know that put a footnote on the picture that describes when it was taken and that clears all that up. because unless you ask someone who took the picture or ask the parents, you would never really know how to put it in proper context. >> mr. parks, i spent a long timing listening to people talk about the need for real conversation about race. eing listening to people talk about the need for real conversation about racng listen about the need for real conversation about racg listeni about the need for real conversation about rac listenin about the need for real conversation about race. we heard it after a number of trials, particularly after the o.j. simpson trial brought up race and racial justice. and i'm sure it takes place in smaller forums, as well. and yet whit seems that it's th same story, the justice system as seen by the african american community and others is unfair to african americans and nothing ever changes. what changes it? >> education. if you use ben and i as an example, we don't come from rich backgrounds, but we're lawyers who went to law school and as though we would have a normal civil rights civil litigation type practice, it's very conscious based practice that spend as lot of time and effort in situations to make sure that the right thing happens in our community. so it tends to force the conversation back in the right direction. and so we have of -- there are many comments about our law firm and our lawyers who are very critical. and i don't think these people quite understood how serious we take our role from a social responsibility standpoint. it's really important to us. >> and let me ask you about the word profile. when you say that trayvon martin was profiled, do you mean that you believe that mr. zimmerman profiled him simply because he was african-american? >> that plus the fact that he was wearing a hoodie, plus the fact that he was walking at night, these are all things that he described that happened in the past that led to a number of break-ins. that evidence was very substantial in this case. and so because it was at night, he saw him walking, what he believed to be suspicious, we have to remember trayvon we now know was on the telephone. george zimmerman is not the judge of people who choose to talk on their cell phone, walk slowly at night as they're walking home. that's perfectly okay. people do it all the time. >> to those critics have said it isn't so much that justice was not served, it's that justice was served, there are just some folks that don't line the outcome. >> i think the system sometimes doesn't get it right. that's part of our process. it should motivate people to run for office, to be policymakers and change the laws that makes it more favorable to protect people especially innocent people who are unarmed and who are minding their business. so the law certainly needs some tweaking. >> mr. parks, thanks for your time this morning. up next, the criticism of zimmerman's prosecutors. were they sloppy or was there misconduct? the famed law professor alan der, witness will tell was he thinks. every day we're working to be an even better company -