justice be done in this case. we have as a father a young boy. this is a boy who lost his life. not a grown man who lost his life not at the hands of another teenager, not of another boy, but of a man. an unarmed teenager. i think from the very beginning, but for ben crump and the fact that the local community invited the civil rights leadership into this case, this matter would have been swept under the rug. and that s exactly what zimmerman and forces around him wanted to occur. we stop that from occurring and i think we want to send a strong message of solidarity with the parents and the family, but we want to send the message, this is not over and we ll continue. the other piece looking forward is legislative. there s talk about what laws can be changed in florida.
over this for all time. we may never understand or never know. thanks to msnbc s craig melvin from florida. appreciate the update. i m curious what you think this is the most important thing. this is not over. this is what s important. we re talking about yesterday s trial and it was a travesty and a miscarriage of justice. but this is not over. several of us civil rights leaders had a meeting at midnight, myself, al sharpton, melanie campbell, and our focus now is on the department of justice and for there to be a federal criminal civil rights investigation. i also thank that this may be a hate crime and that the hate crimes law, the matthew shepherd hate crime may apply. there are two important aspects of federal law that may have
science tells us is, these things are happening at nano seconds at subliminal levels, not conscious levels. civil rights laws were written at a time when in this country racism happened at a conscious level. so, we don t even understand our brains on race now. we have made so much progress in this country on whether it is appropriate or okay or legal to be overtly, racially discriminatory. we have not dealt with the fact that most people are still carrying unconscious bias, that is racially motivated but not at a conscious level. and so when the department of justice has to look at a hates crime case, it has to find evidence of that conscious level of racial racism. this is an area where they tell us science is different and
civil trial, are more expansive. exactly. the standard of proof, which is different, which is the significant thing. not only the rules of evidence but the standard of proof in a criminal case is obviously much all elements of the crime must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. in a civil case it s by preponderance of the evidence. it s a very different proceeding. the thing you mentioned, the 911 calls, certainly in a civil case, and i think with an intensive competent investigation by the department of justice, i feel that george zimmerman can be brought up on federal criminal civil rights charges and potentially hate crime charges. this law we re talking about, federal criminal civil rights laws, have been used around the nation particularly in police brutality cases. what you have in george zimmerman is a classic wanna-be law enforcement officer. number one, sought to be a law
legislation and spread the poison of stand your ground all over the nation. those who support a.l.e.c. should withdraw because this kind of thing and the use of stand your ground is why at the very instance the law enforcement there in sanford, florida, did not arrest george zimmerman as they should have, at the very inception. you mentioned a minute ago one of the next steps is the question of what s going to happen at the federal level. there sort of a historical pattern there of cases where there are failures, civil rights failures at state and local level and then this historical pattern but that it defaults the federal government. [ male announcer ] this is kevin.