Cops on Trial: Did Fourth Amendment Case Law Help George Zimmerman's Claim of Self-Defense?

Abstract

George Zimmerman was acquitted of murder and manslaughter in the slaying of Trayvon Martin. This article uses Mr. Zimmerman’s jury trial to illustrate a troubling phenomenon: Although the Fourth Amendment was created in order to shield civilians from too much police power, in fact, it has become a shield to protect police from a state’s criminal laws. Arguably, police should not receive this “unfair police privilege” from search and seizure case law when they are charged with state law crimes, but certainly Mr. Zimmerman who was merely a neighborhood watch volunteer, not a police officer, should not benefit. The article begins by analyzing two controversial rulings during Zimmerman’s trial. First, the trial judge refused to allow prosecutors to argue that Zimmerman racially profiled Martin. This ruling makes sense in the context of Fourth Amendment racial blindness principles, but not in the context of criminal prosecutions. Second, the trial judge refused to instruct the jury about the Rule of Aggressors that prevents an aggressor from standing his ground and asks the jury to determine if Zimmerman was an aggressor. Apart from stand your ground, the Rule of Aggressors was part of Florida’s law on self-defense. To understand this momentous ruling, this article shows how Supreme Court Fourth Amendment decisions mask aggression. The article does not allege that the judge consciously applied search and seizure case law. Rather, as a judge, she would be expected to digest search and seizure case law and often rule based on its dictates, making it more likely that unconscious processes were at work. Judicial training and legislation could ameliorate the problems caused by the Supreme Court’s invisible hand.

Keywords: Fourth Amendment, Evidence, Policing, Race, Racial Profiling, Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law, Stand Your Ground, Jury Instructions, Self-Defense, Trayvon Martin