Trayvon Martin: 45 days later is better than never

The Washington Post, “George Zimmerman is charged with 2nd-degree murder in Trayvon Martin shooting“:

George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin 45 days ago, was charged with second-degree murder Wednesday, marking a turning point in a case that has provoked nationwide debate over racial profiling.

Florida special prosecutor Angela B. Corey, who announced the charge in Jacksonville, said that “the search for justice has brought us to this moment.” She said Zimmerman had turned himself in and had the right to appear before a Seminole County magistrate Thursday.

Two of the people I’ve been following closely as they followed this case closely expressed similar reactions to this too-long-delayed, but welcome news.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: “George Zimmerman to Be Charged in the Killing of Trayvon Martin”

What I know is that I care much more about him being charged, then I do about him being convicted. What always rankled about this case wasn’t that Zimmerman might not see a jail cell (that’s what judges and juries determine) but that law enforcement had done everything to foreclose that possibility. We may find that they still have. I imagine a lot was lost in bungling. But at the very least this says, “We take the loss of life seriously.”

The Field Negro: “Finally!”

The fact that it took so long to get an arrest in this case is a travesty and a real stain on the America justice system. And what some of my friends in the majority population do not understand is that this case was not about racism per se on the part of the killer of this young man. … This case was about a police department devaluing the life of a young black man, who sadly laid on a slab in the morgue for days before his parents were even notified of his death. It’s about an unarmed child being killed while minding his own business by a citizen, and that citizen remaining free for 45 days while real racists and ideological whores in this country rallied around him only because his victim was black.