Neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman was released on $150,000 bail from a Florida jail late Sunday night, 12 days after he was arrested for killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Zimmerman, 28, was let out of the Seminole County Jail just before midnight.
Carrying a brown paper bag and wearing blue jeans and a brown windbreaker, Zimmerman refused to comment as he quickly got into a BMW SUV and was whisked away, flanked by at least three police cars.
CBS News) SANFORD, Fla. – A judge granted bail for George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer charged with killing Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, but would not allow his release Friday, citing further discussions needed about the terms, including whether or not he would be allowed out of state.
Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester also said that Zimmerman must not have any contact with the victim’s family; must wear an ankle monitoring bracelet; and adhere to a 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. The judge’s order also states that Zimmerman cannot be in possession of firearms and must not consume alcohol or controlled substances.
Taking the stand during the hearing at the Seminole County Criminal Justice Center, Zimmerman addressed the parents of Martin, who were seated in court: “I wanted to say that I am sorry for the loss of your son.
“I did not know how old he was,” he said. “I thought he was a little bit younger than I am. And I did not know whether he was armed or not.”
President Obama’s election was supposed to be a signal that the United States was ready to put its painful racial history in the past. Instead, it seems the nation has moved backward as it continues to grapple with issues like racial profiling.
How and why it continues to occur, and the subsequent repercussions like the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, will be the topic of a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights hearing on April 17. It will be the first hearing on racial profiling since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“[The subcommittee] will explore how profiling harms law enforcement and the different faces of racial profiling, including state immigration laws in Alabama and Arizona that subject Hispanic-Americans to heightened scrutiny, discriminatory law enforcement against African-Americans and anti-terrorism efforts that target American Muslims,” said subcommittee Chairman Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois).
The Trayvon Martin case did not spark the hearing, although it will certainly come up given its high-profile status. It also will examine proposed solutions to ending racial profiling, such as the End Racial Profiling Act, closing loopholes in the Justice Department’s racial profiling guidance and the agency’s Civil Rights Division’s enforcement of federal civil rights laws to prevent state and local law enforcement agencies from profiling, according to a subcommittee advisory.
A witness list has not yet been posted, but according to a report in The Post and Courier, Dot Scott, president of the Charleston, South Carolina, NAACP, has been invited to testify. She has been a vocal critic of local efforts to crack down on crime in poor, Black neighborhoods, which she’s characterized is in some instances “harassment of good citizens.”
TULSA, Okla. — Oklahoma prosecutors filed murder and hate crime charges Friday against two men arrested in an Easter weekend shooting spree that left three people dead and terrorized Tulsa’s black community.
Jake England, 19, and his roommate, Alvin Watts, 33, each are charged with three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of shooting with intent to kill and five counts of malicious harassment. The harassment counts allege the victims were targeted because of their race.
Police say the men, who were arrested early Sunday after a two-day manhunt, appeared to have chosen their victims at random. Under state law, first-degree murder is punishable by death or life in prison. Prosecutors have not said whether they will seek the men’s execution.
Neo-Nazis say they are conducting heavily armed patrols in and around Sanford, Florida, and are “prepared” for violence in case of a race riot. The patrols are to protect “white citizens in the area who are concerned for their safety” in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting last month, says Commander Jeff Schoep of the National Socialist Movement. “We are not advocating any type of violence or attacks on anybody, but we are prepared for it,” he says. “We are not the type of white people who are going to be walked all over.”
