How long was trayvon martins body in the morgue

The shooter, said to be white, had gone free. As in many cities in the South, Sanford has a long history of racial tension, and black mistrust of the police runs deep. Sanford police did not arrest the assailant until video of the attack surfaced on local TV and provoked an outcry from Sanford civil rights leaders.

Now, once again, anger was building. Lee told a news conference that while he stood by the Sanford Police Department, he was stepping aside. Although Martin had identified his son to police on Monday, February 27, and asked Serino the next day to issue police clearance for releasing the body, not until Wednesday was a funeral director permitted to drive it back to South Florida.

There was nothing else I could do as a mother. The family held a viewing on Friday, March 2. The memorial service and interment were Saturday. The painful work of laying Trayvon to rest was complete. Now would begin the more difficult search for justice. Martin turned to Patricia Jones, his sister-in-law. On Tuesday, February 28, Crump was at the Duval County Courthouse in Jacksonville, about miles north of Sanford, arguing that public records should be released in civil litigation over Antonio Cooks.

During a break in the hearing, Crump noticed messages from Tyrone Williams, another attorney he knows, and Jones. They urgently asked for his help. Soon Jones put him in touch with Tracy Martin. Of course they are going to arrest him just for that. He took the case pro bono. Her mother lives in Sanford. Now Crump and Jackson needed a media strategy. On March 5, Jackson brought in Ryan Julison, a publicist who had worked with her on a number of high-profile cases.

After speaking with Tracy Martin, Julison said he also took the job for free and went to work pitching the story to national media. Crump knew from his experience on the boot-camp case that publicity could force officials to act, but it would require persuading two people who had never stood before a television camera to withstand the spotlight. There was only one problem. Meanwhile, police fingerprinted the dead teen, who carried no ID. He had never been arrested, so 12 hours passed before anyone knew his name.

He came home that night just before 11 p. It was not until he called police the next morning that a major-crimes detective went to the townhouse where his girlfriend lives to break the news. Zimmerman, in the meantime, had been questioned by police and released without charges.

Police stressed that Zimmerman was interviewed at least three times and gave a videotaped statement and a walk-through of what happened. Zimmerman, whose father is a retired Virginia magistrate, never asked for an attorney or changed his story, former Sanford police Chief Bill Lee said.

The investigation began with detectives interrogating Zimmerman and patrol officers canvassing the callers. One caller said he had seen a man with a white T-shirt on top of the other.

Neither Zimmerman nor Trayvon wore white T-shirts. Another caller, Mora's roommate, Mary Cutcher, phoned police after the gunshot and said the black man was standing over another man, which would have been impossible, because Trayvon was already dead. Cutcher later blasted the Sanford police, saying detectives did not return her phone calls because she clearly believed that the person crying was the boy, and that was not the story investigators were looking for. Police issued a news release saying she had given an "inconsistent statement.

ABC News later reported that a boy who witnessed part of the incident said he saw someone matching Zimmerman's red-jacket description lying on the grass, suggesting the shooter had told the truth when he said Trayvon had knocked him down.

Brown said she will hire an attorney to demand a copy of the audio statement her son gave to prove he has never wavered, and never claimed to see Zimmerman on the ground.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators were at the gated community last week, reinterviewing witnesses. The probe is also expected to lean heavily on audio experts to try to determine whether it was Trayvon or Zimmerman crying in the first call. Several days passed before police released a report with an account that said Zimmerman had blood on his nose and the back of his head, fueling suspicion that the department was attempting to bolster Zimmerman's story and defend the lack of an arrest.

The report listed the height and weight of every person, including the callers. The only person whose size is not noted is Zimmerman. At 5 feet 9, Zimmerman was much shorter but heavier than Trayvon. The report listed Trayvon at 6 feet and pounds, though his family said he was actually 6-foot-3 and weighed at most pounds. Although some people thought they heard two shots, a review of the confiscated weapon showed that only one shot was fired, a police spokesman told the Miami Herald.

Much has been made by people critical of the investigation of the fact that Zimmerman was not tested for drugs or alcohol, although Miami police experts say homicide suspects are rarely tested unless it's a DUI case. The Seminole County State Attorney's Office was called the night of the shooting, as is routine with all killings, but no one from the office went to the scene.

It is unclear who gave the order to let Zimmerman go. Although police publicly said there was no probable cause to arrest Zimmerman, it was later revealed that early on investigators did request an arrest warrant from the state attorney's office, which held off for further review.

The case has since been reassigned to a special prosecutor in Jacksonville. The Sanford police and the Seminole state attorney have referred questions to special prosecutor Angela Corey. Her office said it will not answer any inquiries about the case. Much of the evidence, such as the autopsy report, which would show results of Trayvon's toxicology test, are not yet public record.

Police have declined to release Zimmerman's statements or that of the witnesses. The Fort Lauderdale funeral director who handled the arrangements for Trayvon's family has told reporters that he saw no bruises or blood on the teen's knuckles.

Police said Zimmerman provided medical records to support evidence of his injuries. In an interview two weeks after the incident, Lee said witness statements and physical evidence backed up Zimmerman's version of events. He suggested that based on the timing of the call, he believed that Trayvon went out of his way to approach the person tailing him and mouth off.

I think based on the timing of the call and Zimmerman losing sight of him that he had made it to that 'T' at the end of the path and was starting to walk toward his house. In the midst of public fury over his handling of the incident, Lee stepped down from his post. Reached by the Herald on Friday, he declined to discuss the case. You can't refute it," Lee said in the early interview. Subscribe Manage my subscription Activate my subscription Log in Log out.

Regions Tampa St. Letters to the Editor Submit a Letter. B details key disputed and undisputed facts of the Martin case, and Part II. C explains how the desire to police and maintain the boundaries of whiteness resulted in the killing of Martin. Like Till, Trayvon Martin, who had just turned 17 years old before he was killed, found himself visiting family in a strange new town in February of Just as Mississippi and its culture were foreign to the Illinois-born-and-bred Till, Sanford must have felt completely different to Martin, a Miami resident.

Sanford was not just a few hundred miles away from the popular city; it was vastly different in culture. With more than 2. One of the reactions is to emigrate toward the 19358orth. They resent the fact that an American has to learn Spanish in order to have advantages to work. It is very, very different.

In contrast to Miami, Sanford has a smaller population, with approximately 58, residents. Although both Sanford and Miami have horrible histories regarding racial profiling and shootings of black men by the local police, Sanford possesses its own special place in racial history. By the time that Martin was killed by Zimmerman in , Sanford was a town rife with racial tensions. Recent events had already eroded the trust between black residents and the Sanford Police Department.

The first investigation involved two white security guards, Patrick Swofford and Bryan Ansley, who shot and killed an unarmed, black, year-old male, Tavares McGill. Smith, a black man, replaced Lee as Police Chief with the express goal of rebuilding trust in the community. Great skepticism, however, remained. At approximately p. Upon spotting Martin in the rain, Zimmerman made a call to report Martin as a suspicious person. The exchange between Zimmerman and the operator proceeded in relevant part as follows:.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy is he white, black, or Hispanic? Zimmerman: He looks black. Dispatcher: Did you see what he was wearing? Zimmerman: Yeah. A dark hoodie, like a grey hoodie, and either jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes. Dispatcher: OK. Or ?

Dispatcher: How old would you say he looks? Dispatcher: Late teens, ok. Zimmerman: Somethings wrong with him. Dispatcher: Just let me know if he does anything ok Zimmerman: How long until you get an officer over here? Zimmerman: Okay. These assholes they always get away. At this point during the four-minute phone call, Zimmerman told the operator that Martin began to run.

Which way is he running? Zimmerman: Down towards the other entrance to the neighborhood. Zimmerman: The back entrance. Get off! Only Martin and Zimmerman know what transpired after that point, but one undisputed fact is that Zimmerman shot and killed Martin, who was an unarmed guest of a resident in that same gated community. Although Zimmerman shot and killed an unarmed teenager, Sanford Police released Zimmerman because he asserted a claim of self-defense and they claimed they found no evidence that night to contradict his claims.

Drew Pinsky, an expert on addiction, explicated that marijuana typically does not make its users more aggressive, but rather more passive. Despite his involvement in a potential crime, Zimmerman, unlike Martin, was not tested for drugs. The night before, his wife Shellie had left him following a big fight. For many Blacks, the decision by the local police to release George Zimmerman, even though he had just killed an unarmed teenager, demonstrated how black lives were devalued in the area.

Zimmerman was allowed to just go on his way while Mr. Martin went to a morgue. They have ignited a powder keg by being slow, by being indecisive and by being arrogant by not arresting this man. What defendant has ever been given such a free ride at a murder trial? In the end, the all-female and nearly all-white jury acquitted Zimmerman of both second-degree murder and manslaughter. Much like Till when he came to visit his relatives in Money, Mississippi in , Martin entered Sanford without any real knowledge of the racially tense environment that he was entering.

A soft-spoken teenager, Martin was known for being kind and gentle towards others. What Martin did not know is that he was walking in a neighborhood where residents, much like white Mississippians in , were fighting to preserve the whiteness of their neighborhood, or rather the meaning accorded to perceived white spaces that their neighborhood had previously claimed.

As numerous studies have revealed over the years, Whites are the most racially segregated group in the United States, and that reality is not by pure mistake or coincidence. More importantly, researchers have found that Whites are the most segregated racial group in the country because they prefer to have only a few neighbors of color. Hacker writes:. Americans have extraordinarily sensitive antennae for the colorations of neighborhoods. In virtually every metropolitan area, white householders can rank each enclave by the racial makeup of the residents.

Given this knowledge, where a family lives becomes an index of its social standing. While this is largely an economic matter, proximity to blacks compounds this assessment. For a white family to be seen as living in a mixed—or changing—neighborhood can be construed as a symptom of surrender, indeed as evidence that they are on a downward spiral.

Thus, as more people of color have moved into neighborhoods that were previously viewed and experienced by Whites as white spaces, Whites who have the means to move have departed from those areas. During the summer of , George Zimmerman and his then-wife Shellie moved into the neighborhood, renting one of the townhomes. As soon as Zimmerman moved into his rental at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, he began making calls to the police about concerns in the neighborhood.

Soon, however, the downturn in the economy, specifically the housing market crash, resulted in a change in the ratio of owners to renters at the Retreat at Twin Lakes.

In fact, by February of , when Martin came to Sanford to visit his father, 40 townhomes within the Retreat at Twin Lakes—nearly one quarter of all the townhomes in the neighborhood—were empty, and more than half the residents in the gated subdivision were renters like the Zimmermans and Green. In , residents of the neighborhood began to report an increasing number of burglaries to the police.

Zimmerman believes subject is involved in recent burglaries in the neighborhood. Days later, on August 6, , Zimmerman reported more black individuals whom he had deemed suspicious.

Finally, on September 22, , at the initiation of Zimmerman, residents of the Retreat at Twin Lakes held a meeting to form a neighborhood watch program. By February of when Martin arrived in Sanford, residents like Bertalan and Zimmerman had become very fearful of what may happen to their property and neighborhood.

There was definitely a sense of fear in the neighborhood after all of this started happening, and it just kept on happening. It was every week. Our next-door neighbor actually said if someone came into his yard he would shoot him.

If someone came into his house he would shoot him. Everyone felt afraid and scared. Just a few days before Zimmerman killed Martin, Bertalan and her family moved from the neighborhood. There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood.

It was not simply that Zimmerman and other neighborhood watch participants linked blackness with criminality, but that they viewed Blacks who were in the spaces that they viewed as white—here, their neighborhood—as criminals, as outsiders who were up to no good.

Williams: Frank what made him look suspicious—what made him look suspicious in your mind, just because he was walking through your yard? Taaffe: Because he was out of place.

He was out of place. Essentially, only seven percent of the reported wrongdoings in the neighborhood were confirmed to involve black males; yet, the entire narrative of fear in the neighborhood centered on black males. For Till, stepping out of place involved talking to a white woman and then daring to whistle while in her presence.

For instance, residents like Tito Ortiz were not part of the fearful crowd that started the neighborhood watch program. One day, Ransburg, a resident of the Retreat at Twin Lakes, was hanging out with a black friend who also lived in the neighborhood. A black guy did that. Indeed, the racial meaning of the Retreat at Twin Lakes was also seemingly adopted by the police officers who arrived on the scene to investigate the killing of Martin. Viewing Martin much like Zimmerman did before and after he followed the boy—as an outsider, not a guest or resident in the neighborhood—the officers did not knock on any doors in the neighborhood to see if Martin might be living in or visiting someone in the gated community.

Moreover, as scholars such as Kenji Yoshino, Devon Carbado, Mitu Gulati, Mario Barnes, and myself have detailed, both racial exclusion and understandings of race have shifted over time.

Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America , the notion of racial acceptability has changed in meaningful ways over time. Finally, the fact that Zimmerman is Latino and even has some Afro-Latino heritage does not negate the argument that he was working to preserve the whiteness of the neighborhood.

It is clear that Zimmerman perceived the threat to his community as situated in the presence of young black males in the neighborhood.

Indeed, he perceived even black children—not yet out of elementary school—as a sufficient threat to invoke the emergency reporting system.

Furthermore, the claim that Zimmerman could not have racially profiled Martin because Zimmerman was part-Latino is premised upon the erroneous assumption that people of color cannot discriminate against each other. In conclusion, for many African Americans, the killing of Trayvon Martin was the first in many recent signals to expose how the United States is far from being a post-racial society. Such connections between these two cases reveal that while U.

Journalism Rev. Teresa M. See, e. Marshall L. See generally Crystal N. Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching exploring how the protection of white womanhood was utilized as a justification for lynching and how lynching informed and shaped the politics and voices of black and white women ; Ashraf H.

Rushdy, American Lynching examining the horror of lynching and its changes in form and meaning over time. Federal Bureau of Investigation Report from See Fed. See Wil Haygood et al. Post Mar. Times Aug. During the fall of , Oscar-nominated film director Ava DuVernay also spoke of similarities between the two cases, particularly their roles in galvanizing major civil rights movements in the nation.

Daily News Aug. Bureau of Investigation, supra note 9, at 15—18; cf. Stephen J. Employment Discrimination Law , 6 Ala. Times Mar. Interviews revealed that Oliver actually knew very little about Zimmerman, which began to make people question why he was so persistent in giving television interviews to defend Zimmerman. Bell, Jr. Du Bois, supra note 30, at —10, ; see also David R. See id. Harris, Whiteness as Property , Harv.

Ferguson, U. Harris also notes that, although Brown v. Board of Education overruled Plessy , in refusing to acknowledge a right to equality of resources, the Court failed to guarantee that white privilege would be dismantled, thus perpetuating a property interest in whiteness. See Harris, supra note 43, at — Crenshaw, supra note 28 , at ; see also Ian F. The current consensus among whites seems to be that contemporary racial inequalities flow from nonracist factors, whether private choices aggregated by the market, cultural predilections, or real racial differences that form inescapable facts of life.

In many ways, this ideology of whiteness, coupled with the psychic value of whiteness, can help to explain the outcome in the presidential election in the United States, in which many poor and working-class Whites voted against their economic interest to cast their lot with Donald Trump—a billionaire who once proclaimed that he did not believe the minimum wage should be raised because wages were already too high—rather than form a voting coalition with people of color whose economic concerns and issues more closely mirrored their own obstacles.

Insider: Nordic Nov. Times Nov. Let the world see what I saw. Sun, Sept. Appendix A-Transcript, supra note 72, at —76 direct examination of Carolyn Bryant. Bureau of Investigation, supra note 9, at 40—41; see also Appendix A-Transcript, supra note 72, at —71 direct examination of Carolyn Bryant. Bureau of Investigation, supra note 9, at 40—41; see also Appendix A-Transcript, supra note 72, at — Bureau of Investigation, supra note 9, at At trial, Preacher Wright indicated that he had spoken to Till briefly about a rumor he heard, but it is clear that Wright had not heard the full rumor.

Appendix A-Transcript, supra note 72, at 36 cross examination of Moses Wright. Criticism , Whitfield, supra note 19, at Till-Mobley wrote:. Rayner did some work to prepare Emmett for the public viewing, despite our talk. That tongue [that was protruding out and keeping his mouth from closing] had been removed, I guess, and put somewhere. The mouth was closed now. The eye that had been dangling, that was removed, too, and the eyelid closed, like on the other side, where no eye was left.

You would have to have seen Emmett when I first saw him to really appreciate what Mr. What I had seen was so much worse than what other people would ever see.

Daily Trib. Only Blacks were searched as they entered the courtroom. No Whites, unless they were strangers, were searched. Sentinel, Oct. Black children and adults were rated as significantly less innocent than White children and adults. See Whitfield, supra note 19, at 42; Goldsby, supra note 92, at See Curry, supra note 70, at Milam and Roy Bryant Oliver C.

Cox, Lynching and the Status Quo , 14 J. Negro Educ. Mississippi will never consent to placing white and Negro children in the same public schools. Monitor, Aug. Robert M. Rivera, Jr. Courier, Dec. Monitor, Sept. Monitor, Dec. Mississippi Votes: Public Schools Fate? See Davis W. Bureau of Investigation, supra note 9, at 7.

Bureau of Investigation, supra note 9, at 17; see also L. Defender, May 21, , at 2. Smith refused to knuckle under or to be intimidated by the white mobs who threatened him.

Bureau of the Census, U. Very few Blacks obtained a high level of education in the state at the time, and those who did had limited opportunities outside of the agricultural field. One notable exception was Dr.

Howard, who was a civil rights activist in Mississippi. He assisted Till-Mobley in her efforts to find Till after he disappeared and then in her efforts to seek justice for him.

See Whitfield, supra note 19, at The FBI investigative report describes the two as being only one step above white sharecroppers in Mississippi, who were just one step above Blacks. Du Bois, supra note 30, at —01; Harris, supra note 43, at — Huie, supra note 9; see also Whitfield, supra note 19, at Today, he rents Negro-driven mechanical cotton pickers to plantation owners.

Those who know him say that he can handle Negroes better than anybody in the country. See Whitfield, supra note 19, at 52—53, Till-Mobley also objected to the manner in which Huie disregarded the accounts of black witnesses of the alleged whistling incident and the kidnapping of Till, accounts that contradicted those told by key white witnesses and the account told by Milam and Bryant in Look.

In her autobiography Death of Innocence, she wrote:. The tale that unfolded in Look was horrible. In fact, it was unbearable. And that was not just because of the description the killers gave of that night of terror, but also because of the distorted picture of Emmett that was presented. They claimed Emmett kept talking back to them the whole time. They claimed he had a picture of a white girl in his wallet and that he bragged about having white girlfriends.

So, they kept beating him with the pistols they had taken as mementos of their service to the country.