The Founding Fathers feared mob-rule even more than they feared aristocratic rule. Mob-rule is intolerable. It leads to tyranny of the worst sort, tyranny that can last for generations.
The laws of the State of Florida contain a statute protecting members of “Community Watch”; members, according to most reports in the media, such as George Zimmerman. That statute reads as follows:
“843.20 Harassment of participant of neighborhood crime watch program prohibited; penalty; definitions.-
(1) It shall be a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083, for any person to willfully harass, threaten, or intimidate an identifiable member of a neighborhood crime watch program while such member is engaged in, or traveling to or from, an organized neighborhood crime watch program activity or a member who is participating in an ongoing criminal investigation, as designated by a law enforcement officer.
(2) As used in this section, the term:
(a) “Harass” means to engage in a course of conduct directed at a specific person which causes substantial emotional distress in that person and serves no legitimate purpose.
(b) “Organized neighborhood crime watch program activity” means any prearranged event, meeting, or other scheduled activity, or neighborhood patrol, conducted by or at the direction of a neighborhood crime watch program or the program’s authorized designee.
History.—s. 2, ch. 2004-18.”
First question . . . Was Mr. Zimmerman engaged in “an organized neighborhood crime watch program”?
Second question . . . By physically attacking Mr. Zimmerman, did Trayvon Martin violate this statute?
Third question . . . If Trayvon attacked George Zimmerman, was he, thereby, engaging in an illegal act …whatever advice a police-dispatcher might have given to Mr. Zimmerman and whatever the reports in the media that Trayvon was just a law-abiding youth minding his own business, who did nothing wrong?
To date, few, if any, reports or commentaries have mentioned this statute even though it clearly is one specific to the incident in question. Why the silence?
If the statute applies, mightn’t it exonerate Mr. Zimmerman on a point of law? If so, are the authorities applying and ignoring written statutes as a function of which demagogue, backed by which howling mob, is screaming the loudest … all in the name of “civil peace”; i.e., mob-rule?
Compounding the issue is a pending, secondary, federal charge against Mr. Zimmerman based upon the vague laws regarding so-called civil rights, thereby, exposing him to allowable double-jeopardy; i.e., both state-based and federal prosecutions. Is this secondary pursuit of Mr. Zimmerman an example of traditional American justice or what many view as an expanding, federal tyranny in The New America?
Context and consequences (www.inescapableconsequences.com). What will be the consequences of these two pursuits?
Will law-abiding, civically-minded Americans, for example, still want to volunteer for “Community-Watch” after having watched Mr. Zimmerman hounded by a mob threatening his life, persecuted nationwide by the media, charged by the State with murder, and charged by the USDOJ with violating “civil-rights”? Whatever the answer, one consequence of the incident is inescapable … Mr. Zimmerman’s life in the foreseeable future will be a living Hell.