Laws like "Stand Your Ground" undermine innocent Americans' safety "by allowing - and perhaps encouraging - violent situations to escalate in public," Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday afternoon, three days after a jury's acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager spurred civil rights protests across the United States.
Delivering remarks to the NAACP's annual conference in Orlando - 30-something miles from where Zimmerman, claiming "self-defense," fatally shot Trayvon Martin - Holder acknowledged that "as passionate civil rights leaders, as engaged citizens and, most of all, as parents," his audience members are "deeply - and rightly - concerned about this case." He stressed that his department will consider "all available information" in determining whether to press federal charges for Zimmerman.
Holder reiterated President Obama's statement following the verdict that "we are a nation of laws, and the jury has spoken."
But "separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nation's attention, it's time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods," he went on. "It is our collective obligation - we must stand our ground - to ensure that our laws reduce violence, and take a hard look at laws that contribute to more violence than they prevent."
Though Zimmerman's defense did not use Florida's controversial "Stand Your Ground" law in trial, Sanford, Fla., police cited it as a reason the community watch captain was not immediately arrested.
"These laws try to fix something that was never broken - there has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if - and the 'if' is important - no safe retreat is available," he continued. "By allowing -and perhaps encouraging - violent situations to escalate in public, such laws undermine public safety. ...The list of resulting tragedies is long and, unfortunately, has victimized too many who are innocent."
Calling back to a conversation with his father when he was a child about how a "young black man" should conduct himself if ever authorities treated him in a way that was unwarranted, Holder said he's "sure my father felt certain - at the time - that my parents' generation would be the last that had to worry about such things for their children." Alas, he lamented, Martin's death "caused me to sit down to have a conversation with my own 15-year-old son, like my dad did with me."
As important as it was, I am determined to do everything in my power to ensure that the kind of talk I had with my son isn't the only conversation that we engage in as a result of these tragic events," Holder said.
The Zimmerman verdict wasn't the only hot-button topic Holder drew from. Blasting the Supreme Court's decision last month to strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act - effectively leaving the fate of a key portion of the landmark 1965 law in the hands of Congress - Holder vowed, "so long as I have the privilege of serving as attorney general," to uphold the right to vote for all Americans.
"Let me be clear: this was a deeply disappointing and flawed decision. It dealt a serious setback to the cause of voting rights - and, like all of you, I strongly disagree with the Court's action," Holder said. "It is clear that our work is anything but complete. Our cause is not yet fulfilled. And, for all the progress we've made over the last 104 years - our nation's journey along the road to equality and opportunity is far from over."
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar