Few outside Zimmerman's defense team have done more to help him than Sean Hannity, who on Friday declared that Zimmerman had already won the trial. "As far as I'm concerned, this case is over," the Fox host said after playing testimony from a witness who said he saw Trayvon Martin beating Zimmerman "MMA style." The day before that, Hannity said on his radio show that the judge should dismiss manslaughter, let alone the second-degree murder charges.

"So the question is why are we here? And the answer to that question is purely political. Politics influenced the decision, the media influenced the decision," Hannity said, succinctly revealing why the conservative media has found itself vocally defending someone who admitted to killing teenager Trayvon Martin. It goes like this: Liberals and the media made hay out of the fact that Zimmerman was initially not charged in the killing of Martin. Liberals and the media are bad. Therefore, Zimmerman must be good.

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Many found the remark offensive. But Jones, who has apologized for her ill-conceived attempts at humor before, has not yet responded to her critics, at least on Twitter:

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Instead, she issued the following statement via Twitter:

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Immediately, I heard newscasters referring to her prior testimony, which I had watched on video, as combative and aggressive. And I felt my pressure start to rise.

These kinds of terms – combat, aggression, anger – stalk black women, especially black women who are dark-skinned and plus-sized like Rachel, at every turn seeking to discredit the validity of our experiences and render invisible our traumas. By painting Rachel Jeantel as the aggressor, as the one prone to telling lies and spreading untruths, it became easy for the white male defense attorney to treat this 19-year-old, working-class black girl, a witness to the murder of her friend, as hostile, as a threat, as the one who needed to be regulated and contained and put in her place.

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On Wednesday prosecution witness Rachel Jeantel, who was on her cellphone with Martin while he was being pursued by Zimmerman, actually testified that Martin told her he was being followed by “a creepy ass cracker." But it wasn’t until Thursday that it blew up the right wing of the Internet – when Jeantel offered the badgering defense attorney Don West her opinion that the term isn’t racist.

From Glenn Beck’s the Blaze to the Breitbots to smaller right-wing shriekers to Twitter trolls everywhere, white grievance-mongers seemed less bothered by the fact that Martin allegedly used the term, than by Jeantel saying it wasn’t a slur.

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Jeantel does not fit the comfortable image of the grieving girl. As Rachel Samara wrote Wednesday in Global Grind, "A predominantly white jury is not going to like Rachel Jeantel," a girl "who has no media training and who is fully entrenched in a hostile environment." There is confusion over whether or not she was Martin's girlfriend, which eradicates her chances of being depicted as a devastated young quasi-widow. On the stand, she has been blunt, hostile and at times seemingly confused. Online, she has a documented history that includes partying. She is not thin or blond or demure. So there goes her credibility.

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She said she was on the phone with Trayvon when someone - presumed to be Zimmerman - started following him.

Trayvon described the man as a "creepy ass cracker" Jeantel said.

Jeantel said she told Trayvon she was worries that the man was a rapist. Trayvon said to "stop playing with him like that."

While being questioned about what was happening, Trayvon said that N-word "is now following him."

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Like Lauren, most Americans just want to enjoy life and get ahead. But her reasonable and innocuous fears over her future are being hijacked by conservatives to stoke larger fears: that there is a finite ability for us all to thrive together. The George Zimmerman trial, the overturning of the Voting Rights Act, Paula Dean's flare up, angry debates over citizenship in immigration reform: This week, we’re seeing any idealist’s hope of a post-racial future disappear the way of the floppy disk.

The Supreme Court just punted a decision on affirmative action, but it cannot indefinitely forestall the bracing questions driving many people’s interest in the practice. By a 7 to 1 decision, the Court allowed affirmative action to survive in college admissions, but imposed a tough legal standard on schools—“strict scrutiny”—that the policy’s long-term viability has been neutered.

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The opposing attorneys squared off on the first day of testimony in a trial that has attracted international attention and prompted nationwide debates about gun control, race, and equal justice under the law.

Included among the millions likely to be following the case are civil rights leaders the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who joined national protests in the weeks before prosecutors filed second-degree murder charges against Zimmerman 44 days after the shooting.

Zimmerman, who identifies himself as Hispanic, has denied that the shooting had anything to do with race. His mother was born in Peru. His father is a white American. Martin was black.

Prosecutor John Guy's first words to jurors recounted what Zimmerman told a police dispatcher in a call shortly before the fatal confrontation with Martin: "F------ punks. These a-------. They always get away."

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Prosecutors have said Zimmerman, 29, racially profiled the 17-year-old Martin as he walked back from a convenience store on a rainy night in February 2012 wearing a dark hooded shirt.

The race and ethnicity of the minority chosen for the jury was not immediately available. Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic.

Two of the jurors recently moved to the area – one from Iowa and one from Chicago – and two are involved with rescuing animals as their hobbies.

One juror had a prior arrest, but she said it was disposed of and she thought she was treated fairly. Two jurors have guns in their homes. All of their names have been kept confidential and the panel will be sequestered for the trial.

Opening statements are scheduled for Monday.

The central Florida community of Sanford is in Seminole County, which is 78.5 percent white and 16.5 percent black, roughly mirroring the jury's racial makeup.

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Circuit Judge Debra Nelson ruled that the data was not admissible as evidence in opening statements, aligning with prosecution arguments that Martin's history is irrelevant to the case -- the business of which is to determine whether Zimmerman's claim of shooting in self-defense stands up. Via ABC News:

Zimmerman's lawyer argued that Martin's marijuana use and history of fighting was central to proving that Zimmerman acted in self-defense.

"We have a lot of evidence that marijuana use had something to do with the event," Zimmerman's lawyer Mark O'Mara said. "It could have affected his behavior."

Nelson said that evidence would not be permitted in opening statements, but left open the possibility it could eventually be submitted during the trial.

 

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Text messages that show Martin admitting to smoking weed, describing previous fist fights and showing an interest in guns, prosecutors argue, are not admissible as evidence for whether Zimmerman shot the young man in self-defense or not. Via the Guardian:

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Let's start with our gold medalist in the field of ineffectual apologies – Rick Ross. Ross has come under fire for his part on Rocko's "Gift of Gab" mixtape, specifically the track "U.O.E.N.O." As activist journalist Rosa Clemente pointed out, "U.O.E.N.O." contains Ross' "problematic" line, "Put Molly all in her champagne, she ain't even know it/ I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain't even know it." "Molly," by the way, is what the young folk call Ecstasy.

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Although Zimmerman will still pursue a self-defense argument in his June trial, his attorney told a judge to cancel the specific "stand your ground" hearing scheduled for April, in which his client was expected to seek immunity. Essentially, the decision to drop a "stand your ground" defense indicates that Zimmerman's lawyers hope to show at trial that their client was not in a position to retreat. Self-defense laws usually demand that an individual make every possible attempt to defuse a situation before attempts at retreat are exhausted, in which case the use of deadly force is legally justified. "Stand your ground" removes this "duty to retreat" stipulation -- lethal force is justified simply if a shooter “had reason to believe that an unlawful and forcible entry or unlawful act was occurring or had occurred.” If Zimmerman's team believe they can show he shot Martin as a last resort, there's no need to invoke "stand your ground."

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Not long after the shooting, young people, of all races took to the streets, to show their solidarity with Trayvon, in Million Hoodie Marches, saying, “We are all Trayvon.” In the ensuing year, the response to the case often shook out under two camps: those who identify with the young man, versus those who reflexively, insistently, perniciously identify with George Zimmerman. (“We are all George Zimmerman," they inherently believe, the potential victims of a nasty mugging.)

Also not long after the shooting, I appeared on The O’Reilly Factor to insist that Trayvon had been “shot in cold blood.”  The show’s host took great exception to my claim.  Bill O’Reilly vented surprise and outrage that I would be unwilling to shoot an armed assailant attempting to mug me.  “I would shoot a four-year old!” O’Reilly shouted at me.

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Zimmerman, 28, was eventually prosecuted. In April he was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, and is currently awaiting trial set for June 10. While news about the case has perennially hit headlines in recent months -- for example, when Zimmerman offered his autograph to his legal fund donors -- the proceeding have general fallen under the media radar. Here are the major developments and issues to be aware of.

1) Contradictory evidence

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Salon reached out to NRA and Gun Owners of America for comment. The latter, which considers itself the "no compromise" gun group (as opposed to those delicate tulips at the NRA), took on the report at length through spokesman Erich Pratt. Professor Hoekstra then defended his work to Salon.

Here are a few representative quotes from each. The full responses can be viewed here.

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The suit alleges that NBC's edits portrayed Zimmerman as "a racist and predatory villain." Zimmerman, 28, is charged with second-degree murder for shooting dead 17-year-old Martin last February. Martin's death sparked a nationwide outcry as the shooter was not charged until April. Commentators saw structural racism underpinning the police's decision to take for granted Zimmerman's claim of self-defense and invocation of Florida's "stand-your-ground" law. However, Zimmerman and his attorneys charge that NBC engaged in "yellow journalism" in attempting to assert a racist motivation through specific edits made to a 911 call he placed on Feb. 26 to authorities just before the shooting occurred.

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