Lisa Bloom. Bloom is the New York Times best-selling author of "Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World" and "Swagger: 10 Urgent rules for Raising Boys in an Era of Failing Schools, Mass Joblessness and Thug Culture." A trial lawyer, she is also an award-winning television legal analyst for NBC News, MSNBC and CNN. Her latest book is "Suspicion Nation: The Inside Story of the Trayvon Martin Injustice and Why We Continue to Repeat It."
Barry Siegel. Siegel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, directs the literary journalism program at UC Irvine. He is the author of seven books. His latest book, "Manifest Injustice: The True Story of a Convicted Murderer and the Lawyers Who Fought for His Freedom," is a fanalist for the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Current Interest.
Tom Zoellner. Zoellner, an associate professor of English at Chapman University, is the author of "Train: Riding the Rails that Created the Modern World," "A Safeway in Arizone" and other nonfiction books. His writing has appeared in the Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Time, Slate, Harper's, the Wall Street Journal and many other publications.
The following are my notes from the conversation. Sorry for any inaccuracies.
Lisa Bloom. She covered the George Zimmerman trial for MSNBC. The George Zimmerman defense was very coherent. But she had an “ah ha” moment. George Zimmerman said his gun was holstered and behind him.
She believes this is similar to the Emmett Till case from 1959. It will be an iconic case that we’ll look back to in 50 years.
The trial indicates the incompetence of Florida. What are the root causes for this happening over and over again?
Juror Maddy. She is Puerto Rican/African American. There was racial profiling in the jury room. All jurors were women. All white except for her. She was belittled by other jurors for wanting to take leftovers home from restaurants. She felt like an outsider. Some of the jurors wanted to convict, but the prosecution wasn’t convincing.
African American witnesses weren’t properly prepared.
Juror B-37 called protestors rioters. She knew Trayvon Martin was not a good person from press reports. She said her husband was a lawyer and she had a superior understanding of the law.
Barry Siegel. In June 2010, he saw a brief news story about a 1962 murder. The convicted individual, Bill Macumber, was getting a hearing. He was supposed to be released due to injustice. The Arizona Justice Project had taken up the case.
Someone already in jail had confessed to the murder. His confession; however, was to his lawyer and psychologist. There was attorney-client privileges involved.
Case went cold for 12 years until the estranged wife of Macumber said that he had confessed to her. Meanwhile, the individual who had confessed (Venezuela) died. His lawyer at that point wrote a letter to the judge about this. The judge refused to allow the letter into evidence as the attorney-client privilege was still in effect even after death. Later this lawyer became a judge. This still hung on him and at that point he contacted the Arizona Justice Project to continue looking into the case.
One problem for Macumber was that the murder happened in a small town. The police didn’t have the proper skills to investigate such a crime.
Tom Zoellner. His book was on the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords by Jared Lee Loughner, a paranoid schizophrenic. He feels the shooting was stripped of the social context. He blames xenophobia, the economic collapse. He doesn’t necessarily blame the Tea Party. When news broke of the shooting, it wasn’t surprising. Shocking yes, but not surprising.
The story quickly became a story of heroes and Giffords’ recovery. He finds it a source of dismay that we don’t look into how this could happen. While the actions of Loughner are difficult to understand as he was a paranoid schizophrenic, he still took cues from what he was hearing.
Tom Zoellner did lose some friends over the book – he’s from Arizona. Not everyone wants to hear about how social context can result in murder. It is a too obscure, philosophical question.
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