on small business saturday and every day to make shopping small huge. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. george zimmerman not guilty of the murder of trayvon martin. now what? the verdict came in late last night. george zimmerman not guilty of manslaughter, not guilty of second-degree murder and now he's a free man. protesters peacefully assem bemed overnight in cities across the country. hundreds marched. the issue of race, zimmerman's

trial throughout the trial, is one that motivated the victim trayvon martin because he referred to george zimmerman as a cracker but did not moat their motivate their client. >> this is not about civil rights. it needs to be talked about but not in the context of the george zimmerman case. >> trayvon martin's family was not in the courthouse last night. >> trayvon martin will forever remain in the annals of history next to med ger evers and emmett till as symbols for the fight for equal justice for all. tracy and sybrina are thankful

for all those prayers over the past 17 months since the death of their son. this is a very trying time for their family and we ask that you respected their privacy. in conclusion, for trayvon to rest in peace, we must all be peaceful. thank you. >> lawyers for trayvon martin's family indicated they may sue george zimmerman in civil court. the naacp promised to pursue civil rights cases in federal court and selected thousands of signatures for that. the state department said it would continue to evaluate evidence from an earlier today i want to bring in my yeah white, julie read, michael denzel smith

with the nation institute and contributor to "the nation" magazine. sima, legal contributor to arise news. this is one of those situations where we could have the technical discussion, we will have a tech discussion about what the exact charges were and what the jury was instructed to do and whether the jury given the confines, it reached a reasonable conclusion or not. i want to start more broadly speaking. this is one of those situations where you take one step back or half a step back and play through the events of february 2012 and look, this is sort of the end result of taking those events and filtering them through our legal system and this is what it comes out with? the man who indisputedly killed trayvon martin, loses the ankle bracelets, handcuffs, gets his gun back and says he has no more

to do with the court. >> the most devastating of last night is the role we have to play with our children. explain why a boy walking in his neighborhood after buying candy is dead. >> what did you say? >> you know what i said is, that it isn't right. that the most important thing we can do is understand we have to thank the jury. i mean, the jury did its job. it took the evidence into account and made their decision. we have to respect that. the issue here is whether or not we in america are going to have an honest and truthful conversation about whether race is still relevant in our lives. and the answer for my children is unquestioned. it's yes. that's part of why they're stunned. it's not just about, to your point, the legal finding and

legal ramifications of the finding. it's really about what it symbolizes in terms of whether we're going to address race in america and the fact that black people are not safe even when they are innocent. >> may i? i'm actually stunned you're saying, just from knowing you, that you do respect the jury's findings. i do not respect the jury's findings. this is what i do for a living. this is what i've been doing for the last 20 years. i've been doing this longer than trayvon martin was alive. and i'm disgusted with our system of justice and better for you that you can tell your children you respect these six women and what they find. >> this is an important discussion. i think our rule of law is important. i think there are many things wrong with the justice system. so saying we have to recognize

that six human beings in a very difficult case, emotionally difficult, huge amounts of public pressure, they were going to be denigrated no matter the verdict because there was going to be some side of the american public that were going to say, they were absolutely wrong. that's why. more because -- i'm taking a more human approach to this and saying, i think it is important to humanize those jurors and say, we need to let them go on and live their lives. the issue is what we need to fix about the situation? we need to fix the fact that they have six on murder cases. we won't have fair representation and because race still matters in america, it does matter what the racial makeup is of jurors. that's the conversation i'm totally outraged about. i don't want to personalize it to those individual jurors. >> at the same time, we always talked about the verdict in the

context of how african-americans would view it and absorb it. we forgot there's a different complex. white women living in a town that's conservative, that is pro-zimmerman, at least among the whites in sanford. the home they were going back to, the community they were getting absorbed back into, this is the verdict more comfortable for that community. you're talk about a town where people by and large are pro hive gun, angela corey, conservative republican. this is an issue where most of their community, the peers, their peers, were on the side they landed on. there were people on the other

side of this. i don't know why i was surprised but i think what surprised me the most, to be honest with you, was the reaction of the defense attorneys. i was a little taken aback. it was breathtaking for me, the kind of spiking the football reaction, particularly of don west but both defense attorneys -- >> they were happy. >> it's fine to be happy for your client but i think their presentation struck me as very insensitive. there is still a dead boy here. i thought it was cavalier. i can only respond by -- don west, doubling down on the joke. this is not justice for the family of the dead kid. they should have been more sensitive. >> they had no respect for trayvon martin to begin with. the thing that disgusted me, the jury was made up of six women, five white women. the defense literally invoked

the same -- they showed a picture of george zimmerman's white woman neighbor and show her as the picture of fear and said, this is what the neighborhood was up against and put a picture of trayvon martin with his shirt off looking like the most thugged out version of trayvon martin you could get and basically said, george zimmerman was protecting not just himself but white womanhood from this vicious, black thug. >> we were talking about some reactions from the defense team last night. it was interesting -- to me, i don't understand all the legal procedures but i guess this was very unusual after the verdict announced that don west refused to shake hands with the prosecution team. >> yes, please ask me about that. >> i want to play a couple -- this was mark o'mara after the verdict last night. this is some of what he had to say, basically putting the blame on trayvon martin. >> i'm not going to shy away from the fact that i think the evidence supported that george zimmerman did nothing wrong and that he was battered and beaten

by a 17-year-old, who for whatever reason, we won't know, thought he had to lash out and attack violently. >> and i just -- we'll play don west as well because he was talking about how this -- he felt a travesty had been avoided here. this is his reaction last night. >> this is something no one gets over. there's no winners here. there's no monsters here. that's the tragedy. the travesty, it would have been a travesty of justice had george zimmerman been convicted. that's the travesty. >> we're going to get some reactions to that, right after this. food dinners. a meal like this from walmart costs less that $3.50 per serving. and if a family of four like yours switches out fast food dinner just once a week you can save over $690 a year. unbelievable. it's believable. save on a kraft dinner backed by the low price guarantee. walmart

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we just played clips from mark o'mara and don west and inflammatory, is the way to describe how they conducted themselves after the verdict last night. seema, from a legal standpoint, what do you make from after the verdict? >> just so i'm clear, you said don west would not shake the hands of the prosecutors? >> yes. >> that's astounding to me because he won. what i do, lose or win, and what i've seen other attorneys do, as a professional courtesy you shake the hands. let's say in this case when the defense was successful, you shake the hand of the prosecutor and you say, i'm sorry. leave it at that. going forward with that point, all these statements to the press, why do you have to talk to the press? i don't understand it.

if you are sorry for the loss of trayvon martin, sit down, it's done. i want to point out that mark o'mara throughout this trial especially -- they talk about how busy they are, in court, how do you find time to go on cnn and give a press statement every single night? you should be working. you should not be using this young person's death as -- >> my quick question from a legal standpoint, is there some kind -- we're talking about the potential of civil suit, federal civil rights charges. is there kind of legal -- especially of being in the media and trying to -- >> absolutely. >> -- as horrible as it is, smear trayvon martin and -- >> that's a great question. because the civil suit would also be in state court. this is what o'mara has been doing the last year and a half. what he's continuing to do is

taint a potential jury pool. >> every single case does have an element of being tried in the court of public opinion for the very reason you've just pointed out and seema has just said. this is not over. this is not over by a longshot. this one criminal case is over. yes, the justice department will see if they can bring an action against george zimmerman of some kind. it's also pretty clear and the family is pretty clear they're probably going after him in civil suit. so i would guess, and it is a guess, these are the communities who are, a, a narrative extremely destructive to the fabric of our nation in order to protect an individual. >> not only that, mark o'mara has said on the one hand they're sensitive to the racial issues and we have to have this

discussion about black man and civil rights. he says that a lot. but he said, if george zimmerman was black, he never would have been charged. to everybody who is black is the most -- that is -- that just is confoundi confounding. that's simply not true. look at the criminal justice system. it sort of suggests there was some sort of racial controversy against george zimmerman to proint him out as a racist. that's the theme, too. those by and large on the right, this is about messaging to them. there's a lot of conversations going on. those are the people who provided support. those are the people in the potential jury pool. this jury was conservative, gun owners, et cetera. also one other case is shelly zimmerman perjury case, which would also be tried in sanford. i thought that was statement was

so jarring. >> we're talking about what the next step might be. to answer that, i'll bring in two attorneys, benjamin crump. thank you for joining us. benjamin, i'll start with you. can you just tell us -- i'm sure you've been in communication with the family since last night. what is their mood like? what are you hearing right now? >> well, initially when the verdict came, they were heart broken. it's painful. the killer of their unarmed son was not held accountable so they're trying to make sense of it all and trying to think about positive stuff. they have a foundation and they're going to work on that and try to figure out how to preserve trayvon's legacy because his death was not in vein. as they have said, they will

continue to vow to fight for him. >> the immediate questions from a legal standpoint, one directly involves you. this is a decision to pursue civil charges. where does that stand right now? >> well, right now they are dealing with this very difficult time. i'm sure we'll spend time talking with them and make the appropriate decisions. but but this morning, the harder i thought about it because they are very con for used by the american justice system. all of this has transpired, so as mr. and mrs. martin, they can continue to talk to their children. >> a lot of the discussion, we'll into this more on this show, in the wing have the judge

had a limited, narrow world it was forced to live in. i understand that if you go to a civil right, if you have a civil suit, the rules in that world expand a lot. does that offer you possibilities if you -- in term of making a case going to a civil court. what would that look like? >> certainly, there's a difference based on the preponderance of evidence so that's less than a reasonable doubt higher, but we think the facts and the evidence in this case were clear to us. he never should have followed trayvon martin. never should have profiled him. you know, the family's just heartbroken about it all.

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. i understand we're going to be losing benjamin crump in a minute. i want to play a clip for you before you go. i wanted your response to this. mark o'mara on friday gave an interview where he singled out you, talked about the lawyers around the martin family and basically saying in his view that you and others had -- were responsible for this horrible thing that happened to his client. i want to play what he said and i want your response to it. let's play it first. >> it was a wonderfully created, crafted public relations campaign by the people who were assisting the martin family. that's ben crump and other people. i don't discredit what he did as long as he acknowledges that's exactly what happened. >> do you think that george zimmerman would have even been charged had ben crump not been pulled into this?

>> no. ben crump or someone like him, because had ben crump not gotten involved in the case, maybe for some good reasons to believed in. if he believed there was something swept under the rug, get into it. i'm very okay with that. >> you didn't say it that way. you thought if it weren't for ben crump george zimmerman would be free and we would not be in that trial. >> that's correct. i think it was a made-up story for purposes that had nothing to do with george zimmerman. they victimized him -- they complain about trayvon martin being victimized. george zimmerman was victimized by a publicity campaign to smear him, to call him a racist when he wasn't and call him a murderer when he wasn't. >> there's a lot there. i just -- i'm curious what your response to that is. >> well, very simply, it's almost as if people don't want to look at the fact that you had a dead, unarmed teenager on the

ground killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer. and i remember distinctly when tracy martin called me with that sense of hopelessness in his voice where he said, they are not going to arrest him. they are not going to do anything. how i tried to encourage him to believe in the system because i'm a lawyer. i said, certainly they're going to arrest him. you know, we have seen people in our communities arrested on nothing, a hypothesis, no evidence at all, and yet they told this father, this family they were not going to arrest the killer of their unarmed child. so we said, you know, we are lawyers. we do this type of work. it would have been so easy to say, we can't make a difference. i remember talking to my law partner darrell parks and how he said, we're going to spend a lot

of money, spend a lot of time and resources and at the end of the day there's no guarantee whatsoever they're ever going to arrest this guy. and we agreed his statements were probably correct but we went to law school to try to make a difference in our community, to try to make everybody get equal justice. not just people from one side of town, but people from everywhere, especially in our community. so when they say i did all of this, i think they overlook the facts, the 2 million people that signed that petition that said you at least have to arrest the person who killed an unarmed teenager, because if you don't, what message does that send to society? what is the precedent set if we let people kill unarmed teenagers and go home and sleep in their beds at night?

i just think we have to remember what the prosecutor said at the very end. if trayvon martin and the facts were reversed would have profiled and followed and pursued and killed unarmed george zimmerman, what would the verdict have been? and i think the problem a lot of us are having accepting this verdict, we know in our heart of hearts that trayvon martin would have been convicted. so where we go from here, whether we progress or regress is going to be what we learn as a society to make sure this does not happen again and we have to continue to try as much as possible to say, you can't profile people. you can't make assumptions about people because on february 26, 2012, assumptions were made about trayvon martin and they were incorrect and he paid with

his life. >> benjamin crump, i want to thank you for joining us. e aflas expenses while he can't work, he can focus on his recovery. he doesn't have to worry so much about his mortgage, groceries, or even gas bills. kick! kick... feel it! feel it! feel it! nice work! ♪ you got it! you got it! yes! aflac's gonna help take care of his expenses. and us...we're gonna get him back in fighting shape. ♪ [ male announcer ] see what's happening behind the scenes at aflac.com. i get out a lot... except when it's too cold. like the last three weekends. asthma doesn't affect my job... you missed the meeting again last week! it doesn't affect my family. your coughing woke me up again. i wish you'd take me to the park. i don't use my rescue inhaler a lot... depends on what you mean by a lot. coping with asthma isn't controlling it.

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[ male announcer ] that's handy. ♪ so, we've been talking about that question that was raised and the question that was put to the defense team after the verdict last night about what if the roles were reversed, the race was reversed, trayvon martin and george zimmerman. that question was put to the defense team last night. this is how mark o'mara answered it. >> well-being i think things would have been different if george zimmerman were black for this reason -- he never would have been charged with a crime. it seems what happened is an event that was being looked into by sanford police department, and as we know now, looked into quite well. i had taken advantage of police departments who have not done a good investigation of crimes because naethat's what i do for living. when i looked into sanford

police department, they had done quite a good job. you can look across the country at who does good or bad with their investigations. they had done quite a lot. what happened is this became the focus for a civil rights event, which is a wonderful event to have, but they decide george zimmerman would be the person who they were to blame and sort of use as the creation of a civil rights violation. none of which was brought out by the facts. >> we have darrell parks with us, attorney for trayvon martin's family. what do you make after hearing that claim, if zimmerman were black, he never would have been charged? >> i don't believe anyone in america knows that except mark o'ma o'mara. everyone sitting at home knows that if a 28-year-old black man

shot and killed a young, white boy anywhere in america, that person would be arrested and face trial without question. so, i don't buy that at all. in that, mark o'mara, the quote there, trying to make this a civil rights event. in the press conference last night, you know, benjamin crump, your partner, said that trayvon martin will go down in history with emmett till and medgar everers. >> i think what mr. o'mara attempts to do is not put the whole situation in context as to what happened. this is not just something that happened on the protest. this is something that built up over time when they refused to arrest george zimmerman at all. first, it started off with ben and natalie having those very small press conferences locally,

talking about the fact this young man had been killed and nothing had been done about it. that story began to grow for that reason because the system hadn't responded. and so there are some people in this country, some people in this country, who may not understand when people are not happy with what the system is doing, that nonviolent protests through the civil rights movement is what you do. they may not understand it because they've never participated in it or don't respect the fact that other people can have power. that's fine. however, it's the law of our land and people can affect change. >> michael, i know you have thoughts. >> the presumption in o'mara's statement is george zimmerman were a black man had killed a black child this wouldn't have been an issue because this isn't a point for people to make this about racism. what happened to trayvon martin is emblematic what happens in

the justice system turning a blind eye to black children. what infuriates me when people bring up chicago and detroit and why don't people care about black-on-black crime. people in those communities care, but the people in the system do not care. >> george zimmerman's brother gave an interview and he specifically mentioned chicago. >> in cases in chicago if a black person kills another black person, they're not allowed to go home. they're arrested. i mean, the justice system grinds through african-american men at a pace that's breathtaking. there have been plenty of books written about it. we don't need to go into depth. look, to believe it was an injustice to even arrest, let alone charge george zimmerman for shooting trayvon martin, you have to believe when you see a dead, black child or teenager on the ground, can you presume on

the word of the shooter, the person on the ground was a shooter. was a killer. i have a bloody nose. that was the killer. just believe that. >> no matter how ridiculous the story. >> even if he lies about certain things, you're saying it was an injustice against the shooter to disbelieve his story wherein he is the only witness to what happened. >> let's be frank. black people are presumed guilty. white people are presumed innocent. >> that's the truth. >> that's exactly what happened here. >> it really is. >> even in this particular case, that was completely counterfactual what mr. o'mara said, is police did not go through all protocol in securing that crime scene because they believed george zimmerman's version without forensic science being conducted at the crime scene. that's the example of white

people being presumed innocent and a dead black boy laying on the sidewalk is presumed guilty with no ability to give his own statement. >> i think we can get this up on the screen. this is a revealing graphic that shows racial disparity in killings deemed -- here it is, found to be justifiable. the way to explain this is the baseline is white-on-white crime. you see if it's white-on-black crime, we put this in states that have stand your ground laws, don't have stand your ground laws and blue is all states. you can see there's a huge -- 200, 300, nearly 400% difference when you talk about black-on-white crime. the idea of a justifiable homicide is vastly more likely -- it's negative there when it becomes a black-on-white issue. >> because you can get away with it. black life is not valued in this country the same way white lives are. >> cynthia tucker did a great piece for the grio in which we posted this more than where she went back and reminded us "the

times" in tampa bay did a stand your ground laws in 2005 found when defendants claim stand your ground, if the victim was black and the person who shot them was white, 73% of the time their stand your ground claim was effective. it was only 53% of the time effective when the victim was white. am i getting that right? so when you claim stand your ground and you kill a black person, you're much more likely -- 20 percentage points more likely in stand your ground. i think the racial disparity is clear on its face. >> i want to pick up on stand your ground and look back at the roots of when the crime was -- when the killing took place, you had -- you took weeks to get george zimmerman charged with anything. i want to go back to that period of time and see how that affected the outcome. [ male announcer ] fight pepperoni heartburn and pepperoni breath fast

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we started to talk about florida's stand your ground law. when this all happened initially a year and a half ago, that provision got -- that law got a lot of attention. it didn't come up, i guess, as explicitly as people thought in the court proceedings but i want to ask daryl parks about the role of stand your ground. do you think that was a factor, that law? you know, what role do you think it played in the result that ended up being reached in the trial? >> i really don't believe it played any role. it was the topic of discussion early on in the case. you may recall earlier this year in one of the hearings, mark o'mara announced he would not be having a stand your ground hearing. at least at that particular stand your ground law, it was not an issue in this case. >> mr. parks, attorney here, do you think the delay in arrest, 45 dashgsz was a subtext to the

jury's decision in finding a not guilty verdict? >> it's funny you would say that. various times through these proceedings you heard mark o'mara take little stabs at the fact that the prosecutors in this case are from jacksonville and various times he would attack them about them being -- that's inappropriate, as you know. it has no bearing on the decision they would have made. all it was intended to do is draw a wedge between the jury and the prosecutors and make their job that much harder and inflame them. that was an issue that came into the proceedings several times and it was totally wrong. >> but do you feel george zimmerman in some way looked less culpable because if the police believed him, if the police decided let me wait 45 days until, frankly you and your associates, you are the ones who got this arrest, if not for that, we wouldn't be here.

but my point is, zimmerman was presented to the jury as, frankly, someone who was innocent for 45 days. what effect do you think that had? you saw the jurors. you saw their faces. do you think it was relevant? >> it has a big effect. i don't want to call mark o'mara a racist, but i will say this, i really believe he made it his point to portray this young black man as a young, black thug, right? there's a picture in there that shows trayvon martin from an upward position, the camera is pointed upward, as if he's a shirtless thug on the street. that's the image they wanted to portray. they slid that picture in over the state's objection and the court let it in. i think that was totally wrong because it started to create the wrong image. in their minds they could probably never identify that man they saw in the picture in this case. >> i wonder, too, daryl, how

much do you think it was an obstacle for the prosecution, they would say profiling, not saying racial profiling, is that something you think the prosecution would have run with more as a legal strategy? >> no. why would you do that with an all-white jury? that would make no sense. any time you start to make race an issue in a case like this, it tends to divide people for whatever reason and doesn't give the case to stand on its merits. i think they charged it correctly. george zimmerman believed trayvon was part of the element who had been burglarizing this complex and that's why he chose to follow him. that type -- the criminal profiling was the issue in this case. >> joy reid was making an interesting point, the demographics, the culture of this area of florida. this is a more conservative, white area of florida. when you saw the jury that was

chosen for this trial, was your reaction this is going to be an uphill climb because of some of those factors joy was talking about? >> let me say this in a nice way. i think you have to always remember your jury matters. it would almost be as if the four of y'all sitting there new york -- five of y'all sitting there in new york, one or person, you were my jury, i would be feel comfortable with you all. who your jury is makes a huge issue. i think what happens is most people won't talk about that as much. you took a stab at it today. i've listened to what you all said. you all made some very, very great points about this case. >> mr. parks, this is mia wily. i wonder if you would tell us what you -- florida's unique because you only have six people on a murder trial which makes it -- i would think, to try to get the kind of jury to

understand what it's like to walk around in black skin. what's your takeaway of the impact of having a six-member jury instead of 12-member jury. >> the capital cases you do have 12. capital and eminent domain cases require 12-person juries. again, you all who tried cases know, that when you try a case, the jury is whoever you get. and in any case, you try to get a jury you believe best fits your case. and that's just life up. hope you would get some people who can identify with the salient issues that will be a part of your case. obviously, we didn't connect with that jury. and they found differently, based upon evidence they have. we have to live with that for now. that's their decision. we accept their decision. doesn't mean we have to agree with it, though. i don't think the country agrees with the decision but we accept

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i want to bring in president of the national urban league, member of virginia state house of delegates and chairwoman of democratic state party and former virginia governor doug wilder, first african-american ever elected to a governor's office. ran for president in 1992 and elected mayor of richmond in 2004. governor, i want to start with you. although a basic level, i'm curious what your reaction is to the verdict last night and what you've seen in the aftermath of that verdict. >> well, i was surprised by the verdict, first off, and somewhat disappointed, and yet i've been listening to the questions and answers that have been coming forth relative to your prepounding them.

some of them surprised me. start off with this, you had an all-white courtroom, for all practical purposes, other than the defendant's presence and some of the witnesses -- i'm sorry, the victim and some of the witnesses. an all-white jury. all of the prosecutors were white. the defense people were white. if race didn't play a part in it, then you ask this very simple question, if the florida stand your ground law is not a part of what people considered, then why could you come to this verdict? the other thing that i would say is to follow some bit of what you've suggested, you've got a young man who has done nothing wrong criminally. he's been killed. no one debates that. so what caused his death? so the action that involved him being killed was the action of

the defendant. to the extent he goes unpunished for someone who's done nothing doesn't make any sense. if the law has to be changed in florida, you should change it. or if this could happen again under the same set of circumstances, that's not what we have fought for in terms of bringing justice to all, making certain that three preceps. america can't stand this kind of justice and people around the world would look at us and say, what are you talking about when you tell us how to bhaf. i'm shocked with it. i'm disappointed in it. i don't know all of the facts. i was not there. i don't know whether the prosecutors presented the case as best they could. i do think pretty clearly that race did play a part.

>> i want to ask you because you came -- came of age, i guess, during and before the civil rights movement. there was a point in the press conference after the verdict where benjamin crump, lawyer for trayvon martin's family, likened -- he said trayvon martin will go down in history. remembered with medgar evers and emmett till. i wonder what you make of that comparison. >> that's probably true but it doesn't bring him back. it doesn't bring his life back. how many emmett tills and medgar evers and trayvon martins must be sacrificed before the wheels of justice, which grind so slowly, grind for meting out justice for all. i would have been very concerned when that jury was set to see six white people. i would have been very, very concerned. i don't know how or why the prosecutor would allow that to

take place without some degree of closed session to say, hey, wait a minute, let's go talk to the judge. you know where the strikes came from. from the defense. you can't tell me there were not people of color, black people, that the jury would have been selected from. somebody had to strike certain people. it would be interesting to see if the people stricken were black. if they were not included, why not? >> we're short on time, but i wonder as a lawyer if you can answer that quickly. do you look -- could the prosecution have done better? >> the problem is sanford is 80% white, so the jury pool is representative of that. so, when you're picking a jury, there may not have been many blacks and minorities in that pool. so it really ends up being a numbers game. in a jury pool you're picking person by person by person so at

the end you say, wow, i have six white people sitting here. but i do have to criticize the prosecution's strategy in picking a jury. they've been doing this a long time. they should know better. they should know how to play the numbers in picking a jury and to set it up -- >> exactly. >> -- that you would have more minorities on that. so, i absolutely do agree with the gentleman that that was their deficiency. >> we are -- we're up against one hard break for this hour. we affected by oil spills, rescue workers have opened up a lot of dawn. ♪ they rely on it because it's tough on grease yet gentle. but even they'll tell you, dawn helps open... all: 3, 2, 1! [ male announcer ] ...something even bigger. this year, dawn is also donating $1 million to rescue efforts. go to facebook.com/dawnsaveswildlife. find out how the little things you do can make a big difference.

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governor doug wilder. first i want to go to msnbc's craig melvin with the latest on the reaction to last night's verdict. can you get us up to date? >> reporter: what a few hours makes in sanford, florida. the scene outside the courthouse as you saw, about 200 demonstrators at its height, about 200 demonstrators. no demonstrators now, obviously. law enforcement that had been camped outside of that courthouse for two or three days during deliberations, and quite frankly, throughout the entire trial and jury selection as well, that law enforcement presence is also gone here in sanford. at least outside the courthouse. i can also tell you that the protests and the demonstrations that they were prepared for here in sanford at least, they happened on a very small scale. the ones that did happen were peaceful, they were orderly. there was no civil unrest to speak of here in sanford or the

surrounding area. the video you're looking at is video from last night as that verdict was being read outside the courthouse, there was a hush that fell over the crowd. shortly after the verdict was read, a few moments after the verdict was read, the crowd you see there erupted. there was chanting as well as singing. but the chants we heard more often than the others, no justice for trayvon was one of the chants. no justice, no peace, another one of the chants. again, no arrests last night. they stuck around for about 90 minutes, steve. shortly thereafter they dispersed. the news choppers also gone. the city of sanford, as i've talked to a number of folks here the past few weeks, said they want it to get back to return, they want it to return to narmalcy, and it appears as least on the surface, there's an

important distinction to be made here, but at least on the surface logistically that is starting to happen. >> you know, craig, i would love, and i think a lot of people out there would really love to hear exactly it was that led these jurors to the conclusion they should acquit zimmerman. is there any indication, any reason to believe we'll hear from any of the jurors at this point? >> reporter: that's the million dollar question. it's funny you should ask me that. i was having that same discussion with one of the producers here because that's the big piece of the story we're missing. that jury of six women. to bring you up to speed on how this works, at least in the state of florida. about a week or so ago members of the media were allowed to submit requests that were then handed to the jurors. all six of those jurors, as you might imagine, got a folder, requests about that thick from just about every media outlet in this country. and we're told that a spokesperson last night, a

spokesperson with the court here in sanford, florida, went to the jurors and basically said, are any of you interested either collectively or individually, are you at all interested in answering any of the questions about deliberations? and all of them said no, not tonight. not only did they not do it last night, by order of judge nelson, steve, their identities will be shielded. the media has been instructed to basically -- to not allow to try to track them down at their house. that order of anonymity at this point we don't know when it is going to be lifted. there will be a separate hearing scheduled. at that time judge nelson will decide if and whether to make the names of these jurors public. so, it's going to be a while, if ever, we hear from these jurors about when they are -- or how they decided on the verdict that they reached. >> could be mystery hovering

over this for all time. we may never understand or never know. thanks to msnbc's craig melvin from florida. appreciate the update. i'm curious what you think -- >> this is the most important thing. this is not over. this is what's important. we're talking about yesterday's trial and it was a travesty and a miscarriage of justice. but this is not over. several of us civil rights leaders had a meeting at midnight, myself, al sharpton, melanie campbell, and our focus now is on the department of justice and for there to be a federal criminal civil rights investigation. i also thank that this may be a hate crime and that the hate crimes law, the matthew shepherd hate crime may apply. there are two important aspects of federal law that may have

been violated by george zimmerman, which could be investigated and should and could lead to an additional indictment. secondly, there is the wrongful death case, a civil proceeding, which the trayvon martin family, they have competent counsel in daryl parks and ben crump to bring that. this is not over. those who are activists, concerned justice has not been met, should absolutely continue disciplined and directed advocacy for this family. thirdly, i was offended by mark o'mara's statements. they were not only unprofessional and unbecoming a lawyer, who just succeeded in a case. they are insensitive and further drive a wedge. and i think spur us to say that we're going to insist that

justice be done in this case. we have as a father a young boy. this is a boy who lost his life. not a grown man who lost his life not at the hands of another teenager, not of another boy, but of a man. an unarmed teenager. i think from the very beginning, but for ben crump and the fact that the local community invited the civil rights leadership into this case, this matter would have been swept under the rug. and that's exactly what zimmerman and forces around him wanted to occur. we stop that from occurring and i think we want to send a strong message of solidarity with the parents and the family, but we want to send the message, this is not over and we'll continue. >> the other piece looking forward is legislative. there's talk about what laws can be changed in florida.

you're familiar with what's on the books in virginia. >> yes. >> i'm curious if you can compare what the sort of situation is in florida, how out of line it is with other states and what needs to be changed there. >> florida is certainly not alone. there are several states with stand your ground law. i can say in virginia our state law is basically for personality. if you're faced with deadly force, you can use deadly force to defend yourself. i will say this, in the virginia legislature there is always a bill put in similar to what's in florida. it's defeated each year. the thing is we get close every time to getting it passed. it's basically leadership that tucks that bill away and sends it back to committee. this is a message for every citizen who cares about our children from sandy hook to trayvon martin. we have a serious problem here when we are watching our children die. it is painful to watch. i remember my mother telling me about emmett till and how she felt during that time. never in my life would i think i would have to relive her pain,

but i in pain right now. and it's not because of my race. i am looking at children dying in this country and with violence, so state legislators will certainly take a look at laws but we must be vigilant because these laws that allow a unarmed teenager to die, and i'll call him a perpetrator, but he was instructed to stay in his car, zimmerman. why are we allowing somebody to disregard instructions by our law enforcement? this is very serious. >> you mention the stand your ground laws seem to be gaining ground in the virginia legislature. i'm curious. in florida the big story was the american council, it's a national group. it's like a cookie cutter thing. is that what's behind the movement in virginia? >> i mean, it could be --

unfortunately there's confusion about virginia law. some legislators file the -- it has to be explained to them. unfortunately, people just don't understand the law. a.l.e.c. is a group that has forced this, the stand your ground legislation and other groups, too. because there are rumors circulating that you can't protected yourself in your own home against deadly force. >> it's important to recognize a year ago when there was some sunlight on a.l.e.c., many of us called for many of its major supporters to withdraw. i want to renew that call this morning. the poison of the stand your ground law was from a.l.e.c. they went to the state -- i'm a former state legislator and watched them operate. there needs to be sunlight on what nair doing, which what they're doing is creating model

legislation and spread the poison of stand your ground all over the nation. those who support a.l.e.c. should withdraw because this kind of thing and the use of stand your ground is why at the very instance the law enforcement there in sanford, florida, did not arrest george zimmerman as they should have, at the very inception. >> you mentioned a minute ago one of the next steps is the question of what's going to happen at the federal level. there sort of a historical pattern there of cases where there are failures, civil rights failures at state and local level and then this historical pattern but that it defaults the federal government. [ male announcer ] this is kevin.

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when i heard the possibility of federal intervention, the justice department looking at

this, i thought back to the rodney king case from the early 1990s, the black l.a. motorist beaten by the cops. you had -- initially a jury acquitted the cops, that's what sparked the l.a. riots of 1992. then federal charges were brought and two of the police officers were eventually convicted and did time for that. i wonder, and i'll bring doug wilder back. i'm curious, governor, do you see sort of -- is this a continuation of a pattern? i teased at the end of last segment when there are civil rights failures at the local level, the state level. i know this is the story decades ago, generations ago, but again we see the federal government is sort of the -- it's the last bit of defense there when it comes to civil rights. >> well, i heard my good friend marc morial gave his explanation as to what's going on. i do agree with him that people should not give up and should have hope. and yet he being a lawyer himself recognizes that even

asking the justice department to come in, there's no guarantee of anything to take place. they have this law in florida also that in order to maintain certain civil actions, you have got to have been proven to not been wrong yourself. and it's going to be very, very difficult in many instances. and yet that's what the justice department is there for. one of the things that chanielle was speaking to relative to virginia, even though -- i don't disagree with her, even though there may have been attempts by some people in the house to get this legislation through, it never has gotten through, i would be surprised if it got through into the senate and i would be very surprised if any governor of virginia who would want to carry us back so far as to sign that bill. there would be human cry from a lot of people. i would hope when the justice department looks into it, it

looks to the totality of what's going on. was that grounds for zimmerman to do anything because of this stand your ground law? why was he feeling that he was -- i was not a policeman. he has no license. what gives him the authority to take a life and go unpunished? that's what's before the justice department. was it civil rights violation? yes. was it also the loss of his opportunity to live? yes. how can that and should that be corrected? >> so, there are -- there's something police officers, college students and george zimmerman all have in common and that is they are more likely to shoot a black man with a wallet than they are to shoot a white man with a gun. it's called shooter bias. the law has not kept pace with the science, with the brain science, because what brain

science tells us is, these things are happening at nano seconds at subliminal levels, not conscious levels. civil rights laws were written at a time when in this country racism happened at a conscious level. so, we don't even understand our brains on race now. we have made so much progress in this country on whether it is appropriate or okay or legal to be overtly, racially discriminatory. we have not dealt with the fact that most people are still carrying unconscious bias, that is racially motivated but not at a conscious level. and so when the department of justice has to look at a hates crime case, it has to find evidence of that conscious level of racial -- racism. this is an area where they tell us science is different and --

>> it's sort of like we talk about the effect versus intensity. we talk about the voting rights a lot now. effect versus intent. i wonder in the case of george zimmerman, it strikes me this did not get a lot of play in the trial but prosecutors introduced five previous 911 calls he had made. >> 46 calls in a six-year period from george zimmerman claiming a scary black person was -- >> right. five admitted as evidence in the trial. >> but my pointed is for brain science, 46 calls. i'm not talking about the evidence. i'm talking about george zimmerman's implicit bias. 46 calls is a lot of evidence on a social science level. >> oh, sure. >> but those calls can be used as, you know, a foundation for the d.o.j. suit and the other -- >> the other thing is, i was asking ben crump about this earlier but the rules of evidence, if this goes to a

civil trial, are more expansive. >> exactly. >> the standard of proof, which is different, which is the significant thing. not only the rules of evidence but the standard of proof in a criminal case is obviously much -- all elements of the crime must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. in a civil case it's by preponderance of the evidence. it's a very different proceeding. the thing you mentioned, the 911 calls, certainly in a civil case, and i think with an intensive competent investigation by the department of justice, i feel that george zimmerman can be brought up on federal criminal civil rights charges and potentially hate crime charges. this law we're talking about, federal criminal civil rights laws, have been used around the nation particularly in police brutality cases. what you have in george zimmerman is a classic wanna-be law enforcement officer. number one, sought to be a law

enforcement officer. two, acted like a law enforcement officer. three, pursued like a law enforcement officer trayvon martin. these are not things a reasonable citizen would do. >> the charges you were outlining, is that what you're asking the department of justice -- >> we're asking the department of justice to conduct a thorough investigation as to whether any federal laws were violated by george zimmerman in connection with the death of trayvon martin. and we have certainly -- will make a form request. i think the naacp will hold a press conference. the naacp, national urban league, black women's, all four of us and many others will join collectively in asking the justice department. now, they started at the very beginning with an investigation. they put it on hold. this is standard procedure by them. to allow the local authorities to pursue their investigation, their prosecution to a conclusion. now it's appropriate for the justice department to pick this up and to proceed.

>> maya, i want to get you back in here but i want to say thanks to doug wilder. what do you driv? i drive a ford fusion. who is healthier, you or your car? i would say my car. probably the car. cause as you get older you start breaking down. i love my car. i want to take care of it. i have a bad wheel - i must say. my car is running quite well. keep your car healthy with the works. $29.95 or less after $10 mail-in rebate at your participating ford dealer. so you gotta take care of yourself? yes you do. you gotta take care of your baby? oh yeah!

maya, i know you want to jump in. go ahead. >> so, trayvon martin's parents worked so hard with mr. crump and mr. parks to bring -- to get these criminal charges made. and i suspect will bring a civil case because they wanted that their son not die in vein. what that means, justice is not just for trayvon martin. justice here is so black people can walk down the streets in america, innocent and unarmed, and not be afraid they're going to be killed. and that means that in addition -- i agree with marc that, one, it's not over. two, that the department of justice, that there's an opportunity to prosecute this case more effectively. but if we miss the real message

here, which is that we need to restructure our laws, we need to understand that our current legal structure does not work for how we do race in america right now, which means it doesn't work for anyone, because we all have a race. that means that we will miss the opportunity, not just to try to get justice for trayvon martin. we will miss the opportunity to assure us that innocent black people can live safe, long, healthy lives. >> i want to talk for a minute about the reaction we've seen nationwide to this. i know there was a lot of conversation, oh, is there going to be violence? should we even be asking, oh, is there going to be violence? we have craig melvin, the report from sanford, florida, basically said overnight, you know, there were protests. they broke up. you know, life seems to be going back to the way it was. there were, you know, rallies or marches. we documented ten cities across the country. we were see be scenes from last

night. i think that's san fran. there was property damage in california but nothing of the dire predictions we were hearing. there was a concert last night in hayward, california, lester chambers had a concert and dedicated a song to trayvon martin. i believe this was before the verdict was announced. he dedicated a song and a white woman came up on the stage and, i guess, started shoving him and was taken into custody. that's what the hayward police told us this morning. we put in a call out there. it's interesting. that's maybe the most dramatic. >> i encourage people, we encourage people as the civil rights leadership of the 21st century, we encourage people to express themselves with discipline and responsibility consistent with our rights under the first amendment and consistent with the traditions of dr. martin luther king, now on the 50th anniversary of that historic march. we also encourage people to join us on august 24th for what we're

calling the civil rights continuation march, which is 50 years after the historic 1963 effort. now, steve, with the supreme court decision in the voting rights case, now with the trayvon martin case, this civil rights continuation effort has a renewed vigor and purpose. so, we're asking people of all backgrounds to join us in washington, d.c. on august 24th when there's going to be an historic effort. we do need to express ourselves through social media, through appropriate means, but we have to remember that this is not over and that the cause and the quest for justice and civil rights of the 21st century continues. but we, i think, do not want to discourage expression. we want to encourage responsible and disciplined expression. >> there was a writing in "the new yorker," the idea, are there going to be violent protests or

anything, and he said you'll see riots if maybe you're expecting one thing and you get another. >> that is part -- >> stereotyping. >> that's stereotyping. we do not think the rest of ourselves as americans. for the most part, it was nonviolence. look at us as americans and how beautiful we are, we believe in healing, we believe in getting to the highest potential, we believe in continuing the civil rights movement. we have to. this is a wake-up call. what happened to trayvon martin, yes, it is similar to emmett till -- >> the civil rights movement in this country has historically been the hall mark of peaceful protest. and to suggest that and to continue to harp on that is an effort to discredit the very issues at hand. >> this goes back to the narrative point you made at the top of the hour. it should not be news that black people are not rioting.

that should not be rioting. white officer acquitted shooting dialo 19 times going for his wallet. sean bell, 23 years old, shot and killed right before his wedding, unarmed. no right. ricky boyd in chicago, two months after trayvon martin, shot and killed by an off-duty detective, no riot. we have more incidents of not rioting that it should not be news we're not rioting. it plays into the same narrative mr. o'mara gave us after this verdict, which is tearing the social fabric of this country which is that black people are to be feared. >> the question i was trying to get at with what mr. cobb wrote, not about violence, but he was saying in his mind he was not expecting a positive result. i'm wondering, in general, how pervasive -- >> we were on "all in" with

chris and he made this point and it's a poignant point and worth restating. we see black people killed who are innocent all the time. i mean, so the idea there's something -- unfortunately and wrongly, that there's something new here and, therefore, there's going to be eruption by virtue of the fact of the acquittal alone, ignores that this is a norm for our community. this is why i say, do we live in one america? because i think the answer is no. we live in two different americas. because the reality for people who are black in this country, and this is why the jury pool mattered, is very different than the reality for people who are white. >> we've been talking about changing the laws. it's not just about stand your ground. since this show started we decided we need to change stand your ground, we need to change the six-juror number in florida if it's want a capital case.

in most states we all know we get 12-person juries. when daryl parks was on he said to us, if it's a capital case, it's 12-jury panel. >> i want to thank marc morial, and charniel harris. shoot! this is bad. no! we're good! this is your first time missing a payment. and you've got the it card, so we won't hike up your apr for paying late. that's great! it is great! thank you. at discover, we treat you like you'd treat you. get the it card with late payment forgiveness. resoft would be great, but we really just need "kid-proof." softsprings got both, let me show you. right over here. here, feel this. wow, that's nice. wow. the soft carpets have never been this durable. you know i think we'll take it. get kid-friendly toughness and feet-friendly softness, without walking all over your budget. he didn't tell us it would do this. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot.

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you coughed all through our date night! i hardly use my rescue inhaler at all. what did you say? how about - every day? coping with asthma isn't controlling it. test your level of control at asthma.com, then talk to your doctor. there may be more you could do for your asthma. i want to bring in msnbc's tre, co-host of "the cycle," michael denzel smith, contributor at "the nation", back with us at the table. i want to talk about the reaction from trayvon martin. first, we were just talking about the idea of, you know, if the jury had been bigger, if we had 12 instead of 6. maya you said during the break some interesting point about research about what happens with just one -- if you take an all-white jury and add one african-american to the mix, what happens? >> i thought everything i said was interesting. >> i agree, i agree.

>> now, seriously, seema is absolutely right. i want to reinforce seema's point with science. jury matters president the race of who is on the jury matters in the outcome. here's why. sarasota and seminole counties, ten years' of data, 700 juries, what that research found is when one black person is on a six-member jury, the number of acquittals of black defendants drops over ten percentage points and the number of convictions of white defendants increases by 10 percentage points and makes the number of conviction equal by race. in other words, you don't see racial differences in convictions and acquittals. >> which makes it -- we were talking about, you know, could the prosecution have done more to get -- >> right. >> it makes it all the more amazing -- >> this is also seema's point on the number of jurors is so

important and why i asked mr. parks the question about the six-member jury. because we live in segregated communities, we don't have -- the geographic area we're pulling juries from do not reflect other nation, do not even reflect our states. if you don't have more seats on that jury, you have less opportunities to make sure one black juror is on that jury. we know that influences how people understand how -- because it's all about how you understand what may have happened that night. >> and you have that juror in that room explaining to the other jurors, hey, i'm a black woman. this is my experience. this is what it's like for a young black man walking home at night with candy. you need that. that's the part of the deliberation process, i mean, bringing this -- >> credibility of witnesses. >> it was interesting to hear daryl parks, we had him on earlier, i asked him limb takings with the prosecution, did it hurt their case they

couldn't explicitly make racial profiling a part of this case. he said, no, not at all with an all-white jury. >> in function of these covert ways and one way which race is part of this, the prosecution got out-lawyered. why did that happen? because george zimmerman had an extraordinarily expensive defense team. not the dream team o.j. simpson had. what you get in the justice system is what you can afford. when this became a political football back in the beginning of all this, all these people, most of whom we can assume are on the right, decided to give him hundreds of thousands of dollars. we don't know if it was one or two donors but thousands of donors, gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars, allowing him to get a mark o'mara and he can get representation far greater than he could ever afford. >> two points to that. you know mark o'mara was working

for free. did you know that? yeah. i thought that was out there. so, at some point -- >> mark o'mara did not get money for this? >> this is what happened -- >> was this publicity? >> that was my point. i thought this was out there. at some point mark o'mara wasn't getting paid. the problem is -- this is on a practical level. if you have a private case and you're getting paid, the client can no longer afford you, you ask the court to appoint you and have the court pay. because george zimmerman had the legal defense fund with the hundreds of thousands of dollars you're talking about, the court couldn't claim that george zimmerman was indigent and, therefore, had that available, that option available to get appointed counsel. so, from my understanding, o'mara and, perhaps, don west, they haven't been paid for a very long time. and to your point, yes, of course, it's for the publicity.

>> and he still spent all his money because all the bells and whistles, all the -- finding experts, we all know -- >> right. that's very expensive and that came from the defense fund, the hundreds of thousands of dollars you're referring to. >> i want to get these on the screen and talk about them in a little bit. last night after the verdict, there was some tweets from trayvon martin's family that i think were really kind of moving. this is the first one. there were two from his father. this is the first one his father did last night. god bless me and sybrina and tray and even in his death i know my baby proud of the fight we we along with all of you put up for him. god bless. the second one, thanks to everyone who are with us and who will be with us so we together can make sure that this doesn't happen again. also from his father. even though i am brokenhearted,

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we put the tweets up from trayvon martin's last night. when i saw those, it made me stop and think what that family has been through for the past year and a half. we're talking about maybe pursuing a civil suit now, a civil kacase. there's the federal issue overhanging this and after that there's just your whole life and your son's been killed and you've gone through and you've watched how he's been portrayed by the defense. i just wonder how any family -- i'm thinking more on a human level, how any family goes through this, how you pick up your life and move on at all. >> that's why i want to go back to the point of the jurors being all white. i would like to get to a point where that all-white jury could understand the pain of a tracy

martin and sybrina fulton and they wonuldn't have to have a black person in the room explaining what they're going through right now. that's an unimaginable pain to have your son taken from you in circumstances beyond his control because someone looked at him and decided that he was a threat and decided to follow him, to stalk him, and to murder him. and whether, you know, the courts say he didn't murder him, fine, but he killed that child. that's the pain that those parents are living with now. that jury couldn't relate to. >> that's the racial empathy gap that people have written about. we see others like us and we feel their pain and others who are not like us. we don't feel their pain. respect brother tracy for never wanting this to happen again but he knows, we know this will happen again. i mean, the roll call only grows, oscar grant, dialo, sean bell, iana jones and we could add other names -- >> boyd.

>> the roll call grows and it will continue to grow. this cannot stopped as long as we have the police brutality level, the inherent shooter bias we have and so many people in this country who are armed as we talk about on "the cycle," so many people who take the law into their own hands because they are armed. not just where there is stand your ground but other places where they have similar statutes they don't call that but the same effect. >> there's something important to say. if you watch other stations, not msnbc, but other stations, the conversation is about race baiting. the conversation is, and you ask the questions to mr. crump and mr. parks. it's being challenged. we saw mr. o'mara do it yesterday. so when our -- who are the race baiters? the race --

>> what does that mean? >> so it's -- because what's happening is we're saying race no longer matters, that black kid was violent. >> right. and let's -- >> i mean, that actually -- >> or that, well, george zimmerman had race, right, because -- so george zimmerman was raced, so ergo that cancels -- i find race is like the weather. people think about it when the weather events are extreme but the weather is con stand and race is constantly part of almost everything. >> you mentioned daryl parks and we interviewed him earlier. i do want to go back to something he said earlier, in-show flashback. let's just play daryl parks talking about how the defense portrayed trayvon martin. >> i don't want to call mark o'mara a racist, but i will say this, i really believe he made it his point to portray this young black man as a young, black thug, right? there's a picture in there that shows trayvon martin from an

upward position. the camera's pointed upward, right, as if he's some shirtless thug on the streets, right? and so that was the image they wanted to portray. they slid that picture in at the end over the state's objection at the last minute and the court let it in. i think that was totally wrong. totally wrong because it started to create the wrong image. in their minds, they could probably never identify with that man they saw in the picture in this case. >> maya, it really seems -- you talked earlier about sort of the way profiling happens, the brain science of it. and the defense was trying to get the white jury to profile trayvon martin the same way that -- >> there is a social, psychological term for this in the research. it's called priming. when you -- you can prime an image of a black person to the criminal that will increase the implicit bias of the viewer. you can prime in a way that

reduces the implicit bias. that's my point. we don't have to live this way. there are actual ways to solve this, but we don't solve it unless we recognize, one, that it exists and that it's not as simple as saying, oh, you're a racist, not a racist. it's actually understanding that we are all victims of a media that is constantly priming us with images of dangerous black kids. >> let's not forget that -- i think we've all forgotten about rachel jental. when she got on the stand, don west was talking to her like she was an alien. and that young lady was consistently authentic, consistently honest. and she stood her ground under a very brutal and long cross-examination. >> you know, all credit to mr. parks for not calling o'mara a racist, but he trafficked in the exact racist ideology that

renders blackness a threat in this country. he did it consistently. he and his team did it consistently. that's what got george zimmerman off. >> toure, first word after the break. nt? 20? new purina one true instinct has 30. active dogs crave nutrient-dense food. so we made purina one true instinct. learn more at purinaone.com

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just like old times in the cycle, he was trying to talk and i cut him off. >> i want to underline the point, the test we get nowadays, are you racist, which means are you racist all day long, is a totally false test anybody can knock down. at this moment are you doing anything to perpetuate white supremacy, that's more effective than are you working with the tools of racism. when i look at trayvon, who lives 16 years and a couple of weeks, right, he was a child. talking to people about he was a child, so many people are saying to me, stop it. he wasn't a child. he was bad. he was this. he was that. that's the way we don't get to

be children. we get to be man children, manchild in the promise land, that we are old before our years, right. even his innocence was taken and his family had to work so hard to restore his innocence after george zimmerman took it away, the police took it away, and now -- >> so much was made of the rebuttal from the prosecution after the defense made the final arguments, the rebuttal playing up the idea trayvon was a child. it didn't ring true with the jury. >> there's something problematic about this, even though we've all done it, which is if i was 50 years old why would this be okay. there's a 51-year-old black man killed in washington state. once again, no riot. he was innocent. he was unarmed. he didn't do anything wrong. he was shot dead. he was 51. it's not just age. >> if a man started following

me, i would feel enough efficacy to face him and say, why are you following me? a 16, 17-year-old would perhaps freak out, and i'm running. >> i agree with you in terms of he's -- i tell my kids if someone is messing with you on the playground. they live in brooklyn, in public school. if someone is messing with you on the playground you will not get in trouble with me if you defend yourself, but defending yourself does not mean you get to stand your ground. you have to do everything in your power -- but if it's a 15-year-old against my 9-year-old, she's in a different situation, which is i think what you're saying. george zimmerman is the 28-year-old, had more of an obligation. the one thing i want to come back to this point. a, if black people of all ages should be presumed innocent, it shouldn't just be about age.

this is part of why we keep -- and part of why the prosecution kept trying to reinforce the issue of his age, it had to undermine that implicit bias of scariness. they were using age to try to say how can you -- >> we're implicitly, frightening, the black body emanates fear and then we have to live with that, we have to deal with that. so people want to kill us, to cage us, the fear, the anxiety that flows out of our bodies. >> i hate to say it but i have to cut it off. i want to thank my guests. thanks for getting up, and thank you all for joining us at home. we'll be back next week 8:00 a.m. eastern time. coming up next, melissa harris-perry with more analysis and coverage of the continuing reaction to the zimmerman verdict. that's melissa harris-perry coming up next.

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and best-in-class torque these are some of the bold, new ram commercial trucks -- built to blow your imagination. guts. glory. ram. he is not guilty of manslaughter in the killing of trayvon martin. george zimmerman is now a free man after this scene played out late last night in the courtroom. >> in the circuit court of the 18th judicial circuit in and for seminole county florida, state of florida versus george zimmerman. verdict, we the jury find george zimmerman not guilty. >> good morning. i'm melissa harris-perry. we have a lot to get to over the course of the program this morning. but i want to put one