1. Stand Your Ground played no part in the trial of George Zimmerman, it was the excuse used by the local prosecutor for not filing charges when the crime occurred. Zimmerman’s attorneys used the standard Self-Defense provisions of the law.

2. The Prosecution filed the wrong charge against Zimmerman, even though they lacked the evidence to prove it. This is the second time recently that prosecutors in Florida have gone to trial with unprovable charges and lost the case because they couldn’t prove it beyond reasonable doubt. They are getting as bad as the Los Angeles district attorneys.

3. Zimmerman could have and should have been charged with Manslaughter. Manslaughter was included in jury instructions, but the prosecutors didn’t explain to the jury how the facts in the case corresponded to the elements of the law.

4. The Judge is restricted to explaining the law, she could not tell the jury how that law applied to the current case, as the judge must remain impartial.

Manslaughter would have been a short, straight-forward trial. Trayvon Martin was dead, and George Zimmerman killed him. That was never the question, that was a fact. The prosecutors should have used that great legal fiction, “the reasonable man”, to show that Zimmerman caused the death of Martin by failing to act “reasonably”. There were several points on the night of the incident when, if Zimmerman had done the “reasonable” thing, there would have been no confrontation with Martin and no death.

The prosecutors had a case they could have proven with the evidence they had, most of it supplied by Zimmerman, but they decided to go for the ‘big win’ because CNN was going to cover it. This was never about the death of Trayvon Martin, this was about the political aspirations of the prosecutors. Justice was not served.