The Department of Justice announced recently that they have a civil rights investigation open into the death of Trayvon Martin. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz agrees that Eric Holder should be investigating civil rights violations in this case — except he’s investigating the wrong person:
Immediately after the verdict was announced, however, the NAACP and outspoken activist Al Sharpton called on the Justice Department to launch a federal civil-rights probe, charging that the case had been racially tainted.
Dershowitz is calling for a civil-rights probe as well. But he contends the person whose rights were violated was Zimmerman.
“I think there were violations of civil rights and civil liberties — by the prosecutor,” said the criminal-law expert. “The prosecutor sent this case to a judge, and willfully, deliberately, and in my view criminally withheld exculpatory evidence… They denied the judge the right to see pictures that showed Zimmerman with his nose broken and his head bashed in. The prosecution should be investigated for civil rights violations, and civil liberty violations.”
Dershowitz argues that in general the Justice Department doesn’t investigate civil rights violations on an individual basis unless one of the individuals works for the government, and that George Zimmerman couldn’t alone have violated anybody’s civil rights even if he’d been found guilty of the crime. The person in this case who violated the civil rights of an individual is prosecutor Angela Corey, who Dershowitz says should be disbarred and “is among the most irresponsible prosecutors I’ve seen in 50 years of litigating cases.” Ouch.
Video via Legal Insurrection:
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