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Alum comments on Trayvon Martin shooting as hate crime


March 27, 2012

ASU alumnus Donald Tibbs, now associate professor of law at Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law, offered comment in a March 27 Associated Press story reporting that the U.S. Department of Justice is looking into bringing a hate-crime charge in the Florida killing of teenager Trayvon Martin. 

The story reported that the "Justice Department's civil rights division and the FBI are conducting their own probe in the case, and a federal hate crimes charge could come out of that no matter what state authorities do. The hate crimes law carries a potential life prison sentence when a death is involved.

"Tibbs said one key is determining whether Martin's race alone was the reason Zimmerman decided to follow him in his vehicle. Martin, who was from Miami, was staying in the neighborhood with his father and father's fiancée and was returning from a convenience store with Skittles and a can of iced tea when the confrontation took place. He was not armed."

"He was not suspicious. What makes him suspicious in the moment is the fact that he was black. If Trayvon Martin was white, would any of this have happened?" Tibbs said.

A 2004 graduate of the doctoral program in justice studies in the School of Social Transformation at ASU, Tibbs has studied race and justice, civil rights and criminal procedure. He formerly served as assistant professor of law and director of the Institute for Civil Rights and Justice at the Southern University Law Center. He recently authored the book "From Black Power to Prison Power: The Making of Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union."

Article source: Boston Globe

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