Up in the far corner, a tall standing quilt with fifty stars as well as red and white stripes gloomed over the courtroom. It was a physical representation of what ideals this country was founded on. Justice was a big portion of those ideals.
“I was just walkin’ through town when I noticed Trayvon, my homie from school, bein’ dissed by this other guy–”
Darrell interrupted, “It was wack what happened next. One minute the dude was standing, the next Treyvon had jumped him.”
I may not know all that much about the justice system in America, but I do know what is sagacious in moral situations. Wow, I just used a lot of big words in that sentence.. I bet you think that Darrell and I alike are black based off the way we speak. Well you are right about me. Darrell, however, happens to be one of the most physically white people I’ve ever met. But obviously since we are representing our black friend from school with ghetto slurs that means we are black, right? No, it doesn’t.
But that is beside the point.
My friend Darrell and I were called into court on the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman case. Both of us were there when the epidemic occurred. If you haven’t already heard about it, the basis of the situation was that our acquaintance Trayvon was walking home, and this man started following him. Trayvon, acting in self-defense in fear of his life, attacked the man. Without warning, the other man who they call Zimmerman had shot Trayvon, an unarmed teenager.
“Do you agree that Trayvon started open physical conflict?” the defendant’s lawyer looked directly at me.
“Yeah.”
“So then Zimmerman was acting out of self-defense?” the lawyer prompted.
“No,” I replied. “Trayvon initially acted out of self-defense. I’d do the same if some dude was following me to my crib”.
“But Zimmerman stated that an underage black boy had been terrorizing the neighbor–“
“So that makes it right to shoot a boy cause he’s black?” Darrell asked sternly.
The room fell silent.
The defendant’s lawyer straightened his tie and adjusted his glasses. He looked nervous about what he wanted to say next.
“Did Zimmerman have the advantage in the physical altercation?” The opposing lawyer finally had been able to ask.
“Well…from our standpoint it didn’t seem so. But that doesn’t mean–“ I was cut off.
“There were multiple cases of break-ins and robberies taking place in the area at the time, and one of the notes was that there were black teenagers committing crimes. Zimmerman questioned Trayvon, he didn’t intend to cause a fight let alone shooting him.” the Lawyer tried to convince everyone.
“But what if Trayvon was the one chasing the dude? And he shot him outta ‘self-defense’? I’m 100% sure that he’d be accused of murder and woulda been sent in prison.” Darrell wasn’t sure of this accusation himself, but he knew it was possible.
“Your friend was suspended at the time for having marijuana in his locker and what even seemed to be utilities for a robbery”, the Lawyer avoided answering that question.
“Yeah but what about all dem white boys you see with drugs? Ain’t none of them getting’ suspended. It ain’t right.” Darrell said, which was actually and statistically accurate. There have been multiple cases of white kids buying and doing drugs, but not being found out or suspended.
“They don’t even bother lookin’ in the white kids’ lockers. They always assume it’s the blacks.” Darrell continued from his previous. “I saw a white kid beating on some black kid the other day unnoticed–“
“You are going far beyond the boundaries of the question.” The defendant’s lawyer stated rather defensively with emphasis on the word far.
“No, you’re ignoring the morality of the situation!” I blurted out. But people weren’t scathed by what I had said. Instead they were whispering things about a large vocabulary for my skin color.
Sorry in advance for my being tangential, but it is extremely infuriating when people expect a lower standard of education for people of different race based off of stereotypes. Yes, I speak a certain way, but that doesn’t lessen my vocabulary overall. I got a 2050 on my SAT, a score that was probably amongst the highest in my entire school, whites included. Isn’t that ironic?
Apologies, that isn’t the point of this case.
After a series of back and forth arguments between the plaintiff’s lawyer and the defendant’s lawyer, the judge said he’d heard enough, and asked politely to hear each of the sides’ closing statements.
The plaintiff’s lawyer, who was representing Trayvon Martin, continued off of what I had said previously. “While it is true that there were reports of break-ins in the neighborhood, the job of a policeman may be to question a suspect, not kill them.”
The defendant’s lawyer quickly intercepted the statement and said, “Zimmerman was being attacked and was clearly at the disadvantage, evident by his current fractures and bruises. Therefore, he killed a person out of self-defense.”
After that, the judge had sent everyone home and said that the jury would discuss the event and come to his or her own conclusion the following day.
Tomorrow finally came, and the jury was silently discussing the case, leaving my friend Darrell and I as well as Trayvon’s family shaking from nerves. The defendants seemed rather confident.
Finally, the jury made their final statement, “Following what the witnesses said previously, it seems that Trayvon’s death was out of cold blood because of the circumstances. However, Trayvon initiated physical contact and to protect his life, thus making Zimmerman the victim. The jury finds the defendant innocent.”
The judge said “The defendant is innocent. Money from the case will be awarded to Zimmerman for his recovery. Case dismissed.” The pound of the hammer created an ominous atmosphere and a shiver down my spine.
Zimmerman’s family was excited and hugging each other, while the plaintiff’s family sobbed. Money was not the only thing they had lost. They lost Trayvon in cold blood and the man who had killed him was acquitted.
Anger took over me and I wanted to rip up the American flag that stood tall in the courtroom. The only freedom that flag was representing was freedom for the whites. For anyone else, the flag merely represented white freedom and racism for the rest of the population. Even though slavery was destroyed after the Civil War, and Martin Luther King had made his speech in Washington D.C. back in the 1960’s, people will never really be equal.
Our Constitution, something Americans live by everyday, states that every man is equal. It has been one of America’s greatest values since the formation of the country, and one of the reasons it was created in the first place. Exiting the court only intensified this realization. Today, many others and myself became conscious of the irony included in the term freedom. This is due to the fact that unfortunately in America, even freedom has limitations.
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American Values Rationale

The literary elements I included and made to be a certain way were regional dialect, word choice, the 1st person point of view, irony, and some symbolism. The first thing that is probably noticed in the short story is that the character Darrell, and sometimes Andre, speak with slang. Also, Darrell’s English for the most part is poor. The reasoning behind this is pretty obvious within the first few paragraphs. It was not only to reveal the general location of the story, but also to show that people’s stereotypes about blacks and whites education wise isn’t always correct. I felt I should include this simply to add more to racism than just in the judicial system. Also, going along the lines of regional dialect, I also included a lot of word choice in my story. Adding to regional dialect, I chose to use a lot of stereotypical ghetto slang the really set the scene. For instance, instead of saying “home”, I had my main character refer to his house as his “crib”, and there are other examples of this in the story. At the same time, I also made it so my main character had a larger vocabulary and a seemingly better education than what was expected of him as an African American student in a poor city. For instance, instead of using the word “fair”, I had him use the word “sagacious”, which is a pretty unique word considering his circumstances as far as stereotypes go. For the regional dialect and word choice, I wanted to make it so the reader could be either surprised or barely affected by the character’s choice of words. Also, when the protagonist explains how he is actually very intelligent, I was hoping that this would be a shock for the reader. Another literary element I intentionally made a certain way was the story being told from the 1st person point of view. I made this so that we as readers can see the perspective of people who are vulnerable in society, like minorities such as blacks. As far as the story goes, it also was interesting to see the world through witnesses’ eyes rather than the eyes of the press, which is how most people interpreted this case. My ultimate goal was to get people to understand the immorality of the situation through the witnesses’ perspective and how they are pretty defenseless. There was also a lot of irony in my story. More than once in the story, the protagonist will interrupt his own thoughts to talk about something that bothers him and it usually ends up being ironic. For instance, when he speaks of stereotypes and how most blacks are presumed to have terrible educations and very little knowledge in general. However, he also talks about how he scores higher on standardized tests such as the SAT than a majority of the whites in his school. I think that the irony really adds to this story because one of the main ideas of the story is that racism in justice is often based off of stereotypes. Also, it provides some humor for the reader as well as teaching a mini-lesson, as many short stories do. Finally, I included some symbolism towards the end of the story. Although I made the symbol really obvious, I still included the protagonists’ interpretation of the American flag. He interprets the flag twice in the story, both the same way, but with different viewpoints. In the beginning, he has confidence in the flag that it still represents judicious decisions made in the courts. However towards the end, he realizes that this isn’t true. This symbolism almost teaches the audience the moral of the story without necessarily saying it directly.