Blog Posts by Zachary Roth

Rev. Al Sharpton speaks at a rally for Trayvon Martin (Julie Fletcher/AP)Florida's governor announced the appointment of a special prosecutor in the Trayvon Martin case Thursday, a response to growing public pressure for a more robust response from authorities. Separately, the Rev. Al Sharpton and other speakers at a boisterous rally demanded that the teen's killer, George Zimmerman, be charged.

Gov. Rick Scott appointed the state attorney for the Jacksonville area, Angela Corey, as a special prosecutor running the state's investigation of the February 26 shooting, which has caused widespread national outrage. Concerns had been raised that the office of Brevard-Seminole State Attorney Norm Wolfinger, who had been heading the probe, might have had trouble conducting a full and fair investigation, given ties to local law enforcement.

Scott, a Republican, also announced that a special task force headed by Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll would study Florida's "stand your ground'' law, which allows armed individuals to use deadly force if they're attacked, and which some argue could complicate efforts to prosecute Zimmerman.

Sanford police chief Bill Lee announced Thursday afternoon that he would temporarily step aside, amid public criticism of his department's handling of the case.

The U.S. Justice Department has announced that it's conducting its own investigation into whether Zimmerman, whose father is white and whose mother is from Peru, is guilty of a hate crime by targeting Martin, an African-American, on the basis of his race.

Sanford, Fla., Police Chief Bill Lee is "temporarily" resigning amid widespread criticism of his department's handling of the Trayvon Martin case, he announced moments ago.

"My role as the leader of this agency has become a distraction for this organization," Lee said at a press conference Thursday afternoon. "It is apparent that my involvement in this matter is overshadowing the process. I have come to the decision that I must temporarily remove myself from the position of police chief of the city of Sanford."

Sanford City Manager Norton Bonaparte Jr. said in a letter released Wednesday evening that police were "prohibited" from arresting George Zimmerman, who had confessed to shooting Martin, "based on the facts and circumstances they had at the time." Zimmerman told local police he acted in self-defense.

Sanford police have been criticized for not conducting an alcohol or drug test on Zimmerman, as is standard practice in a homicide probe, among other alleged missteps. And a witness has said that a law enforcement officer "corrected" her when she said she heard Martin screaming for help. Lee had emerged as a focal point of the criticism.

George Zimmerman (AP/Orange County Jail via Miami Herald)

A woman accused the man who fatally shot Trayvon Martin of domestic violence, it emerged Wednesday, as a fuller picture of George Zimmerman began to take shape.

In 2005, a woman filed a petition for an injunction against Zimmerman, claiming that he came to her house and became violent when she told him to leave, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Zimmerman, 21 at the time, filed a petition of his own in response.

Just a month before that, the paper reports, Zimmerman was at a bar near the University of Central Florida when a friend was arrested on suspicion of serving minors. Zimmerman became profane and pushed a law enforcement agent who tried to escort him away. He was arrested after a short struggle. That arrest had been reported previously.

In both cases, injunctions have kept the cases' outcomes sealed.

Zimmerman, 28, was born in Virginia, aspired to be a law enforcement officer, and moved with his family to Florida about a decade ago. Though he appears not to have been an official member of the national Neighborhood Watch program, he was zealous -- perhaps over-zealous -- about patrolling his Sanford community, neighbors say.

Trayvon Martin (AP/Martin Family Photos)

The city manager of Sanford, Fla., says George Zimmerman wasn't arrested despite his confession that he fatally shot Trayvon Martin because police were legally barred from doing so.

"Zimmerman provided a statement claiming he acted in self defense, which at the time was supported by physical evidence and testimony," Sanford City Manager Norton Bonaparte Jr. wrote in a letter released publicly Wednesday evening. "By Florida Statute, law enforcement was PROHIBITED from making an arrest based on the facts and circumstances they had at the time."

The Sanford Police Department has received widespread criticism for its handling of the investigation. Among other issues, it didn't conduct a drug or alcohol test on Zimmerman, although that's standard practice in homicide probes, and a witness has said a police officer "corrected" her claim that she heard Martin yelling for help.

The letter goes on to address several other issues related to the case. Bonaparte writes that Zimmerman's failure to obey a 911 dispatcher's request that he not follow Martin can be taken into account in the ongoing investigation, but adds that the request "is not a lawful order that Mr. Zimmerman would be required to follow."

Bonaparte appears to be saying that disobeying the order wasn't in itself a violation of law.

A rally for Trayvon Martin (AP/Reinhold Matay)

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the fatal shooting last month of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Florida teen. But despite widespread public outrage over the incident, there's reason to think the feds could have a hard time bringing civil rights charges. A separate state homicide probe, though, might be more likely to bear fruit.

Bringing federal civil rights charges "is not an easy case," Stephen Saltzburg, a professor at George Washington University Law School, told Yahoo News.

George Zimmerman was patrolling the streets of a gated community in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26 when he spotted Martin, 17, and told a police dispatcher that a "black male" was acting "suspicious." Zimmerman, 28, ignored a warning from the dispatcher not to pursue Martin, and a violent confrontation ensued, leaving Martin dead. Zimmerman, a white Hispanic, told local police he acted in self-defense, and he has not been detained or charged, though questions have been raised about the thoroughness of the police investigation.

In its statement announcing the probe, the Justice Department appeared eager to lower expectations, noting that prosecutors "must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person acted intentionally and with the specific intent to do something which law forbids—the highest level of intent in criminal law." And just hours earlier, the White House had called the case "a local law enforcement matter."

It's easy to see why the feds might be wary. To successfully bring civil rights charges against Zimmerman, prosecutors would need to establish beyond reasonable doubt that he targeted Martin because of his race; that in walking on the streets, Martin was using a public space and therefore was engaged in a federally protected activity; and—crucially—that Zimmerman's goal was to prevent Martin from using those streets.

The racial angle would likely be easiest to prove, Saltzburg said. Zimmerman told the dispatcher that Martin was black, and later in the call appears to have used a racial slur. Zimmerman's father has said he's not a racist.

[Related: Anatomy of a media bias: Trayvon Martin, Mike Daisey, and Us]

As Yahoo News reported Tuesday, under "streets theory," some courts have held that walking down the street is a federally protected activity, akin to voting or riding on public transport. But Saltzburg said that's far from a slam dunk. "In a gated community, that's a little bit of a stretch," Saltzburg said. "I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's difficult."

A rally for Trayvon Martin, in Titusville, Fla. (AP Photo/Florida Today, Craig Rubadoux)

After a nationwide outcry, the U.S. Justice Department said late Monday it would investigate the fatal shooting last month of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American teenager, in Florida.

"The department will conduct a thorough and independent review of all of the evidence and take appropriate action at the conclusion of the investigation," it said in a statement. "The department also is providing assistance to and cooperating with the state officials in their investigation into the incident."

On Tuesday afternoon, the state attorney for Brevard and Seminole counties, Norman Wolfinger, said his office would conduct its own investigation, beginning April 1o.

The federal probe, to be conducted by the FBI and the Justice Department's civil rights division, looks set to focus on whether the shooter, George Zimmerman, violated 17-year-old Martin's civil rights by targeting him because of his race.

Zimmerman, a white Hispanic, was patrolling the streets of a gated community in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26 when he spotted Martin and told a police dispatcher that a "black male" was acting "suspicious." Zimmerman, 28, ignored a warning from the dispatcher not to pursue Martin, and a violent confrontation ensued, leaving Martin dead. Zimmerman told local police he acted in self-defense, and he has not been detained or charged, though questions have been raised about the thoroughness of the police investigation.

A classic civil-rights violation occurs when a person is targeted because of his or her race while trying to engage in a federally protected activity, such as voting or riding on public transportation. Martin was merely walking back to the house where he was staying after buying Skittles and iced tea at a nearby store.

But Bradley Schlozman, a former acting head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, told Yahoo News that in the past, courts have found that using a public sidewalk can qualify as a protected activity.

"Under 'streets theory,' individuals have been prosecuted for targeting a minority on the basis of his or her race because they didn't appreciate that they were being on the streets," Schlozman said. "One of the recognized civil rights is being able to walk the streets."

But an FBI policy guide examined by Yahoo News points to a potential hurdle to using streets theory: "Difficulties arise from the necessary step of proving the subject's actions were ... motivated by the subject's intent to prevent the victim  from using the streets." In other words, prosecutors would need to show that Zimmerman targeted Martin because of his race, and that his goal was to stop him from walking down the street.

Click photo to view more images. (AP Photo/HO, Martin Family Photos)The tragic story of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed Florida teen who was fatally shot last month by a neighborhood watch volunteer, is now garnering national media attention. And the release last week of calls to police during the incident are bolstering demands for the shooter, George Zimmerman—who has yet to be detained by authorities—to be charged in Martin's death. Meanwhile, some are arguing that a permissive Florida gun law played a role in the tragedy. And Monday night came word that the U.S. Justice Department is probing the matter.

Here's what you need to know about where things stand:

What happened?
On Feb. 26, Martin, a 17-year-old African-American and Miami native, was visiting his father in Sanford, near Orlando. Martin was watching the NBA All-Star Game at a house in a gated Sanford community, and at halftime he stepped out to buy some Skittles and an iced tea at a local 7-Eleven.

Zimmerman, an armed neighborhood watch volunteer who was patrolling the area in an SUV, saw Martin returning to the house and became suspicious. A violent confrontation ensued, which ended with Martin being shot to death. Zimmerman was found bleeding from the nose and the back of the head, standing over Martin.

(J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

In 2009, an unusual meeting took place at a federal government agency in Baltimore. For around 90 minutes, a group of financial industry professionals grilled staffers at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, seeking information about an obscure policy question: whether CMS, which oversees the two massive federal health programs, planned to change the reimbursement policies under Medicare for a class of  medical devices. The decision stood to affect the bottom line of several companies that produce versions of the device, and the bankers wanted to use what they learned to make investment decisions.

"They hammered us for an hour and a half to try to figure out where we were headed, what our process was, how we'd done things like this in the past," one CMS staffer at the meeting told Yahoo News. "It was theater of the obscene."

The Wall Street crowd didn't learn whether the reimbursement policies would change, but they still got something out of the meeting. "They learned a great deal about the process," said the source. "So they had an enormous competitive advantage over others in the marketplace."

After the meeting was first reported by the Project on Government Oversight, a good-government group, Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, sent a stern letter to CMS questioning whether the confab had served taxpayers' interests. The agency told POGO the meeting was "consistent with agency rules on contacts between CMS staff and members of the public."

Still, this wasn't the kind of meeting that any concerned citizen could have set up. It was arranged by the Marwood Group, a "strategic advisory and financial services firm" focused on health care policy and founded in 2000 by Edward Kennedy Jr., son of the late Massachusetts senator. Marwood is one of an increasing number of players in the fast-growing "political intelligence" industry, which provides information or analysis about legislative developments or policy decisions to clients—usually Wall Street hedge funds or other financial institutions—whose business decisions are affected by what happens in Washington. And lately, it's attracted the attention of some federal lawmakers, who fear that it gives insiders an unfair leg up.