Zimmerman lawyer: Race is not the 'elephant in the room' in Trayvon Martin case

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O’Mara himself furthered this perception when during Zimmerman’s second bond hearing in June, the attorney introduced grainy images from the surveillance camera inside the convenience store where Martin purchased Skittles candy and a can of Arizona Iced Tea just before his fatal confrontation with O’Mara’s client inside a gated community in Sanford, Florida. Assistant Sate Attorney Bernie De La Rionda erupted after O’Mara’s presentation that the images were meant to make Martin look like a criminal.

“Is it that because he was wearing a hoodie, this victim can be seen as a criminal,” De La Rionda asked? “That clerk treated him as a customer.”

Further, it is the O’Mara team that has sought to procure Martin’s school records (he was in Sanford because he had been suspended from his high school in Miami) and even his social media accounts, both of which have been leaked to the media, in some cases combined with fake photos purported to be Martin (which, by the way, were circulated by the neo-Nazi website Stormfront, and were later picked up by right wing websites like Breitbart.com and MichelleMalkin.com, among others), and unsubstantiated claims in right wing media and blogs that Martin was high on marijuana on the night of the killing, in a clear attempt to portray the teen as a thug. In fact, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera said Martin was killed because he was wearing a hoodie.

That, O’Mara wants the public to believe, has nothing to do with Martin’s race, but perceptions of a young black man, quoting violent hip-hop lyrics and rocking gold grilles (which Martin didn’t even have, but the young man in the fake Trayvon Martin pics circulated by Zimmerman supporters did), are well known in contemporary America. And O’Mara himself hasn’t shied away from portraying Martin as a dangerous thug — with all that implies when you’re talking about a black teenage boy — in the defense of his client.

After O’Mara’s motion to obtain the school records and social media counts was released, Crump issued the following statement:

“Trayvon’s parents maintain that his school records and Facebook page are completely irrelevant to George Zimmerman’s decision to get out of his car to profile, pursue, and shoot their son in the heart on February 26, 2012. How does George Zimmerman’s review of Trayvon Martin’s high school and middle school records and Facebook page bear any relevance to Zimmerman’s decision to pull the trigger and kill a seventeen year old child? Is this going to be a new legal standard we are setting- for a murderer to review the school records and Facebook page of his teenage victim to determine whether or not he should have killed him?”

Meanwhile, there is testimony in the case, from a cousin of George Zimmerman’s, that he and his family harbored negative views of black people. Whether or not those allegations prove relevant to the case, prosecutors have included that testimony in their basket of evidence.

Lastly, the Martin shooting and subsequent investigation took place in the context of an embittered racial climate in Sanford, where distrust of the police by African-Americans has run high for generations, and where the perception gap between white and black residents on the subject of race was and likely remains wide.

Race clearly intersects with the Trayvon Martin case, both with respect to the killing itself, and the investigation into it. O’Mara seems to blame Martin’s family and their supporters for injecting it, but any objective observer can see that it was there all along.

Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @thereidreport