In yet another attempt to “be fair” (Fox News style) to George Zimmerman – and demonize Trayvon Martin - Fox News guest Doug Burns raised the suggestion – in all seriousness – that Martin could have used his Skittles and/or iced tea as a lethal weapon that justified Zimmerman fatally shooting him.
Here’s the relevant discussion that aired Monday (6/10/13) on Fox News Live between Burns and host Jamie Colby. According to Raw Story, Burns is a former federal prosecutor.
Burns: There’s certainly a very good argument to be made that the force used was out of proportion to what was going on, and the kid was unarmed. We didn’t even discuss that. Totally different case, let’s say the kid had a gun! Are you kidding me? It’s a whole different case?
Colby: Which he didn’t know. All that Trayvon, we learned later, was armed with was a bag of Skittles and an iced tea.
Burns: I know everybody keeps sarcastically saying about the Skittles. You could probably kill somebody with Skittles.
Colby: It’s not sarcastic, though; to me, it’s very compelling. Skittles? Only a kid who hadn’t had dental work could eat Skittles. I’m not being - but, to me as a juror… that’s -
Burns: I know, but they go around with that rhetoric, that he had iced tea and a Skittles. It really doesn’t matter- The point is that he didn’t really have a weapon.
Colby: But he didn’t take that iced tea and bang Zimmerman over the head with the bottle.
Burns: The thing is, yeah, I mean, you’re spinning a lot of hypotheticals, and you could break a bottle of iced tea, right, with the jagged edge, and you could kill somebody with it.
Colby: Use it as a weapon.
Video below via Think Progress.