Megyn Kelly held a discussion on America Live today about race and jury selection in the George Zimmerman trial over the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Instead of hosting an attorney, the guest was Mark Fuhrman – a slap in the face of African Americans if ever there was one. Even worse, as Kelly revealed her concern that the jury might be disproportionately black, Fuhrman repeatedly suggested that Zimmerman is the victim of a racial witch hunt and described Martin as “a dead victim or dead suspect” depending on “which side you’re on.” In fact, Martin is the dead victim, period. At worst, he’s a possible aggressor. But suspect? Only in Fox News’ white dreams.

Kelly, who is supposed to be part of Fox’s “objective”  news lineup, merely introduced Furhman as a “former LAPD police detective.” She failed to mention to the “we report, you decide” network’s viewers that Fuhrman left the LAPD under a racial cloud that arose during his testimony in the O.J. Simpson case.

Fuhrman agreed with Kelly that jury selection IS the case in the Zimmerman trial. Then, leaving no doubt what he thinks of it, he added, “It’s not a direct evidence case, it’s kind of a super-circumstantial case. There’s really no eyewitnesses, there’s no forensic evidence, there’s the statements of George Zimmerman and a dead victim or dead suspect, however or which side you’re on, you’re going to describe Trayvon Martin. But that’s the circumstance.”

The New York Times agrees that it’s a tough case to prosecute but they managed to do so without the inflammatory suggestions and via real legal experts.

“What happened?” asked Michael R. Band, a Miami defense lawyer and a former chief assistant state attorney in Miami-Dade County who has prosecuted high-profile criminal cases. “Who knows? The evidence is reasonably clear that we really don’t know.”

This could pose a problem for the prosecutors from the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Florida who are trying the case, legal experts said. If jurors do not ultimately know what happened, they tend to acquit, they added.

For several reasons, the prosecution in State v. Zimmerman faces the tougher challenge in proving second-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt, lawyers said.

None of Fuhrman’s rhetoric seemed to bot her Kelly. She moved on to discuss the racial makeup of the jury. “It would be foolish to pretend that the racial makeup of the jury is irrelevant,” she opined before noting that in the trial’s jurisdiction, juries are usually 90% white. She continued, “It looks like there will not be a huge racial imbalance in favor of an African American jury here.” She had no such concern about what would seem a likely imbalance favoring Zimmerman.

Fuhrman against cast doubt on the prosecution, this time hinting that the charges were trumped up on racial grounds. He called it “kind of a pathetic state of affairs when we put the race composition of the before the evidence in a case. …This is a very hard case to prosecute …and certainly George Zimmerman’s not without fault but certainly  -  can you prosecute this case or are you just creating something to disappoint the really uninformed audience – doesn’t matter what race they are – the uninformed audience that doesn’t understand the law enforcement, investigatory or judicial system insomuch as what you can and can’t do.”

That would have been a good time for Kelly, who understands the system at least as much as Fuhrman and has more expertise in the law, to jump in and point out some of the reasons why Zimmerman may be legitimately convicted. Instead, she gave further cred to Fuhrman by saying, “You have not been easy on George Zimmerman but you also have serious doubts about whether he is going to be convicted.”

And then, in shades of a previous America Live segment in which Kelly cleverly worked in defense material under cover of news - before a later segment in which she acknowledged the defense  was “trying the victim” – she played a defense videotape “that they’re going to try to backdoor into evidence.” She played some video that Martin had taken of a fist fight (that had already been excluded from evidence but might be allowed in later) and, “just asked” Fuhrman, “I ask you, Mark Fuhrman, whether this is actually relevant or whether this is the defense attorney’s attempt to backdoor into evidence a tape that the judge has already said she doesn’t want.” Kelly was being too cute by half here. She’s the attorney, not Fuhrman. She had already acknowledged that the video was being “backdoored” – and she helped it through that backdoor by playing it in its entirety.

This is not the first time that Fox has used Fuhrman to deliberately play the race card. Nor was it the only time today that Fox suggested Trayvon Martin was the true criminal. Sadly, there’s every reason to think there will be many more such episodes on “fair and balanced” Fox as the trial continues.