FIRST-PERSON: Trayvon Martin & our justice system

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, criticizes “a handful of activists” and a “complicit” national media for “a rush to judgment,” ready to convict George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin before the facts have been adjudicated in a court of law. “The premise that each of us is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of our peers is the greatest guarantee of our individual liberty,” Land writes. “That principle protects all Americans, regardless of ethnicity, from government abuse of power.”