Hot on the heels of a statement from Barack Obama, the Department of Justice has released its own statement on the George Zimmerman trial.
As you can see, it quite clearly leaves the door open for a civil right case against Zimmerman, who was last night found not guilty of murdering 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
A growing movement is asking that the DoJ file a civil case against Zimmerman, with a number of petitions addressed to United States Attorney General Eric Holder circulating.
The full statement is below:
As the Department first acknowledged last year, we have an open investigation into the death of Trayvon Martin. The Department of Justice’s Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation continue to evaluate the evidence generated during the federal investigation, as well as the evidence and testimony from the state trial. Experienced federal prosecutors will determine whether the evidence reveals a prosecutable violation of any of the limited federal criminal civil rights statutes within our jurisdiction, and whether federal prosecution is appropriate in accordance with the Department’s policy governing successive federal prosecution following a state trial.
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