The prosecutor investigating the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., has not yet decided if she will bring charges against the shooter, George Zimmerman.
It took several weeks for the Feb. 26 shooting to draw the nation's attention — after Benjamin Crump, the attorney for Trayvon Martin's family, launched a campaign to get the case before media and civil rights activists nationwide.
Two days after the shooting, the high-profile civil rights attorney started getting calls about the case. "My phone was buzzing," Crump says.
But Crump, whose firm's motto is "We Help David Fight Goliath," initially didn't think there would be any reason to take the case. When he heard Trayvon Martin was unarmed, he assumed the Sanford Police Department would make an arrest.
If they're trying to sweep it under the rug ... don't let 'em.
"A neighborhood watch volunteer with a 9 mm gun? And he kills your son, who's an unarmed teenager? They're going to arrest him," he recalls telling those who approached him about the case.
But there was no arrest. So Crump and Trayvon's parents began holding news conferences to tell their side of the story.
After the release of 911 recordings of the incident in March, Crump enlisted prominent civil rights activists, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, to the cause. The group organized rallies in Sanford and across the country.
"When attorney Crump called me I told him, 'I don't believe in drive-by activism,'" Sharpton told the crowd at a March rally in Sanford. "If [we're] in it, [we're] gonna be in it till we in and win."
A Tried-And-True Strategy
Crump's strategy for getting Trayvon Martin's case into the public eye is similar to his approach to his first high-profile legal battle.
In 2006, he represented the family of Martin Lee Anderson, a 14-year-old boy who was beaten by prison guards and died in a Florida juvenile detention boot camp. Seven guards and a nurse were charged with murder, but found not guilty.
"You kill a dog, you go to jail. You kill a little black boy — nothing happens," Crump said at the time.
Crump won a multimillion-dollar settlement for the teen's family, and the case prompted such outrage that Florida ultimately closed all of its juvenile boot camps.
Crump was born in Lumberton, N.C., where his mother worked in a shoe factory and as a hotel maid. He says his grandmother helped to raise and teach him, subscribing to a newspaper so they could read it together.
Crump graduated from Florida State University law school and opened a firm in 1996 with his partner, Daryl Parks, in Tallahassee, Fla. The two started taking — and winning — personal injury cases.
Identifying With The Public
The two's success is due in part to their strategy of enlisting public support.
LeRoy Pernell, dean of the Florida A&M University law school, says the Trayvon Martin case is about dispelling racial stereotypes — and pressuring state and federal authorities to act when the local police would not.
"A good attorney who wants to seek justice for their client needs to make the public understand that these are people just like them," Pernell says. "[To] make the public identify with their client. And that's what I think you see going on here."
Outside the Florida A&M law school, some students say the story may have gone unnoticed if not for the public pressure.
"You want to say that it would have," says student Aleisha Hodo. "But in all honesty, I don't know that it would have gotten that far if it had not been advertised nationwide. ... It's a sad story that it may not have been publicized how it should have been."
Crump continues to work with high-profile activists and has kept the Martin case in the news for weeks.
"If they're trying to sweep it under the rug," Crump says, "don't let 'em."
Crump says he wants to assure fairness in the criminal justice system. In this case, he says fairness means arresting and charging George Zimmerman — and letting both sides of the story come out in court.
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