Natalie Jackson, Trayvon Martin Family Lawyer, Says ‘Biggest Mistake Was To Ignore Race’

Posted: 07/18/2013 10:13 am EDT  |  Updated: 07/18/2013 10:59 am EDT

 

Natalie Jackson

One of the lawyers for Trayvon Martin’s family said that the prosecution should have focused more on race.

The “biggest mistake was to ignore race,” Natalie Jackson told ThinkProgress.

She argued that the defense used certain racial biases to their advantage, attempting to paint a picture of Trayvon Martin as a thug who used drugs and got in trouble at school.

Martin’s parents defended their son on Thursday in their first TV appearances since George Zimmerman was acquitted on Saturday.

“Trayvon was not a burglar, he was not doing anything wrong,” Sabrina Fulton told “CBS This Morning.” “He simply went to the store and was headed back home. And for somebody to look at him and perceive that he was a burglar, that was the problem that initiated everything.”

Tracy Martin echoed Jackson’s comments that race played a bigger role in the case than the prosecution acknowledged.

“Obviously anytime you have a person that makes an assumption that a person is up to no good, there’s some type of profiling there,” he told the “Today” show. “Was he racially profiled? I think that if Trayvon had been white, this wouldn’t have never happened. Obviously race is playing some type of role.”