The Daily Show's John Oliver was back from vacation and opened this Monday's show by first going through a few highlights they missed while they were gone for the last two weeks, and then proceeded to lay into Florida after the "truly depressing" not guilty verdict of George Zimmerman.
As Oliver reminded the audience, what makes this case so horrid is not that the system broke down, but that it worked exactly the way it was meant to given Florida's laws that seem "cut and pasted from 1881 Tombstone.”
OLIVER: Because, let's be clear here. According to current Florida law, you can get a gun, follow an unarmed minor, call the police, have them explicitly tell you to stop following them, then choose to ignore that, keep following the minor, get into a confrontation with them. and if at any point during that process, you get scared, you can shoot the minor to death, and the state of Florida will say, "Well, look, you did what you could."
You know what? I think it might honestly be time for the Sunshine state to officially change its motto.
Oliver went after Zimmerman's attorney Mark O'Mara for the ridiculous and callous remark that if George Zimmerman were black, "he never would've been charged with a crime."
OLIVER: Yes, I suppose the one thing that our justice system is notorious for is how lenient it is on black people.
After slamming Zimmerman's brother for the cognitive dissonance it must have taken to be able to appear on television and complain about his brother having to worry about armed vigilantes, Oliver wrapped things up pointing out that Florida's self defense laws aren't exactly applied equally if you're unfortunate enough to be black.
