The jury weighing criminal charges against George Zimmerman has spoken, but the case may not be over — and that jury might not be the only jury. Trayvon Martin’s family is considering filing a wrongful-death civil suit against Zimmerman, which could produce a very different result. But it could also backfire. Hollywood is not the only industry that believes in sequels. When criminal trials end — whether with a conviction or an acquittal — the victims are still free to sue for money damages. Most famously, after O.J. Simpson beat the murder charges against him, the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman sued him and won $33.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. (Whether the families were able to collect that money is a different story.) (MORE: Viewpoint: Was Zimmerman Telling the Truth?) A lawyer for Martin’s family put a civil lawsuit squarely on the table in a postverdict appearance on ABC’s This Week. “They are certainly going to look at that as an option,” Benjamin Crump said. “They deeply want a sense of justice.” The family has already received a settlement from a wrongful-death claim they made against the homeowners’ association of the subdivision where the shooting occurred, perhaps for more than $1 million. (The Department of Justice is also, separately, considering whether to bring federal hate-crime charges against Zimmerman.) There are some good reasons to believe a civil suit could win, even after prosecutors struck out. Civil trials have a lower standard of proof than criminal trials. Instead of having to establish guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” — a particularly hard threshold to meet in a homicide case with few witnesses and little hard physical evidence — in a civil case, the Martin family would only have to prove it was more likely than not that Zimmerman’s negligence caused Martin’s death. There would also be a new jury — perhaps one chosen in a different jurisdiction. Some trial watchers thought the jury that heard Zimmerman’s case was a good one for the defense — not least because it was nearly all white. The … Continue reading A Civil Suit Could Make Zimmerman Pay — or Could Backfire