No one in our household, nor at Russell and Fiona Bennett’s place up the way, heard the sirens Saturday night.

    It was a little after 10 p.m. when, according to a police report, a drunken driver flipped his BMW convertible, injuring himself and two passengers. We did not know about it until much later, when my sister sent us an e-mail saying she had heard of it on Facebook.

    In the morning, I went to look at the scene. Police investigators had indicated with orange spray paint the tire marks from Richard D. Forman’s BMW as it veered right toward a slight incline on the grassy shoulder, then skidded left across Cranberry Hole Road and into the trees.

    Four days later, the mess remains — a downed trunk, a toppled sign. The orange marks are also still visible where the police made them. And each time I drive past I get a little more upset.

    For me at least, incidents like these have more of a lingering effect the closer they are to home. Thursday’s crash on County Road 39 in Southampton in which a woman was killed when she apparently turned into the path of a Hampton Ambassador bus was tragic, yet farther away both in actual distance and emotional impact. A drunken driver sweeping across my own road, the route I travel a couple of times a day, often with my children in my truck, feels different.

    Cranberry Hole Road is one of those back routes that just invites drivers to speed. Long ago, my wife and I agreed not to let the kids ride bikes on the road near our house, except perhaps in the deep off-season and even then with adult supervision. There are now just too many cars going too fast to make us feel secure. Add to that drunks racing home from Lord knows where, and we are left with a sense of foreboding every time we pull out of the driveway.

    Mr. Forman, who refused a breath-alcohol test, will be relieved of his driver’s license for six months, perhaps more. What such punishment does not do is make our road any safer. There will always be someone else willing to take a chance, putting my family’s life — and their own — in danger.

   As any habitual reader of this column already knows, my neighborhood — or, anyway, the property surrounding my house — was, last fall and winter, home to a resident family of deer. Five would appear at once, and two were fawns. For the most part, they ambled, rather than ran, across the lawn or down the lane; they seem to enjoy visits to the adjacent East Hampton Library grounds, too. I never could figure out where they bedded down. But while other members of our household railed against them, I took a benevolent, maternal attitude. If any of the grandchildren were around, I would join them in rushing excitedly to a door or window to see what the deer were getting up to next.

    I am hardly a vegetarian. I’ve eaten, cooked, and enjoyed venison over the years. I remember that I once even thought it might be a good idea for deer to be raised on Gardiner’s Island for the market. And I am not opposed to hunting, especially if the quarry ends up on the table. But I have come to think of my house deer almost as pets. It follows, therefore, that even if it might be somewhat out of line with my stated beliefs about wild-animal life and death, I don’t quite like the thrust of the long-term management plan that East Hampton Town has just adopted, which advocates killing to control overpopulation.

    The 17-page document (not including maps) was devised by a group of experts and various government officials. The plan augments but does not revise the recommendation that a town committee made more than two years ago, to the effect that hunting should be expanded. It describes other methods that might be used to control deer, but only after the population is brought down to a more manageable level. And, as might be expected, it leaves every action in the hands of existing or future members of the town board.

    For its part, The Star editorialized on the plan a few weeks ago, decrying how long it is taking for anything at all to get done about a situation that is not just a nuisance but, in fact, deadly dangerous to drivers, deleterious to the health of humans and house pets, and, in winter, quite desperate for the hungry deer.

    Back in my yard, once spring arrived, the deer disappeared. I dutifully sprayed the plants around the patio with Tony Minardi’s “Deer Away” and made sure the potted hibiscus was close enough to the house to keep an eye on. Friends suggested my house deer had found other browsing grounds after being frightened by the noise coming from the construction crew at work on a house just over the fence.

    That theory was borne out by a few rather amusing treatises on deer “deterrents” I found on the Internet: Every imaginable form of obnoxious noise, from strings of metal cans to high-frequency sound devices, was touted. The only complication, according to these Internet experts, is that, as we on the East End know all too well by now, deer are amazingly adaptable; they are wily, and easily learn how to survive in changing human environments.

    Their adaptability undoubtedly explains why I have come home on several recent occasions to find a deer lounging on my front lawn and, well, grinning at me. That deer are almost impossible to permanently shoo away has been further proved, unfortunately, by the return, too, of at least one brightly marked doe, perhaps one of the fawns now a teenager, and the inevitable devouring of some house plants that had been doing nicely under the lilacs, where I put them for the summer. 

    The East Hampton Town deer-management plan uses some phraseology that, in my view, creeps close to doublespeak: Expanded opportunities for hunting can “effectively and compassionately” deal with the problem until deer are “ecologically and culturally sustainable,” it says. And it dismisses immunocontraception, which may in fact  actually be an ecological and compassionate method. Apparently, according to the document, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation does not believe in it.

    Immunocontraception, which involves shooting darts rather than bullets to vaccinate deer so they are no longer fertile, has so far not been proven successful, but the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y, has asked the D.E.C. to approve its use in a program devised by the Tufts University Center for Animals and Public Policy. If, as seems likely, it is going to take years for the East Hampton hunting plan to bring our local deer population under control, it makes sense to me that immunocontraception should be given a try in the meanwhile. What do you think?

   Last month a friend gave me, unsolicited, a copy of a book called “Wheat Belly.” What was she trying to tell me?

    It hadn’t escaped me that, having reached a certain age, my middle had begun to expand. I eat very healthfully, and exercise regularly, but still the old spare tire clung to me like an embedded tick.

    Five years ago, when I was 20 pounds lighter, clothes hung on me like on a mannequin, draping just so. With my postmenopausal figure resembling more the Michelin Man than its former hourglass, I still haven’t figured out how to dress. Yes, I’ve discovered Spanx and tops that blouse over the extra padding. And, yes, I’m relieved that mommy jeans are coming back so I don’t have to worry about a dreaded muffin top. But I want my former lighter-on-my-feet self back.

    So when my friend handed me the “Wheat Belly” book, I welcomed a new plan. It seemed easy: Don’t eat wheat. Just remove one thing from my diet? I could do that. As long as I could imbibe spirits, which was forbidden on a diet I had been considering.  

     The gist of the book is that today’s wheat is not our grandmother’s. According to the author, William Davis, M.D., Europeans started eating wheat cultivated from a wild grass called einkorn around 3300 B.C. Einkorn was a simple food, containing only 14 chromosomes in its genetic code. Around that time, it was hybridized with goatgrass and the resulting emmer wheat contained 28 chromosomes. (“Plants such as wheat have the ability to retain the sum of the genes of their forebears.”)

    Emmer sustained several civilizations until biblical times when it naturally merged with another grass and became Triticum aestivum, a 48-chromosome wheat. The more genetically complex, the more pliable its flour became, it allowed for less dense bread. And so this last wheat stayed with us until the middle of the last century.    

    Today’s wheat (even whole wheat), Dr. Davis writes, is so toxic you’re better off eating sugar. It has been hybridized and genetically modified to produce higher yields. It also is easier to thresh and produces lighter flours.

    Wheat no longer shimmers in amber waves‚ it is now predominantly “dwarf wheat” — any taller than a foot, its super grains would cause the plant to collapse. By 1980, thousands of new strains of wheat had been developed, producing dramatic genetic changes and untold numbers of chromosomes. Yet “no animal or human safety testing was conducted on the new genetic strains‚” according to the book.

    Today we are a society addicted to wheat, which, among other things, has opiate-like effects on the brain, making it difficult to go cold turkey. Thus, eating wheat makes you high. And not eating it, when you’re in the cycle, makes you low. It’s also a potent appetite stimulant — a bagel begets a pizza begets pasta — and mood agitator. There’s a lot of science in the book, but suffice it to say that the wheat-caused “cycle of insulin-driven satiety and hunger” is responsible for growth of fat specifically in the visceral organs,” as well as its “familiar surface manifestation.” In other words, the wheat belly.

    Fortunately, I didn’t eat much wheat to begin with. But it is astonishing how, as soon as there is a rule telling you not to do something, you suddenly want to do it. Why did I find myself at Maison-Kayser bakery on Third Avenue eyeing the financiers or going into Crumbs to ogle the cupcakes decorated like fine jew­els? Or, why was I drawn inside Mary’s Marvelous to inhale the scent of fresh-baked goodies? After all, “Nothing says lovin’ like something from the oven.”

    In my first wheat-free week I got through a visit to Southampton almost unscathed, despite my intense yearning to score a bag of the salty-sweet-crunchy nuggets of my youth, Crutchley’s doughnut holes, which Kathleen King has reintroduced at Tate’s Bake Shop. I was able to pass, but only because the friend I had joined for dinner had a plate of fried calamari. Yes, they were battered, most likely in wheat, but I made a decision there and then: If a plate of irresistible morsels is sitting in front of you, and the wheat quotient is minimal, I won’t torture myself. Seems like a good rule. And it took my mind off Crutchley’s.

    This is how things went for a while — cravings that I was mostly able to ignore.  At home I could control what I ingested. With the gluten-free fad in full swing, it is easy to find satisfying wheat replacements. I’d been eating brown rice pasta for a while anyway. Delicious. Trust me, and readily available, you can also buy quinoa pasta, also delicious and wonderfully textured. And the Sag Harbor shop Provisions carries several tasty breads made of rice or millet flour, which are light and tasty. 

    Out in public, wheat seems to crop up everywhere from wraps to pasta, and especially on hors d’oeuvres trays as an inexpensive vehicle for getting the main event into your mouth. So I had to eat more consciously. Hard cheese at events works because I can use my fingers rather than crackers. Ditto for soup chasers, which sadly don’t seem to be around as much this summer as last.

    With only one thing to avoid, it’s been pretty easy. I’d say I’m 98-percent wheat free, cheating only at first when someone brought a fabulous banana bread into the office. Now those things fail to tempt me. Much. 

    It’s been five weeks. I lost five pounds within two weeks, but have continued to hover at that same number since.  While I’m sure that avoiding “Frankenwheat” is a good thing, my belly has shrunk only minimally. I’m thinking of renaming it “wine belly.”

    Debra Scott is a writer and member of the production staff at The Star.

   I know it’s after the fact and thus irrelevant to the recent acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, an African-American teen whom Mr. Zimmerman, an armed neighborhood watch volunteer, had pursued while the youth was returning to the condo his father’s fiancée rented in a gated Florida community, but one wonders why on earth a neighborhood watch volunteer was carrying a gun in the first place.

    Thinking on that reminded me that armed “auxiliaries” were once proposed here.

    The date of our first story on the subject appeared in the Sept. 22, 1977, issue, and was written by Val Schaffner.

    Val was told that the Village Police Department (whose chief at the time had made the proposal) would “have to be very careful about recruiting.” The up to 15 armed volunteers, he was told, would help the 16-man force with crowd control at football games, parades, and at the L.V.I.S. Fair, and could come in handy as well should there be looting after a hurricane. And they, of course, would also aid the force in serving as its “eyes and ears.”

    The next chief, Glen Stonemetz, thought better of arming the volunteers, though a letter writer warned at the time that if they weren’t, this place could well become “Home, Sweet Home for felons and lawbreakers.”

    That letter was written in response to a column Arthur Roth had written, and I too received some volleys over the bow after adding my voice to the disarming side, one of which said, “Jack Graves’s ‘Point of View’ wherein he objects to the arming of auxiliaries, terming it ‘vigilantes’ and ‘vigilante antics,’ is a prime example of bias and ignorance. [. . .] On behalf of legitimate firearm owners, let me assure Mr. Graves that even his purple prose will not inspire any of us toward ‘vigilante antics.’ ”

    I’m glad, some 35 years later, that that purple prose hasn’t. And I’m glad that the armed-auxiliary idea was ultimately deep-sixed here. Tragically, it wasn’t in Florida.

   We have met the enemy and it is us. That is the conclusion I reached this week as summer 2013 began to reach full fever pitch.

    Here’s my epiphany: Those of us who consider ourselves local like to think it is folks from away who need a little attitude adjustment. Perhaps they do, what with their expressions of entitlement, boorishness, and piled-on demands, but frankly, it is those of us who should know better by dint of living here year round who really have no excuse.

    A couple of incidents in the public sphere in recent days got me thinking. The first came early Sunday on an ocean beach, where I watched large dogs pounce on a woman’s beach towel and personal possessions as she sat at a distance near the water’s edge. She leaped up, and I heard the dog’s owner offer what sounded like a half-hearted apology. A moment later one of the dogs stomped across my surfboard, leaving sand in the wax and a fresh scratch in the fiberglass.

    “What the hell?” I said to the dog owner, “If you can’t control your dogs . . .” He shrugged this off, and gave me a repeated middle finger as he headed away, the dogs ambling ahead. I admit to thinking that he was probably from points west, but, I learned later that, like me, he was a resident, and that his dogs were well known on the beach for being less than obedient.

    It is convenient, if not satisfying, to blame the season’s daily frustrations on out-of-towners, and sometimes they are indeed at fault. I think of a woman both I and East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. saw at midday on Monday apparently urging her leashed lapdog to relieve itself in the middle of a Newtown Lane crosswalk as traffic waited. That she was from a place where such rudeness is acceptable was my too-easy reaction. I pulled out my cellphone and took a photo. The mayor, having seen the whole thing from his car, got me on the phone later to commiserate, later sending me a fax expanding on his frustration.

    The next day I had passing words with a jaywalker, who had been affronted that I had not come to a complete stop to allow him to cross Montauk Highway near Brent’s store in Amagansett. By the cut of his jib, this time I figured he was local, but that did not stop me from rolling down my window and yelling, “What is wrong with you?” I could not hear his response, but it was equally impolite, I could see.

     I also have to report that an East Hampton woman I know caused two nearly identical fender-benders in the village in the last few weeks of the sort I would have thought only non-locals would be involved in.

     Speaking for myself, I could be more magnanimous in dealing with these summer faux pas. But so too could a lot of us, even us locals.

   Perhaps it can be said that I have a handicap where computers are concerned. After all, I started using them in what might, depending on the actuarial tables, be considered the second half of life. No matter. I keep trying to catch up, to learn more and get better at it. But I am not sure I am getting a passing grade.

    Take, for example, the fact that I continue to be bombarded by e-mails offering goods and services I don’t want. Somewhere out there in cyberspace purchases I consider inconceivable are apparently listed as likely by the gurus of the electronic marketing industry. What data is being collected? What did I buy to put me on these lists?

    Macs are supposed to move the e-mails you mark as junk a given number of times directly into the junk bin. I took a look at that folder on my Mac the other morning and found 1,320 entries. But that doesn’t mean I am off the hook. I no longer get sales pitches for drugs from Canada that purport to enhance male prowess, but instead receive come-ons destined for over-the-hill consumers — arthritis cures, stair lifts, walk-in bathtubs, and reverse mortgages among them. Somewhere in cyberspace I have been categorized.

    It is general knowledge that vendors of all kinds have got our number (or think they do). Commercial surveillance is obviously an industry of its own; I bet you can even get a degree in it. But in comparison to the National Security Administration’s massive surveillance of ordinary citizens, you can’t take the gathering of commercial information about what we do electronically too seriously, I suppose.

    Did you know that sales of the George Orwell novel “1984” increased by an astronomical percentage after Edward Snowden passed along information about the N.S.A.’s prying? It also has been reported that Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” Shrugged” had a tremendous circulation boost when the Great Recession fell upon us in 2008.

    That there are real comparisons between the totalitarian state Orwell described and our own is subject to doubt, although the Obama administration’s pursuit of whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and its concurrent attempt to criminalize journalists who have written about leaked information is alarming.

    There is something consoling about the public’s turning to the written word to make sense of what is going on (even if you can read electronically). I just hope “Brave New World” isn’t on its way.

   When workers get off the job, one might think that they would kick back and relax after a hard day’s labor. That they would at least go home, take a shower, and maybe collapse into bed. But on weekend evenings, as soon as work is out at around 5 or 6, Latin American men of various nationalities head to the barren fields and dense woods of the community center at Stephen Hand’s Path in East Hampton.

    There, they park their cars and large pickup trucks along the long parking lot, which stretches the distance of both of the center’s two soccer fields. The fields are empty and utterly deserted for most of the week, but come weekends, they spring to life as 20, 30, or more people come together with one common purpose — to play soccer.

    Players wait around in their cars, either on their phones or taking a quick nap as they await others. Cars will begin to trickle in, and they park in the many empty spaces along the field. As soon as enough vehicles accumulate, some ambitious and venturesome folk will step out of their cars, soccer cleats in hand, and begin to call out to familiar friends and faces. Thus, a whole process of mobilization begins.

    Doors open, shouts are heard, cleats are laced up. A ball is thrown onto the field, and several of the first players step out to follow it. They begin to pass the ball around in a large circle; this is the official sign that a game will be starting shortly.

    Sometimes there are no games. I’ve driven down to the fields several times on a Saturday or Sunday evening only to find one or two lone cars parked in the parking lot, a family having a small cookout, or a few kids running around. But when there are games, the whole area seems to be bustling with life, and even some spectators gather.

    As the ball gets passed around, this is where I come in. All summer, in each game, I’ve consistently been the only non-Latin American in the game, besides my younger brother. Many of the people who play can’t speak English, and if they do they can speak only a few words. My brother and I do our best to understand and communicate. Together, we approach the group and offer up our orange ball to use in the game, indicating that we want in. We’re greeted with welcoming beckons and warm smiles as we join the passing circle, which by this time has grown.

    When the head count surpasses about 15, people begin pairing off with someone of their equal skill level, and one person goes to one side, one goes to the other. Teams have been formed. Someone with the ball will look around, a quick glance to remember who his teammates are, before kicking it off to start the game.

    As soon as the game starts, the volume begins to increase. Shouts are heard to pass the ball to the wing, make a tackle, take a shot on goal. Latecomers run to join the game. As soon as one team scores the opening goal, the opposing players scowl at the ground as they take their shirts off to form the skins team. So begins a full two or three-hour game of pickup soccer.

    Nicknames are yelled out as people call for passes, including Gordo, the large goalkeeper who makes acrobatic saves; Colombia, a Colombian man built like a tank; Chicharito, a big center-forward who always wears the jersey of his favorite Mexican international player, Chicharito Hernandez.

    Similarly, my brother has earned the nickname Neymar, for the jersey with the Brazilian player’s name on it he wore to his first pickup game. There’s a little kid, under 12 years old, who plays in almost every game and has earned the nickname Messi, after the Argentinean star, for his amazing skills and his ability to compete with a much older crowd. There’s even an older man, almost 60 years old and affectionately nicknamed Papi, who plays from time to time.

    The Latin Americans’ style of play is quick, full of flair, and fun. They show off skill moves on offense, but also make clever interceptions on defense. They call fouls on themselves for a handball, or for a tackle that was a bit too rough. Players offer hands to help others off the ground. Goals are celebrated with high fives or mock celebrations. It’s all fun and lighthearted competition, and every single person involved thoroughly enjoys himself.

    The Latin Americans who play don’t all know one another. However, they speak as if they are all old friends, because they all have something in common. They are brought together by their passion for soccer. That’s why, when they finish a long day of hard work, the first thing they do is rush to get in on one of these pickup games, no matter how exhausting they are (it’s hard to walk after almost three hours of soccer). It’s also why they are so welcoming to others — like my brother and me.

    So, when I find myself out there on those fields, surrounded by people who don’t speak English but whom I greatly admire, I realize that we are all on the same field out of love for the game. These unique pickup games organized by Latin Americans serve as an example of a passion bringing people together and as a universal language that everyone can communicate with.

   Sergei Klebnikov is an intern at The Star this summer.

   Sartre was right: Hell is other people, I think,s as I try to navigate as calmly as possible through the throbbing, siren-wailing traffic here.

    Well, perhaps not other people, but other drivers, for sure. In the aggregate, they and I could pass for a pretty fair approximation of hell, which if by hell you mean torment.

    Yes, it’s pretty safe to say that we who drive here in the summertime are tormented — a fact music, however serene, or talk radio, however demented, will not allay.

    When I told my wife last night that there had been 57 accidents in the past week, 29 of which had resulted in arrests that alleged drinking while driving, she said, “There must be so many tormented souls.”

    Or heedless souls, at any rate, which may be the same thing as tormented inasmuch as the reflectiveness you would think the topography of this place — its beaches, dunes,  quiet bays, and milky and burnished light — would inspire seems sadly, and sometimes tragically, absent.

    We live in a madhouse, admit it. At least in the summer months. So any pretense at rationality seems to be out of the question. Voltaire told us to cultivate our gardens, but the deer eat them.

    At least stay home, then, but summer tenants doth murder sleep, the innocent sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care. . . .

    I used to rail at random traffic stops, my accustomed reaction to what I call unreasonable searches and seizures, but now I almost yearn for them. Suspend our liberties, please do. And should we present a clear and present danger to others, haul us away to the looney bin, where we belong.

    Perhaps there should be a tourist head tax — a pooled fund dedicated to repairing, as much as possible, the damage done.

    And, along with that tax, there would be a summer reading list given out, a list of the many interesting books that have been written on the natural and human history of this place, starting with our late editor Ev Rattray’s “The South Fork, The Land and the People of Eastern Long Island.” Perhaps every bedside table in a vacation rental should have one, in Gideon Bible fashion.

    There would be no tests; I have said I’m against them. But perhaps some of the knowledge acquired would take, and the readings on our Richter scale of mayhem would abate somewhat over time.

   Unfortunately perhaps, East Hampton Bowl was just the kind of place you did not think about much — or miss until it was gone. This dawned on me as I was driving west on an errand early Sunday. One word on the classic road sign said it all: Closed.

    East Hampton Bowl had been shuttered at the end of June after 54 years. My first thought was of my son, Ellis, who is 3. He had been there a few times but would in all likelihood never be there again. It was a melancholy moment.

    I would not go so far as to call it a rite of passage, but for several generations of East Hampton-area kids, bowling was part of childhood, whether for a friend’s birthday or a rainy-day diversion. There was something about the place that set it apart from other South Fork’s diversions: the absence of daylight, the loud pop music, its connection to what seemed an earlier, more innocent America.

    Last month, the bowling alley’s owner, Craig Patterson, said that costs and a difficult environment in which to run a business helped him make the decision to close. League play, once a dependable source of East Hampton Bowl’s income, was down, he said, as was general attendance, thanks perhaps to the recession. Crazy-high bills for electricity may have played a role, too.    

    The property, as you might imagine, is valuable, what with the huge parking area, good highway exposure, and a fully functional bar with ample space for a pool table and live music. When our reporter was working on a story about the place’s demise, Mr. Patterson told her that he had turned down as many as seven real estate offers a month.

    What will happen to the property now is anybody’s guess. I’d prefer it to remain a bowling alley; the nearest one is in Riverhead, and on a blustery November day when the kids said they had nothing to do, it was a godsend for parents. But in truth, going perhaps only two or three times a year, we were not going to make the difference. If East Hampton Bowl were to reopen by some miracle, I would vow to make it there more often.

   Protesters holding  signs reading “Trayvon Martin Lynch­ed” marched down University Place in New York, where I happened to be, on Monday. From across the street, the marchers seemed outnumbered by police. A long line of officers walked in tandem with them, another line of police on motorcycles edged the street, and other officers, apparently of higher rank, stood nearby, along with several vans. I had no idea what to expect and wondered if the police were sent out in high numbers only to keep order or because violence was feared.

    There have been other protests around the city and country after a jury of six women in Florida found George Zimmerman not guilty of either manslaughter or second degree murder. In the city on Sunday, thousands had grouped at Union Square, then moved up to Times Square and eventually into Harlem.

    At about the same time, some of the Web sites I look at started recounting the case of Marissa Alex­ander, who was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison, having been convicted of attempted murder after a gun she fired hit a wall, injuring no one.

    Twenty years is the mandatory minimum term under a 1999 Florida law, which requires an automatic 10-year term if someone shows a gun while committing certain felonies and 20 years if the gun is fired. Judges are left with no discretion in sentencing. (If someone is wounded, judges can mete out 25 years to life.)

    Ms. Alexander had given birth nine days before the incident, and it was reported that she had a protective order against her husband, Rico Gray, who had beaten her during pregnancy. Mr. Gray had a history of abusing her as well as other women, and she had been hospitalized at least once.

    She testified that she went to the house they had shared to get some of her clothes when they got into an argument. She said he laid hands on her, that she escaped after he tried to lock her in a bathroom; she then went to her car to retrieve a legally  obtained handgun, and fired what she later called a warning shot. Mr. Gray said she had aimed at him but missed. She was found guilty of  aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

    Not sufficiently informed about Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, I am not qualified to make an in-depth comparison about what happened between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin and between Marissa Alexander and Rico Gray. However, both Mr. Zimmerman and Ms. Alexander said they feared for their lives when they fired their guns. The jury did not believe Ms. Alexander and voted for conviction in 12 minutes. The six women on the Zimmerman panel, on the other hand, believed him. It was a crucial difference.

    Hovering over each case are the contexts in which the incidents occurred: domestic violence and disregard for women’s rights in one, institutionalized racism, perhaps, in both. There were rallies on behalf of Ms. Alexander, after her conviction, and a movement asking that she be pardoned is under way now. The Justice Department is reportedly considering whether to bring a civil rights case against Mr. Zimmerman.

    Regardless of what happens, these Florida laws and those who have written them should  be indicted in the court of public opinion.