President Obama surprised reporters in the White House briefing room to comment on the George Zimmerman trial, noting that “reasonable doubt is relevant” in a murder trial and speaking in personal terms about his experiences with the kind of racial profiling that outraged black Americans who think Trayvon Martin was unjustly targeted.

“in a case such as this, reasonable doubt was relevant, and they rendered a verdict,”  Obama said conclusively, before turning to the question of why this case received national attention, especially among the African American community. “And once the jury’s spoken, that’s how our system works.”