According to a panel of Harvard faculty members and students, the “inanity” in the killing of Trayvon Martin was not the outcome of the trial, but the laws that promote situations like it.

The discussion, held Wednesday evening, was organized by the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations and Cabot House. It was the first in a series of panels on race and justice created to analyze the implications of the Martin case on race relations in the U.S. and within the Harvard community specifically.

Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager, was shot and killed February 2012 in Sanford, Fla. by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. After facing charges of second-degree manslaughter and murder, Zimmerman was acquitted in July.

The five-person panel consisted of Ronald S. Sullivan, a professor at Harvard Law School and Winthrop Housemaster; Timothy G. Benson, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School; and three undergraduates. They analyzed the social and psychological ramifications of Florida’s “stand-your-ground” law,  which gives individuals the right to defend themselves with deadly force without any requirement to evade or retreat from the dangerous situation. The law was influential in the defense of George Zimmerman.

“The stand-your-ground law was written in a way that demanded the verdict,” Sullivan said.

The other panelists agreed that the law did not uphold justice in Martin’s case, and outlined other aspects of the trial that they believed were troubling.

“The case seemed to be thrown in a way by the prosecution,” Rodriguez S. Roberts ’15, one of the panelists and president of the Harvard College Black Men’s Forum, said, which led to witnesses being “unprepared for the onslaught of the defense’s cross-examination.”