I think it’s important that George Zimmerman has had a trial.
I don’t know if George Zimmerman is guilty of murder under Florida’s laws or not. That’s partly a subjective determination which can only properly be made by a judge or jury. Martin’s death was not so clear-cut that a cop or prosecutor ought to have decided that Zimmerman should face no consequences. In our system, that decision is, and should be, made in a courtroom.
Given the US’s historic and ongoing racism, I think it’s reasonable to particularly fear such decisions being made by cops or prosecutors in cases where the person killed was a young black boy. It is reasonable to wonder, when a clearly innocent, unarmed, black kid is shot to death and the police decide no charges are needed, if the same decision would have been reached if the body were white.
That all remains true if Zimmerman is found “not guilty,” which strikes me as the most likely outcome (and one I’d probably vote for myself, if I were on the jury). From the progressive, anti-racist point of view, victory doesn’t require a guilty verdict. Even in a hypothetical perfectly non-racist system, injustice would still happen, and sometimes people would get away with murder. This is because our justice system, when it’s working properly, is and should be biased in favor of the dependent defendant.
I don’t blame people for being unhappy with Zimmerman being found not guilty (if he is found not guilty), or for correctly seeing it as part of a pattern in which black lives are taken less seriously by our justice system. But I also think that, given the facts of this case, it wouldn’t require racial bias for the jury to find that Zimmerman acted in self-defense.
Russell Simmons writes:
Even with this important day coming soon, I remind myself that we have already accomplished a tremendous amount in the memory of Trayvon. All we ever asked for was for equal justice for the young man who was killed that drizzling night in Sanford, Florida. If George Zimmerman had rights, so did Trayvon Martin. And that is why Mr. Zimmerman was properly arrested and charged with murder in the second degree. He will soon be judged by a jury of his peers, and that is the best we can do.
Victory should not require any particular verdict in this trial. That there was a trial is the victory.
Of course, some people consider it ridiculous that there was a trial at all, or that the jury is being allowed to reach a verdict. Over at Ethics Alarms, Jack writes:
Last week, Judge Debra Nelson, presiding over Zimmerman’s trial, rejected the motion by Zimmerman’s defense team to dismiss the case before a single defense witness had been called, because the prosecution had not met its burden of proof. Media analysts were quick to note that such motions are routine, but this one wasn’t: it was obvious and undeniable that the prosecution’s case could not support a verdict of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. A courageous, fair and ethical judge would have dismissed the case: Judge Nelson did not. Judges usually default to the position that we should let the jury decide, but when the evidence won’t support a legitimate guilty verdict, as in this case, that position is irresponsible.
Not for the first time, Jack genuinely can’t imagine that any reasonable person could ever disagree with the right-wing view. This case is not nearly as clear-cut as he suggests.
According to Findlaw:
Florida’s jury instructions (which are based on the Florida statute) spell out three elements that prosecutors must prove to establish second degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt:
- The victim is deceased,
- The victim’s death was caused by the defendant’s criminal act, and
- There was an unlawful killing of the victim “by an act imminently dangerous to another and demonstrating a depraved mind without regard for human life.”
The last element — an “imminently dangerous” act that shows a “depraved mind” — is further defined by Florida’s jury instructions. Three elements must be present:
- A “person of ordinary judgment” would know the act, or series of acts, “is reasonably certain to kill or do serious bodily injury to another”;
- The act is “done from ill will, hatred, spite, or an evil intent”; and
- The act is “of such a nature that the act itself indicates an indifference to human life.”
Note that prosecutors do not have to prove the defendant intended to cause death, Florida’s jury instructions state.
IF the jury is persuaded that Zimmerman, who told the dispatcher “Fucking punks. Those assholes, they always get away,” before disregarding the dispatcher’s request to stay put and chasing after a 17-year-old kid in the dark while carrying a gun, had demonstrated both ill will and committing an act that was very likely to lead to serious bodily injury, they could reasonably find Zimmerman guilty of second degree murder.
The jury could also find Zimmerman guilty of the lesser included offense of manslaughter. Findlaw again:
To establish involuntary manslaughter, the prosecutor must show that the defendant acted with “culpable negligence.” Florida statutes define culpable negligence as a disregard for human life while engaging in wanton or reckless behavior. The state may be able to prove involuntary manslaughter by showing the defendant’s recklessness or lack of care when handling a dangerous instrument or weapon, or while engaging in a range of other activities that could lead to death if performed recklessly.
So to find that Zimmerman committed manslaughter, no finding of spite or ill will is required.
Zimmerman’s strongest argument is that Martin’s death was in self-defense. Although not all witnesses agreed, both Zimmerman’s injuries and the testimony of the closest third party witness support Zimmerman’s testimony that Zimmerman had been punched in the nose, and that Martin was on top of Zimmerman and may have pounded Zimmerman’s head into the ground.
I think someone in that situation could very reasonably fear “death or great bodily harm,” even if he provoked the situation himself through his own idiotic actions. However, from the standard instructions given Florida juries in self-defense cases:
The use of deadly force is not justifiable if you find George Zimmerman initially provoked the use of force against himself, by force or the threat of force, unless:
* The force asserted toward George Zimmerman was so great that he reasonably believed that he was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and had exhausted every reasonable means to escape the danger, other than using deadly force on Trayvon Martin;
So there if the jury believes that Zimmerman “initially provoked the use of force,” AND if they believe that Zimmerman had not “exhausted every reasonable means to escape the danger,” then they could reasonably decide that Zimmerman was not acting in legitimate self-defense.
Honestly, if I was on the jury, I’d probably vote “not guilty.” Someone on the ground, being straddled and beaten, can reasonably be in fear of death or serious injury, and may not believe he has any way out other than his gun. And although much of Zimmerman’s testimony doesn’t seem credible to me, that he was on the ground being straddled and hit by Martin does strike me as credible, given his injuries and the neighbor’s testimony.
But I’m not on the jury. And I don’t think the judge was wrong to think that determination should be made by the jury.
* * *
A couple of random thoughts:
* Ironically, it seems to me that if Zimmerman had died – if in the course of the scuffle Zimmerman’s head had hit the pavement so hard that Zimmerman died of a mortal injury – that Trayvon Martin would have a much stronger case for self-defense than Zimmerman has.
* Although I think Zimmerman may have reasonably been in fear of his life, given how objectively minor his injuries were, that fear was almost certainly mistaken. If Zimmerman hadn’t had a gun, it is overwhelmingly likely that both Zimmerman and Martin would be alive today. Yay guns!
* I actually think that chasing after someone in the dark with a gun, unless there are highly compelling circumstances justifying it, should itself be a crime – even if the gunholder winds up in a situation where he fears for his life. (I don’t find Zimmerman’s story that he didn’t pursue Martin credible, although of course a jury could reasonably disagree with me about that.) The potential for an otherwise nonlethal conflict to escalate into something deadly when idiots like Zimmerman bring a gun into what had been a non-gun situation is obvious, and in my opinion Zimmerman’s actions showed a depraved indifference to that possibility. That should be a crime. But maybe it’s effectively not a crime, under current Florida law.
* I find it disgusting that so much of the discussion of this trial, and the trial itself, (such as admitting evidence that Martin had – gasp! – smoked pot at some point!) has been about disparaging Martin and his friend Rachel Jeantel. In particular, the racist, sexist, classist, and fatphobic attacks on Jeantel have disgusted me. For more on this, read Erikka Yancy, Demetria Lucas, and Mychal Denzel Smith.
But that is not in fact known.
That was actually my entire point.
And no, “reasonably possible” is not a legal standard.
Here’s a random thought: I have been in a tussle before with a pistol between us. It was one of the most terrifying moments I’ve ever had (I’ve had many) and here’s why. During a tussle, there is a fear and a struggle as you try to best your opponant. A punch here, a yank there, wrestling, straining, pushing and pain and inflicting of pain and anger and yelling, the huffing and puffing, your heart is racing and you worry that you might be the loser and everything happens so fast and you’re having trouble breathing and thoughts keep zooming in and out that this was such a bad idea, and what am I going to do, and help, help….and then…and then, everything changes when the tussle turns towards the gun! All of the sudden its a whole other ball game! Adrenaline slams into your nervous system like a freight train, cold sweat grips you in an instant and you DO fear for your life. If both party’s hands were reaching for the pistol at the same time, it is very conceivable that when the gun was pulled out of George Zimmerman’s waistband, it was only by chance that George’s hand was wrapped around it instead of Travon’s. In a moment like that it feels like the brush of a feather is enough to pull the trigger.
Fortunately in my case, the gun never went off, my attacker was sent to jail and I got to go home alive. I wish that could have been the outcome for this tussle too. I don’t know if legally GZ is “not guilty” by reason of self-defense, but I do know that he most certainly feared for his life the nano-second that gun became the center of the tussle.
Then I don’t understand your point.
“Reasonably possible” – O.K., fair enough, let me rephrase that. To be convicted of murder, the jury has to decide that it has been shown beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman was not acting in self-defense. I don’t see how that was done. Zimmerman’s wounds and the testimony of the eyewitness were consistent with his story that Martin was on top of him bashing his head into the concrete. The fact that his wounds were not serious does not mean that he was not in danger of receiving a serious wound momentarily if he had not acted.
If someone assaults you, only causes minor injury but appears to you to be intent on continuing the assault and causing you serious injury or death, is it your contention that you have to wait until serious injury occurs before you can use deadly force to stop them? Because that doesn’t seem to be the legal standard.
And let me revisit “He was warned not to [follow Martin]”. I just checked the actual transcript of the 911 call (if this is an accurate transcription) I don’t interpret “We don’t need you to do that” as a definitive instruction to “Don’t do that”. I wouldn’t characterize that as “He was warned not to follow” Martin.
Have another look at the picture of Zimmerman’s head. If I got on top of you and smacked your head onto concrete hard enough to do that to your head, I bet at that moment you wouldn’t think it was superficial or minimal. I bet you would think that I was quite intent about doing you some serious harm. I bet you would do anything you could to stop me. And you wouldn’t be particularly calm or calculating, either.
RonF,
This is fucking disgusting and you should be ashamed of having written it.
About half of US states treat a claim of self-defense as an affirmative defense that needs to be proven by the defense either to a preponderance of evidence level or a clear and convincing level. Florida is very much not among them, so as long as there is a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman is a liar, then it is hard to see how he could be convicted.
On the other hand, the evidence seems pretty clear that Zimmerman is a liar, and the evidence that Martin was pounding Zimmerman’s head into the sidewalk seems to consist entirely of Zimmerman saying that is what was happening (plus a witness who later retracted that claim and said he didn’t know if Martin was punching Zimmerman or just restraining him), so if Martin were white and Zimmerman were a black teenager, I think there is a good chance a jury would convict black teen Zimmerman of murder.
Black teen Zimmerman would also have been arrested immediately, and the right wing noise machine would never have taken up his defense, so the national media wouldn’t be following the case and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. In fact, it is highly likely that a black teen Zimmerman is on trial somewhere in the US, his defense dependent on whether a majority white jury believes that he is not a liar, and no one here will know or care when he is convicted.
Zimmerman’s injuries make it clear that he got hit in the face and that his head hit pavement. In a scuffle that went from standing to prone, that certainly doesn’t require that he was getting his head intentionally pounded into the pavement.
I was just posting to note the deep, deep irony that Zimmerman is wearing a jumper made by a company called “Free Country.”
I have just read RonF’s comment suggesting it is a good thing for black people in your free country to fear being killed by a white person for ‘not being polite’.
The divide between the principles upon which the USA was founded and what actually happens is so vast and appalling, it resembles psychosis.
I don’t think I’ll read anymore comments here.
Have another look at the picture of Zimmerman’s head.
As has been pointed out both here and at trial, RonF, the wounds are consistent with Zimmerman hitting his head on the sidewalk; they don’t require your fantasy violence scenario to happen that way. That’s why there was conflicting medical evidence at trial as to how the wounds happened and whether or not they were serious.
Is it your contention, RonF, that if I attempt to rob you at gunpoint, and you defend yourself in a way that makes me think you might kill me, it is OK for me to go ahead and shoot you?
The jury has acquitted Zimmerman, so it’s a moot point now. I just hope the protests remain peaceful.
Mythago:
“they don’t require your fantasy violence scenario to happen that way”
1) Fantasy? Why is it (to pick a definition of “fantasy”) extravagant and unrestrained imagination to consider that as a possible scenario?
2) It didn’t have to be proven that was the scenario. It only had to be accepted by the jury that it was one of the possible scenarios, thus creating reasonable doubt – and apparently it was. The fact that there was conflicting medical testimony at trial probably contributed to creating that reasonable doubt.
It would my contention that if in that scenario you shoot me and go to trial, the prosecution would have to prove that you were trying to rob me in order to convict you of murder. If they could prove that, then I would expect that you would be convicted. If they could not prove it, if it was your contention that you were NOT robbing me and that I assaulted you without cause and if the only eyewitness only saw me assaulting you, then I would expect that you would go free.
Charles S:
Charles, do you understand where the burden of proof lay in this trial? Do you understand how the concept of “reasonable doubt” applies here?
There’s a lot of true things in the world that are disgusting.
eilsh:
That’s impossible. I wrote no such comment.
Charles S:
Very possibly. But – not that you’ve said so – the possibility or even likelihood of such an injustice would not justify subjecting George Zimmerman to an injustice.
No, but the left wing noise machine might well have.
I don’t know about that. I’d be interested in an analysis of murder cases in the U.S. over the last 10 years or so to see how many black defendants faced an all-white jury.
The local CBS affiliate did some “person on the street” interviews. The first person they interviewed, a young white woman, was visibly shocked and incredulous that Zimmerman was found guilty. I can understand if she thought that the verdict was an injustice, but I’m surprised that she was so surprised. Lots of lawyers thought the verdict would be “not guilty” and I don’t recall seeing any who thought that “guilty” was a slam-dunk. The second person was an 50’s or 60’s black man, who decried it as an injustice but did not seem surprised. The third person was a young white man who cited Florida’s “Stand your ground” law as the basis for Zimmerman’s acquittal and blamed the NRA for pushing passage of the law. I have no idea if the NRA was involved in the passage of that law, but apparently he missed the news that Zimmerman never invoked the “Stand your ground” law as a defense.
Then Jesse Jackson, who’s got a lot on his mind these days, was interviewed and said that it was a major problem that the trial did not have a jury of his peers. Apparently Jackson forgets that it’s the defendant who is entitled to a jury of his or her peers, not the person the prosecution holds is the victim.
To come full circle, Amp:
I think you’re right. If this had ended up with the local Florida cops deciding not to arrest him there would have justifiably endless suspicions of a cover-up of a murder of a black kid. The trial brought to light the entire story as well as it could be elucidated, in open court, and a jury made a finding of fact. There’s going to be a lot of people not satisfied with the verdict, but at least there’s no coverup.
Now, will Federal charges be brought (e.g., violation of Martin’s civil rights)? Will Martin’s family bring a civil suit, which has a different (and lower) standard of proof? Stay tuned, this story may have reached a climax, but it’s not over.
RonF,
Yeah, your comment pretty much reads as what eilish read it as. That is what I read it as. If you didn’t mean it as that, maybe you should have written it differently.
“There’s a lot of true things in the world that are disgusting.”
However, you didn’t perpetrate most of the disgusting things in the world, so you don’t need to feel ashamed. You should only feel ashamed for the disgusting things in the world that you are personally responsible for: like that comment.
As to whether I understand the standard of proof in Florida, maybe you could try re-reading the first paragraph of the comment of mine you are responding to. Here, I’ll save you the trouble of scrolling up: “About half of US states treat a claim of self-defense as an affirmative defense that needs to be proven by the defense either to a preponderance of evidence level or a clear and convincing level. Florida is very much not among them, so as long as there is a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman is a liar, then it is hard to see how he could be convicted.”
If Zimmerman had been in a state with a stronger standard of proof for a claim of self-defense, he would have been a lot more likely to be convicted. None-the-less, juries often (and rightly) completely discount the claims of someone they don’t believe is credible.
And no, what passes for the left-wing noise machine does not take up the cases of black men who are arrested for murdering someone during a fight. Give me an example of a case where MSNBC (which is the only thing that passes for a left-wing noise machine) has taken up the case of black man arrested for killing someone during a fight, where the evidence was overwhelming that the arrested man was the killer and the only question was self-defense.
Hey, if you are curious about something, you could try looking it up. That you are ignorant of something is not actually an argument. Argument from personal ignorance is a rhetorical tactic I have seen you take many times, but no matter how many times you try it, it still isn’t a valid argument.
Also, I like how you slipped the standard from “majority white” to “all white”, something I specifically didn’t write.
Do you really feel that when all-white juries routinely felt that white people killing black people was not a crime that it was not a problem for white people accused of killing black people to have a jury of their all-white peers?
The accused has a constitutional right to a jury of her peers, but it is actually a serious problem if the accused is tried before a jury that includes no peers of the victim.
Charles and Fox News, presenting a united front.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/06/21/zimmerman-jury-homogeneous-dangerous/
I have long realized that this is a serious problem when it comes to white on black violence. Though it’s true it’s not a Constitutional requirement. But then the Bill of Rights was written for white folks and signed off by white men including slave owners so it’s never been relevant to African-Americans in quite the same way as Whites anyway.
I’d buy the self-defense argument if Zimmerman hadn’t provoked the fight. The fact that he did start it makes it harder to defend his actions. To me, he seemed like a want to be cop who could never be one in part because of problems with violence in his own background (including both spousal violence and assault against a police officer arrests) that would have disqualified him. He wanted to be a vigilante and was fortunate to live in a state that passed a law in large part of the NRA that made that much, much easier for a man of his ilk to get away with.
“I’d buy the self-defense argument if Zimmerman hadn’t provoked the fight. The fact that he did start it makes it harder to defend his actions.”
How do you know?
“He wanted to be a vigilante and was fortunate to live in a state that passed a law in large part of the NRA that made that much, much easier for a man of his ilk to get away with.”
This one is like a touchstone of the provenance of a person’s data acquisition. The Stand Your Ground law had absolutely zero bearing on the trial. It was quite prominent in the news discussions early on, however.
Robert, I’m entitled to my views as you’re entitled to yours. I think we can agree to disagree. I’m pissed off I’d admit as I am when a system that’s built to protect the rights as defendants AND victims of certain classes of people cements that right. I used to do work with the NAACP and we ran into quite a few “Zimmermans” unfortunately, but fortunately none of them turned into homicides. I read up on the case and followed it and obviously see it from most people here. I see it also from the perspective of having many friends and coworkers who are SCARED TO DEATH that their Black boyfriends, sons and nephews won’t be coming home when they go out day or night, walking or driving and have just been given another reason for that fear. Rational? Maybe it’s not for people outside that group to even decide. I’m not going to be the one who tells them how fair the verdict is, how just the system that serves as the venue has been or how they should feel about it in terms of what’s a fair or just verdict. There’s really no such thing anyway and having interviewed over 100 jurors after criminal trials and more after civil, I’m kind of jaded by the whole impartiality of a jury thing too.
Sometimes I think the ability to think “rationally” and “logically” (though I don’t personally think it’s “rational” to not be concerned when a vigilante gets off in a state with institutionalized racism including lynching of Black people that’s still pretty steeped) in cases like this is the epitome of privilege enjoyed by people who aren’t profiled by race, aren’t told that their uteri belong to them in certain states in the country and not others, and aren’t told they can’t marry someone they love. I guess some of us can’t break down the legal system in such a cut and dry way. I’d personally love to be able to but I’m not that far advanced yet. Maybe I’ll return to this discussion when I am. I truly envy those who are in a comfortable place where they can do that. Most of them could also walk down the street in a town in Florida and not have to worry about a Zimmerman too which no doubt is quite nice.
Sorry to vent but it’s just in my world the conversations are so different than here and it’s not “left wing noise” as you’d be amazed at how many conservative African-Americans and Republicans are discussing it right now.
Excuse me that’s over a 100 juries not jurors. But the stories I’ve heard…oh never mind.
Anyway as far as the feds go, they’ll open an investigation under massive protests in the streets and/or riots or threats of such. That’s not conjecture, that’s based on history going back into the 1940s at least AND having had more than a few federal prosecutors or DOJ people urge demonstrators to “step it up” to facilitate the initiation of an investigation that they want to do but can’t due to pressure or stonewalling higher up the DOJ ladder.
I realize I can’t cite an article that proves that but as far as I’m concerned, I believe my own experiences in this kind of thing more anyway. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide whether it makes sense or not.
I’m not disputing your right to have your own view. You made an assertion of fact, and I’m asking how you know it to be true. “It’s what I believe” is fine, but then surely you will understand why I assign that zero credibility. (Just as I assign zero credibility to the opposite view.) That isn’t data; that’s your view of the world and what you think is most likely.
On the Stand Your Ground Law part of your assertion, is that another area where your belief system is what matters and not what’s actually provable, or do you have something that connects SYG to the trial?
Zero credibility? That’s perfectly fine with me. I didn’t come here to be rated on credibility but to express an obviously minority opinion. I’m not worried about what you think about my argument. I don’t worry about “winning” anyone over or “winning” arguments. I’m more interesting in not doing that. I could never “win” in an environment where I’m surrounded by people who can send their kids out and not have to worry about them coming home at night or can wear a hoodie down the street and not even be approached by a Zimmerman. But the majority of my friends and “family” just don’t live under that type of system.
What I’d rather spend my time doing is talking with people who are just as frustrated, apparently unable to see the “logic” in it all and are willing to work to address these issues. I found that’s what works best for me rather than just arguing about a complicated, multi-layered issue where being “right” just matters on your perspective and the crowd you hang with.
I guess my argument with “Stand your ground” is that you’re right in that it didn’t get used as a defense BUT I believe more along the lines that so-called “Stand your ground”/”Make my day” laws (CO, TX) foster a climate where vigilantism is more likely to take place and I think the creation and fostering of such a climate does matter.
Jury system? I could go into the myriad of problems with juror selection, you know the whole “jury of his/her/my peers” deal beginning with compilation of juror pools but it’s a bit complicated and I’m sure most people don’t see it relevant. I do because I with others fought to keep a juror pool which was representative of a majority minority region of the county go from 35% whites which matched the demographic of the population to 85% white by essentially gerrymandering it out into areas surrounding it that were “white flight”. I’m not sure it was legal to redistrict a juror pool that way, no one had the means including financial to find out because no “bad” law is ruled unenforceable until a judge decides that or a group of justices for that matter.
I know Florida is much worse in some of these same areas knowing people who live there. Not many of them are in the desirable demographics unfortunately. Some of whom will seriously consider whether or not they want to stay in Florida. Remember this is one of the states that managed to disenfranchise the Black vote in 2000.
I did find the whole six person jury composition very interesting and I am aware that Williams (1970) under SCOTUS allowed for the constitutionality of that. And just as interestingly Georgia discovered in 1978 also via SCOTUS that five was not. I talk to attorneys on both sides about juries that small which many states has (though mine has 12) and there’s been concerns both with diversity of juries as well as cohesiveness of them including the very real element of peer pressure (and I’ve received enough complaints on that to write a book and deals cut for “lesser” offenses to appease holdouts even though those jurors don’t believe in the merit of the compromise verdict). It’s a way to try to avoid deadlocks or mistrials (based on deadlocks) on either side though defense attorneys tend to like smaller juries less.
As much as I’m a feminist I think an all women jury is as much of a red flag as an all male jury too. I’ve seen counsel for both sides try to stack with one gender over the other (just like with race or retirees).
As far as what I would do if I were a juror…well I can’t say for sure peer pressure wouldn’t sway me though I think not. But it’s moot because I’m routinely kicked out of the twelve pack as it’s called here. It’s the most important part of doing a trial as you’d be surprised at how many trials are won or lost at this stage of the game. I know I was.
I had an opportunity a month ago to interview a 12 pack on a civil case tossed on respondent motion granted by a judge for lack of proving the case. Actually that jury was split by two-thirds for the plaintiff (who hadn’t proven the case according to the judge) and one-third either unsure or against the plaintiff. That’s a bit different from the judge’s assessment of whether a case is proven or not when the plaintiff rests. So this colors my opinion of juries even further though I think this kind of gap in between the two tryers of the facts would have more relevance in the Anthony case in Florida.
Ron:
I want to echo Charles – this comment of yours, however you intended it, comes across as both disgustingly racist and as appalling indifferent to human life.
From Lawyers, Guns and Money:
Slacktivist has a round-up of some reactions to the verdict.
Robert,
When did Florida go to a reasonable doubt standard for disproving assertions of self-defense? Was that part of the SYG law or was it already the standard previously?
SYG got a bunch of play in discussions of this case because
(a) it influenced the initial reactions of the police, which probably influenced their behavior during the trial, which probably influenced the outcome
(b) Zimmerman was aware of it, which may have influenced his actions
(c) that Zimmerman had no duty to retreat made it that much harder to get a conviction (i.e. SYG was directly involved in the outcome)
(d) SYG got a lot of play in the initial coverage of the case, so people think SYG was directly involved in the case (oh wait, see above).
Your mistake is conflating SYG exclusively with SYG pre-trial hearings, rather than with the lack of a duty to retreat. SYG pre-trial hearings are a particularly sick bit of NRA/ALEC created law, but they are not actually the entirety of the principle of SYG in Florida law.
2007 case from NY that looks like an example of what would have happened if Zimmerman were black and Martin were white.
Charles – Valid points regarding SYG.
Amp – You really do not want to hitch your wagon to Marissa Alexander.
http://thegrio.com/2012/05/15/angela-corey-lashes-out-at-critics-of-marissa-alexander-prosecution
Charles – Meant to add, “I stand corrected”.
Amp – I am frankly shocked to see the usually good LG&M so grossly misrepresent. Yes, Alexander hadn’t been arrested before she was arrested in this case…though she was arrested *later*, when she went to the same guy’s house (in violation of a protective order) and gave him a black eye. She plead no contest in that case, which was resolved prior to this one, and was convicted. She wasn’t defending herself from an abuser (though he was an abusive man); she went into the garage and retrieved a gun, then came back into the house to shoot at him and the two young children who were standing next to him. (That’s why three charges.) Her claim that the garage door was inoperative and that she had to come back through the house was not supported by the forensic investigation. She claimed that she shot in the air; forensic evidence showed that she shot directly at the group, and the bullet went through the wall.
Her ex, it should be said, seems like a horrible guy and has a long history of his own violent behavior. In addition, he changed his story more than once, because the two of them got back together after this incident, but then broke up again (after she gave him the black eye). So he’s no prize, but this is a case of “fucked up mutually violent DV relationship where someone escalated to attempting murder”, not “tearful DV victim reluctantly goes to armed force to defend herself, is cruelly mistreated by racist justice system”. All of the “woman gets 20 years for warning shot” stories are frankly bullshit – they are the exact equivalent of, if the GZ/TM case hadn’t gotten press attention and GZ had been convicted, of GZ pitching his story to the press as “Heroic neighborhood watch captain mugged in alley by vicious gang member, fires warning shot that went tragically awry, wrongly convicted by racist anti-Latino justice system.”
One side’s pure propaganda version, in other words, unsupported by the forensics.
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Charles S @124
John white was later pardoned by the state:
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/john-white-convicted-killing-daniel-cicciaro-pardoned-gov-david-paterson-article-1.474441
-Jut
Jut, thanks. Glad to hear it (I think, I haven’t actually read up on the case in enough detail to have a knowledgeable opinion).
Frankly I think calling the cops on some black teen who looks like he’s “up to no good” or “up to something” and “on drugs” and then likely being told to wait in the car for police to come (and this is part of most dispatcher training protocols when dealing with 911 calls though Florida could be an exception) and then getting out of the car to confront someone likely because 1) you have a gun and 2) you live in a “Stand Your Ground”/ “Make My Day” state is just complete and utter bullshit.
Sorry for the profanity. But I just finished reading about some of my feminist sisters and the crap they have to deal with regarding whether a woman’s uterus is owned by her or the state of North Carolina which passed fucked up abortion legislation and my state’s penal system which sterilizes female prison inmates. Nothing like being a second class citizen in this country that your body parts belong to others but I’ll try to temper my pique at that and continue my post in a more appropriate fashion. That’s why I can’t be all logical and rational, maybe that’ll come when women are truly liberated in the US of A. I don’t blame my friends for feeling similar about the Martin case, because a lot of them hope to be liberated in the US of A as well. Sometime before the 22nd Century.
Anyway…
As for saying that gee, the guy had the right to shoot someone or use deadly force to avoid getting his head bashed in the pavement, there’s a problem I have with that logic too. We don’t know for sure that happened. The fact, is only one involved party survived to give his version of events, the one on trial for murder. I can understand maybe b/c so many holes are missing in the facts including an obvious omission of eye witness testimony and injuries that could have been self-inflicted for all we know (and no I don’t think that was the case), I can understand in the absence of obviously conflicting evidence giving him some benefit that maybe his version of events might have happened but to say they definitively happened, like he was getting his head bashed, what else could he do (which I’ve heard mentioned a bit elsewhere), you just can’t say that.
Because no one really knows who started the confrontation or how it started behind its beginning with Zimmerman getting out of the car and how it ended. Was it verbal? Who initiated the physical part of it? We don’t know. That in a criminal defense might be to Zimmerman’s benefit but it should be framed as not proven rather than as a certainty. And yes, there’s a huge difference between the two. But that’s my humble opinion.
I found it interesting how Zimmerman’s own record of violence including his criminal background of DV and Assaulting an officer was seen as “run of the mill” and pretty much non consequential I wasn’t aware that so many folks beat up police officers or assaulted them. In my experience, that particular criminal offense has never ever been treated as anything but a major consequence and very seriously. When Black folks do it or are accused of doing it, it’s certainly not seen as “mild” in nature. Excuse me for injecting some profanity in this argument, but WTF?! I have to admit as jaded as I am, that blew me away a bit.
First of all, Erick Erickson needs to just fuck off with telling liberals to buy coat hangers. WTF is the matter of the guy besides the obvious? That’s in Texas where apparently women don’t own their uteri either.
Anyway…
Yes, Paterson did pardon him towards the end of his term. I remember the phone calls I got when that conviction and sentencing came down even all the way across the country. My reaction, was oh, they do it in NYC too?
Like I said, I have zero faith in the criminal justice systems in this country and all the academic articles and studies and all that isn’t going to erase what I’ve personally witnessed and had to deal with and most seem to back that assertion. The worst of it being seen in capital cases which are supposed to be the ones with the highest stakes involved. Some really truly awful stuff there.
Lying to a Black family that you caught the man who killed their loved one and he’ll go away for life when you’ve really just given him immunity for that crime to try to pin it on his cousin (who didn’t do it and the family who witnessed the murder didn’t even recognize him) to get the death penalty for a white man who would have gotten it anyway. Then not even having the balls to tell them the truth. Use them to testify and then stop returning their calls. In a sense they did pay for it with intense public and media exposure but not nearly enough to make up for all the pain they caused because they felt rather than serve these folks better to just use them. The 14 year old murder case will never be closed because the man who did it can never be prosecuted for it. Not to mention that four of the witnesses outside the family who saw the murder and were questioned died within 18 months all of foul play.
Then there’s the two teens who spent four years in jail for a murder they didn’t commit. They didn’t even match the description. I got handed that one when the mother of the victim was hysterical b/c they were both released in the middle of trial. So my boss told me to get to the bottom of it. I knew DNA factored in somewhere, it’s the only sure way for them to walk if innocent. Sure enough they were negative, two other men were positive and the DA withheld the DNA results for eight months and it took them 18 just to run the tests. I read the prelim and there was enough doubt there including by the defense counsel at the time that they were the right suspects. I wish I’d read the prelim transcript earlier…that’s a regret I have because if I had, I’d had raised some hell about it and likely they would have been released sooner than they were. The DA justified it by saying well, if they weren’t in jail all this time they would have killed someone anyway. I told him, what is this, Minority Report (the film)? No answer to that. They both live out of state now which was the only way they could live.
Plenty more anecdotes where they come from and I realize that in the world for serious debate and argument they mean little to nothing but I’m sharing them anyway as explanation as to why I personally am cynical about the system certainly in a state like Florida which already had on its record, serious violations of the Voting Rights Act in 2000.
It’s really hard to explain to people how things go terribly wrong with these systems way before individual examples of it reach the trial stages.
You have to understand how emotional and passionate these things get. I know people are intellectually discussing Mr. Erickson’s tweet though personally, the first thing that comes to mind for me is gelding him since he feels he and others of his ilk have the right to control one of my bodily parts. It wouldn’t make for a good argument.
Amp, Charles: Well, then perhaps I should address it more explicitly. Based on what I read about this trial the following scenario is at least credible if not likely. George Zimmerman is a captain of his neighborhood watch, a group that was created because of a high incidence of crime in his area. He has made calls to the police that have resulted in numerous arrests and in one case has interrupted a crime in progress. He notices Trayvon Martin, whose name he does not know and in fact someone he’s never seen in the neighborhood before. There has recently been a rash of break-ins in the neighborhood. He reports him as a suspicious person. As he does so, he sees the young man walk out of sight. The 911 dispatcher says that he does not need to follow the young man, but based on his own extensive experience in matters of this nature he figures that the police will not be able to find the young man, so he follows him. As he approaches him the young man, who knows he is being observed and followed, attacks the man. In that attack he overpowers the man who was following him, dashing his head into the concrete sidewalk. The man, fearing for his life from his assailant, pulls out his gun and shoots him. The young assailant dies of his wound.
The George Zimmermans of the world are people who live in and are invested in their neighborhood. They understand that the character and safety of their neighborhood are their responsibility, not the cops’, and that if they don’t take an active role in doing something about it then not enough will get done. The Trayvon Martins of this world are people who think that they have a right to escalate feelings of persecution or insult into a physical confrontation.
Notice that nowhere in the above do the words “white”, “Hispanic” or “black” appear. I do not see this as “white” or “Hispanic” vs. “black”. I don’t see any reason to presume that George found Trayvon suspicious based on his race. The George Zimmermans of the world are not “white people”, they are “neighborhood residents trying to keep an eye on their community”. The Trayvon Martins of the world are not “black people”, they are “strangers in a high crime neighborhood”.
It seems to me that your perception that my comment is racist must be based on seeing the defining characteristic of this incident as “white man shoots black man”, and that we must presume that Zimmerman’s actions were racially motivated because it involved a white/Hispanic man shooting a black man (take your pick – I know that “Hispanic” is an ethnicity, not a race, but I also think that most Americans do not make that distinction). I see it as “community resident shoots assailant”. The fact that two people of differing races/ethnic heritage are involved is insufficient in the absence of proof to the contrary to presume that Zimmerman’s actions were racially motivated.
One of the concepts that various people here seem to accept is that George’s act of following Trayvon and approaching him was sufficient provocation or threat to justify Trayvon’s assault. I disagree, and so apparently did the jurors. Absent an actual physical or verbal threat there is no justification for assault. Consider where the denial of that concept would lead.
I’ve stated before that this is a tragedy. I’m not indifferent to the loss of a young life and the wreckage this has left in the Martin family. And if George had been unarmed and Trayvon had killed him or left him with permanent brain damage – a very strong possibility, in my estimation – it would have left wreckage in the Zimmerman family and would still have been a tragedy. I wish it hadn’t happened. But if you want this kind of thing to stop, you have to stop mischaracterizing what this kind of thing is.
You’re right. It’s not a valid argument. That’s why it wasn’t an argument, it was a request for information. There are a lot of people on here who are quite familiar with studies on racially-oriented topics, and I thought they might have that information at hand.
Ah, mea culpa, not my intent. Sorry. Let me say that I’d like to see data on how many black people these days are being tried by majority-white juries.
I’m afraid we’ll be disagreeing there. NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, New York Times, the AP, they’re all pretty much part of the left-wing noise machine.
Maybe so, but that’s not the standard. Rev. Jackson seemed confused on that point.
Radfem:
I have no problem with the logic. But,
True.
I would never say that George Zimmerman has been proven justified in killing Trayvon Martin. “Not Guilty” != “Innocent”. I think your opinion is right on the money.
I’ve seen plenty of postings that can be basically summed up as holding that Zimmerman was clearly innocent and he was being railroaded to satisfy the left-wing noise machine (to steal an earlier characterization). That’s as much nonsense as claiming that he was clearly guilty of murder. I’ve said it before – only God can guarantee justice. Man can only give you law. In an advanced State the closest approximation is sought, but at the end of the day it’s an approximation. When what Radfem is true – when we simply don’t know what happened – we can’t claim “Well, we know what happened – the racist bastard hunted down and killed a black man” anymore than we can claim “Well, we know what happened – that no-good black punk tried to kill the Hispanic guy.” This is one we can’t fix.
Ron, nothing in your new comments is at all a defense of your earlier comment, which strongly implied that it was acceptable to shoot Martin if Martin was impolite.
Your new position is
muchmore defensible (although thereare still details i could nit-pick atis still a lot I disagree with); it is also not at all the same as, and really not even related to, the disgusting statement that Charles and I objected to.I don’t think it implies that at all. I think you’re confusing a prediction of what’s going to happen with an assertion that it’s acceptable.
I’m sorry you find it disgusting, but I don’t think that it is. Cynical, yeah. To find the concept that someone could get shot for being impolite disgusting is a fair reaction. To state the reality that this can happen is not. We had a man shot in Chicago a few months ago because he let his dog crap on a home owner’s lawn and then threaten the home owner when he came out to object. He did not know the home owner was armed. It’s happened before and it will happen again.
I still find your apparent conflation of being polite, and not jumping people and attacking them, to be bizarre. But that aside, thanks for clarifying that you don’t think it’s a good thing if the message young black men get from this trial is that they should be more “polite.”
So are you saying you agree with Cord Jefferson? He wrote:
@136: I found the comment about young, black men learning to be more polite to be somewhat baffling, but assumed he meant it in an ironic way. I took it for granted and gave him the benefit of the doubt that he really doesn’t think blacks should have to bow down to whites in order to avoid violent consequences.
That said, there is I think a germ of wisdom in what he’s saying, but it’s NOT racial. I think EVERYONE (white, black, whatever) should be extremely loath to turn any kind of non-physical offense (or perceived offense) into an occasion for physical violence. Now, it’s possible a person in TM’s position could have felt physically threatened by a person in GZ’s position. It’s also possible that a person in TM’s position simply felt offended that some guy — whether he was perceived as an authority figure or not — was “keeping an eye on him.” But only the former scenario could possibly justify a PHYSICAL response. Just being angry or offended that someone is keeping an eye on you because they think you might be up to no good isn’t a valid reason to physically attack that person.
I had an experience when I was much younger where a cop stopped and questioned me because I had been slowly driving around in a suburban shopping center parking lot late at night listening to the radio, after work. I wasn’t “up to no good”; I think I was just killing a little time before heading home. At the time, I was really offended at the idea that the cop saw me as suspicious. However, I realized that the cop wasn’t being entirely unreasonable in responding to the situation.
People can deny it all they want, but the fact remains that TM’s meandering around through a condo complex, at night, in the rain, not appearing to be heading anywhere, looking into windows, WOULD look suspicious to any reasonable adult in GZ’s position, especially given the burglaries and home invasions that had been taking place in that community. It would look suspicious regardless of his race. (If anything, it would be his AGE that would have concerned people the most. If he had appeared to be a 60-year-old woman, rather than a kid in his late teens, I doubt anyone’s suspicions would have been aroused.)
It’s entirely possible TM was completely oblivious to how his solo stroll in the dark would have appeared to any residents of that community who DIDN’T know what he had actually been doing that evening (skittles, All-Star Game, etc.). But that doesn’t make GZ wrong in having viewed him suspiciously.
Even if GZ’s suspicious instincts were off the mark in this instance, unless GZ actually did something physical to TM, or overtly threatened to do so (such as point his gun at him), then there was no justification for TM to physically attack GZ. (Obviously, there was no evidence at trial to indicate that GZ physically attacked TM or drew his weapon prior to the struggle on the ground.)
It isn’t about “being polite,” but it may well have been a case of a young kid, offended and upset at being looked at with suspicion, lashing out violently in response, not appreciating how dangerous such a response could prove to be.
Conrad, once again your comment is based on the unstated assumption that every word George Zimmerman says is the unvarnished truth. Do you not see that Zimmerman had a VERY strong motivation to do everything he can to paint Martin’s behavior as suspicious? Or is it just you believe Zimmerman to be a saint whose account is to be accorded no skepticism at all?
RonF: correct me if I am wrong, but I thought your comment was an echo of the saying, “an armed society is a polite society.”
But, I am with you. Your critics have your comment offensive, but have said little of the prediction that an acquittal would lead to a lot more dead teenagers.
-Jut
Conrad:
And that’s the problem right there. The comment was not about the young black men of the world. The comment was about strangers moving about in a high-crime neighborhood. There is no evidence that Trayvon caught George’s notice because he was black. There is considerable evidence that Trayvon caught George’s notice because he was a stranger in a high crime neighborhood. If others insist on seeing this through a racial lens I can do nothing about it, but you’re all trying to stuff a square peg in a round hole.
Jutgory, I suppose that the comment I made follows from the general principle that “an armed society is a polite society”. My guess is that this acquittal will lead to fewer dead teenagers, not more. But maybe not – it is inherent to the nature of teenagers that they do not always behave rationally. Irrational and/or irresponsible acts are probably the main reason that people who fail to survive their teenage years in America die. It may be that they die from their own such act, or it may be the consequence of someone else’s, such as a teenage passenger dying in a car crash because the teenage driver decided to race someone.
Yes, but Barry–but so what? Zimmerman didn’t testify, you know. You can be as skeptical as you like, but you have no more reason NOT to believe that account than you do to believe otherwise. Voila! Reasonable doubt! All these comments, when that uncertainty is undeniable and unavoidable. It doomed the prosecution from the start, it was obvious from the get-go, Angelo Corey’s ridiculous statement that she knew Zimmerman was guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” was a politically motivated lie, and when the prosecution knows it cannot get a conviction, it is flat-out unethical to go to trial. Those are facts…complain about it all you like, that’s the way it is. When we don’t know what happened, we can’t pretend that we do, or behave like the case was capable of sending the messages we wish it could send. Sorry. That’s life. We can’t say that Zimmerman was a racist; we can’t say that he was out to harm Martin; we don’t know who confronted who, we don’t know how badly Martin as beating Zimmerman or how scared he was, we don’t know how the gun went off, we…don’t…know. And that means that all the protests and accusations and condemnations and posturing are unsupportable. “He shouldn’t be dead, and somebody should have to pay!” is a pathetic response to such a complex scenario. Unless the “Justice for Trayvon” crowd really believes that people in the US should be jailed based on speculation—and guess what group would be most likely to suffer if “reasonable doubt” was a casualty of this insanity?—this is sound and fury signifying less than nothing.
First of all, most of those details aren’t based on GZ’s account. It WAS dark, it WAS raining, TM, WASN’T just heading straight home, but was loitering around outside (by the “mailbox thing”) while on the phone. The only thing GZ’s narrative added to this was that he was looking in windows and appeared to be on drugs, the latter observation I didn’t even include in my comment.
Second, what was GZ’s motivation to make TM seem suspicious WHEN HE CALLED THE POLICE? I could see why someone might do it after the fact in order to try to explain his actions, but why would he do it before?
I don’t have a problem with not assuming GZ was telling the unvarnished truth, but I also don’t accept that, in lieu of crediting GZ’s statements to the police as truthful, we should give automatic credence to whatever alternative scenarios internet commenters can dream up about what happened that night. I was reading stuff yesterday where people were saying GZ may have had a “cop buddy” rough him up in order to create his injuries, or that those might have been “self-inflicted.” Apparently, while it’s a tragedy so many young black men are railroaded into prison by the system, it’s OK to send a Hispanic man to prison for life based on naked speculation that a “cop buddy” beat him up while he was in custody in order to bolster his claim of self-defense.
Let’s make this deal: I will accept the possibility that GZ was not telling the truth if you accept the possibility that he was. The problem is, as the police determined, GZ’s account was largely either corroborated by other evidence or wasn’t substantially contradicted by other evidence, whereas people assert claims such as “a cop buddy beat him up” without an apparent regard for the known evidence.
If you think my comment above is so outrageously inconsistent with the evidence, please specify what you find so farfetched in the idea that Zimmerman really did view TM engaging in behavior that would seem suspicious to someone in GZ’s position and that TM, rather than feeling physically threatened, simply took offense at the attention GZ was paying to him and launched a physical attack? Why is that scenario so ridiculously implausible, in your opinion?
143 is in response to 138, of course.
Charles S, I found an analysis of the SYG law’s influence in this case that is relevant to your comments on it’s discussion.
According to a story about a recent CNN interview of the police chief involved, SYG had nothing to do with their decision not to charge George Zimmerman:
The New York Times published a claim that the police HAD cited the law, but they provide no reference or link to back that claim up.
O.K., but that’s sheer speculation, not a showing that SYG definitely influenced either this incident or the trial.
The defense’s scenario does not include a situation where Zimmerman was a) threatened but b) had an opportunity to retreat. The defense never invoked SYG.
.
So now ask yourself that if the police never invoked SYG as their reason for not initially arresting Zimmerman and Zimmerman himself never mentioned it and if it was never invoked by the attorneys for the defense or for the prosecution, why did it get a lot of play? My opinion is that it’s probable that a group of people both inside and outside the media were more interested in abusing Trayvon Martin’s death for their own political ends than in actually paying attention to what the case was actually about.
Trayvon Martin may have thought that George Zimmerman didn’t have a cause to follow him. But Zimmerman did think so, and the crime statistics in his neighborhood and the results of his dozens of other observations of strangers in his neighborhood back him up.
But, from Trayvon’s viewpoint, he didn’t know Zimmerman was armed. In fact, if he had, hauling off and punching him prior to any verbal or physical threat would be an incredibly stupid thing to do, so I doubt that he knew.
And, not knowing, it was a pretty stupid thing to do as well. For anybody. Whether you’re a young black man or a young white man or an elderly Hispanic woman or anyone. The situation of being followed by a stranger in a strange neighborhood and the wisdom of a given set of responses don’t particularly change whether you’re a young black man or a young white man. Turning around and punching the person following you is an excellent way of starting a fight and a good way of getting killed by the person you assault whether you’re black or white. So I don’t see that it’s a particular fear that a young black man would have to consider that a young white man wouldn’t.
That this is wrong, OTOH, is something I can agree with. Trayvon had done some wrong things in his day. But I will not say that he was a vicious thug, and I will not say that he deserved to die. We don’t know what was in the young man’s heart. Maybe he would have smacked George one more time in the face, gotten up and walked away. The fact that George didn’t know that and couldn’t take the chance that it would happen that way without risking his life doesn’t mean that Trayvon deserved to die. Things happen to people that they don’t deserve. That doesn’t mean that the person who did it is guilty of a crime. “Deserve” is a dangerous word. God knows what we deserve. Me, I’m not so sure.
Non-Hispanic whites are about 64% of the population; if you include Hispanic whites it climbs to 72% or so. Blacks are about 13%.
In an randomly-sampled 6 person jury you would normally have one black member. But you would still expect quite a few juries with zero black members.
In fact, although “one black member” would be the norm, I think that small juries with zero black members would be more common than juries with two black members. However, I’ve never done well at permutations/combinations so I may be wrong; perhaps some math person can clarify.
I have no idea whether having jury members who were black, or male, would have changed things. It looks like this may really have been caused by bad lawmaking. But in any case it would be better to have 12-member juries. And that is especially true for a serious case like this.
Jurors are almost always registered voters, and are generally locals. So you would have to use the population figures for the county where the trial was held, corrected for voting status.
The GZ case was tried in Seminole County. I couldn’t find a racial breakdown of the registered voters, sadly. (Damn you, Internet age, for only providing 90% of the miraculous information gathering that would have been a colossal undertaking 20 years ago!) So just going with general population figures, Seminole County is 65% white, 18% Hispanic, 12% black, 4% Asian, 2% multiple. (Figures total 101% because of rounding.) I’m leaving multiple-race persons out of the following calculations, because complicated.
The chance that a 6-person randomly selected group will not include a black person would be 0.88 * 0.88 * 0.88 * 0.88 * 0.88 * 0.88. (Invert the black percentage, multiply it by itself n times where n is the # of people in the group.) That comes to 46%; 54% of random 6-person juries should include a black person.
The chance that a 6-person group wouldn’t include a Hispanic person is 14%; 86% of random juries should include a Hispanic person.
Seminole County is 52% female, by the way, so the chance of a 6-person jury being all women is about 1%.
Obviously, of course, juries are not random; both the prosecutor and the defense have the opportunity to boot people out. All the blacks and all the men in the Zimmerman pool were booted out.
Personally, that bothers me. I think that the general pool should be vetted by the prosecutors and a random rotating selection of defense attorneys, and the obvious fools or whack jobs kicked out, and then a random subset of that pool should be selected for each specific trial with no further exclusions possible, and with little or no information about the jury provided to either party in the instant case. Hell put them behind a veil and let the lawyers talk to what amount to a blank wall. Is the jury full of gun nuts? People whose kids were beat up by the police? Alien abductees? You won’t know, so talk about the case and the facts, counselor.
IF he hauled off and punched Zimmerman without provocation at all. You assume that’s the case, because George Zimmerman said so, but we don’t know if it’s true or not.
And it’s a fairly plain fact that black men worry a lot more than white men do about getting killed by cops or neighborhood watch or security guards. You’re sticking your head in the ground if you really believe that Levar Burton’s attitude here is just as common among whites as blacks.
Jack wrote:
First of all, please stop acting like you and I disagree about reasonable doubt. I’ve said multiple times, including in my original post, that I would have voted “not guilty,” obviously because there is reasonable doubt.
But just because I have reasonable doubt, doesn’t mean that I have to pretend Zimmerman’s story is anything but ridiculous. Let’s recall what Zimmerman claimed happened:
In Zimmerman’s account, Martin – for no reason at all – circled Zimmerman’s car, ran away, lurked in waiting, jumped from the bushes and suddenly attacked Zimmerman in a murderous rage, while speaking ludicrous dialog that sounds like something anonymous Thug no. 3 says in a 1980s Dirty Harry movie.
So according to this story, Martin – an apparently ordinary 17 year old boy who was on the phone with his girlfriend while walking home after getting some skittles, and had no sign of mental illness – suddenly and for no reason at all turned into a murderous mad dog.
That’s not anything I’ve said. Please read more carefully.
I do think that a lot of folks – especially a lot of black folks – feel that it does happen pretty regularly that when
whitepeople, especially cops and guards, shoot unarmed black people, no one pays more than a slap on the wrist. No matter how outrageous the circumstances – even in an extreme case like Oscar Grant’s – there are sure to be plenty of smart experts rushing to explain how the shooting was, in fact, perfectly reasonable, and although the results were tragic it would be wrong to suggest that anyone should be held responsible.Although I think the “not guilty” finding was correct in this case, I do think it’s reasonable for people to think there’s something wrong with that pattern. To call that “something’s not right here” feeling “pathetic,” as you do, betrays a lack of compassion and empathy in your analysis.
By the way, Jack, as far as I know (maybe I missed it?) you never responded to this comment from “Amused,” which I believe was a response to you.
Conrad, no one here has said that a cop buddy roughed Zimmerman up, or that “it’s OK to send a Hispanic man to prison for life based on naked speculation that a “cop buddy” beat him up while he was in custody in order to bolster his claim of self-defense.” I don’t think me or anyone else here can fairly be expected to answer for something that someone else allegedly said on some other forum.
I don’t think his story is plausible (see my comment to Jack, two above), but sure, it’s possible.
What’s more likely is that elements of his story – enough to make his self-defense claim reasonable – were true. Although we can’t know, I think Zimmerman frightened Martin by following him; that both of them were frightened and thus hostile and thus the confrontation escalated to a fight; that Zimmerman may well have felt in danger of serious injury (making the “not guilty” verdict correct); and that the whole thing is a tragedy that would have been adverted if Zimmerman had just stayed in his fucking car and left it to the police. But obviously I don’t know that’s what happened; it just strikes me as a plausible guess.
By the way, suppose you were walking home from the store, in the dark, along a pedestrian path, when this guy who had been scoping you out from his car gets out of the car and begins following you in the dark. Are you honestly saying that you would never, ever find such a situation threatening or frightening? If so, you’re very unlike me.
Finally, I stop all the time when I’m walking, even if it’s raining. This is especially true if I’m talking on the phone as I walk, since if I’m concentrating on what I or the other person is saying it’s easier not to be walking. I don’t think this is especially suspicious or criminal behavior. Certainly less suspicious behavior than jumping out of a car and following strangers along a footpath in the dark. (Although that, too, can be an innocent action.)
No, we don’t. That’s true. But the author you cited presented it as if it was in fact the case and you asked me what I thought of his statement. So I followed the situation he presented.
Yep. With good reason, too. But in this specific case – which is what the author cited – I don’t think that the race of the person being followed would make much of a difference, and so I disagree with him there.
True. But take this in the context in which it happened, not as an isolated situation. In the context in which it happened, we have a high-crime neighborhood where George Zimmerman and others have made a number of calls to police when they’ve spotted someone suspicious lurking about and have gotten numerous people arrested and crimes stopped. George’s most reasonable expectation was that this was another such case and it would end up like dozens of other such cases had. A lack of action, taken in context, could reasonably have led to a crime being committed against a member of the community.
This contrasts with the picture that racists like the Rev. Al Sharpton have painted all over America – a white man deliberately hunting down and killing a black man for the crime of being black. That just does not sound at all plausible to me in this case, but it’s implausibility has not stopped them, as their agenda is more important than the truth – which is that we don’t know what happened that night.
Two people each with entirely legitimate aims collided that night. Someone – we don’t know who – made a mistake, and it cost a young man his life. If we knew who made the fatal mistake we could say whether nor not George Zimmerman was guilty of murder. But we don’t, so we can’t.
In Zimmerman’s account, Martin – for no reason at all – circled Zimmerman’s car, ran away, lurked in waiting, jumped from the bushes and suddenly attacked Zimmerman in a murderous rage, while speaking ludicrous dialog that sounds like something anonymous Thug no. 3 says in a 1980s Dirty Harry movie.
For no reason at all that Zimmerman or we know of. I can think of several possible reasons that we could assume applied, ranging from fairly benevolent assumptions to outright malicious ones. We don’t know, because we weren’t there and the person who could provide the direct testimony (be it “I was concerned that this gentleman was a mugger, stalking me” or “I was staking out the place I planned to burgle later, and some dude pissed me off by spotting me do it”) is dead. Our lack of knowledge does not make the story unbelievable; it merely means that the data which would make the story believable isn’t present.
In fact, unless George Zimmerman is significantly smarter than he appears or acts, this lacunae in his story speaks to its credibility, not to its incredibility. A smart liar would put dialog in Martin’s mouth that provided a seamless and plausible explanation of Martin’s actions. Instead, GZ provides us with a fairly cryptic exchange that sheds no light on TM’s motivation. That’s not what a relatively dull, or even a relatively skillful, liar would do. It’s either dumb honesty or diabolically clever dishonesty.
Ludicrous dialog? I’m going to take it that you haven’t been hanging around with teenagers, Amp. I wouldn’t write that dialog unless I was doing a Clemensesque reality piece, because I wouldn’t want to look like a stock racist, but many teenage boys of all racists talk like that *all the time*. The fact that a hypereducated, articulate northeastern-born Jewish artist in his 40s thinks that dialog attributed to a teenage black kid thoroughly immersed in the cultural milieu of “Thug No. 3” is ludicrous, is about as filled with evidentiary value as your opinion of GZ’s gun-handling skills would be. Dude, you barely know what Skittles are, and if I wrote out the story as fiction you’d get on me for being racist in having TM buy a watermelon-flavored drink. But he did.
I think a line by line fisking and analysis of an account is probably the wrong way of going about it. Why would you expect Zimmerman’s story to be coherent? If you were in a situation like that that, particularly one on the street in the rain at night which involved a fight and blow to the head, I think it would be very unlikely that you could give an accurate and neutral description of what happened.
Conrad:
I run into this every once in awhile, people who cherish the illusion that success in law enforcement consists of repeatedly falling ass-backwards into blatant illegality, and that it is easy to tell the Good, Righteous People at a glance from the Evil People of Perfidy. Apparently, suffusing the minds of such people is the unexamined assumption that law enforcement could never involve reasonably intelligent, dedicated professionals carefully sifting through their environment, looking for things which seem out of place, trying to detect the criminals, many of whom are doing their careful best to seem exactly like the non-criminals. In this world-view, it never takes a brief detention or some careful questioning to discern truth from lie. It would be heartwarming to think that they think so highly of us, we officers who have Truth-Ray Vision, that they are shocked, SHOCKED, when we intimate that they (THEY!) might possibly resemble evildoers. (When everyone knows that evildoers wear capes and flat-brimmed black hats and twirl their mustaches.) But no, these people don’t think highly of us. If their mood remains good, they smile tolerantly and refer to us in jocular fashion as “the local constabulary”.
If we push them past the bounds of good taste (as they define it, natch), they can get pretty poisonous. Sometimes they even achieve High Dudgeon.
I suspect that they are a related species to the people I used to run into at the occasional dinner party, who, upon learning that I was an officer, felt compelled to recite every encounter they had ever had with the police, along with asides to show why, in their case, the officer was wrong, or the offense shouldn’t have merited the same punishment which other people quite justifiably receive, nudge, nudge, and don’t I agree? And then they’d get uncomfortable, because (a) unhousebroken ruffian that I am, I’m not going to take their word, solo, against an unknown officer, and (b) very often, even taking their account as true in every particular, my opinion is that they earned what they got.
But even with all that, such people don’t frighten me as much as the ones who say, “I don’t know what happened, but all I need to know is that the officer was right,” and, “Why would you fear an officer if you have nothing to hide?” Because a cast-iron belief that the officer is always right will lead us astray just as surely, but more insidiously, than a cast-iron belief that the officer is always wrong.
Whew! Okay, Grace. Shake it off…
Anyway, Conrad, glad to hear that you grew out of it…
…or not. Not entirely unreasonable? Just mostly? Somewhat? A teensy weensy bit?
Heaven forfend that an officer dig a little to see if someone who seems suspicious is up to no good… oh, wait. See previous rant.
I’ve carefully stayed out of this thread, and I’m not intending to speak to the topic of the post. Just felt the need to rant, because it frustrates me when people want something for nothing. You can’t have effective law enforcement without permitting officers to be suspicious and inquire in order to confirm or dispel their suspicions. The unfortunate fact of law enforcement is that sometimes it involves some poking and prying. Which is why the system has safeguards, because otherwise it would be legal to poke and pry too much… see Mapp v. Ohio, and the sudden boom in search warrants nationwide immediately afterward.
Law enforcement is tricky work, a constant balancing act between conflicting rights and community imperatives and standards, and its performed by human beings. It’s hard enough to do it to a high standard when you have excellent people doing it. Zimmerman apparently had a criminal history which involved multiple assaults. In most jurisdictions (certainly this is true of mine) he would not have been permitted to be an officer.
…but it could have happened the same way if he had been an officer, whether Trayvon Martin never lifted a finger before he was decked or leapt out of the bushes with a pickaxe. Or Zimmerman could have wound up dead instead, or in addition, or, or, or…
Because everything we do, it’s all just human beings, groping as best we can through a world which is too big and too fast for us, acting on our limited experiences and our irrational hopes and our deeply-burned-in fears … and sometimes that’s just going to work out poorly, whether it’s mainly this person’s fault or that person’s fault or both or nobody’s.
Is it possible to find a way to hold ourselves and each other to the highest reasonable standard while at the same time cutting ourselves and each other some slack? Probably not… because we’re human, and we can’t see all ends.
Even when we try our best to do the best we can, sometimes what we get is terror and darkness and flailing and someone’s blood running through our fingers onto the ground.
Heaven help us all.
Grace
@153: “I think Zimmerman frightened Martin by following him; that both of them were frightened and thus hostile and thus the confrontation escalated to a fight; that Zimmerman may well have felt in danger of serious injury (making the “not guilty” verdict correct); and that the whole thing is a tragedy that would have been adverted if Zimmerman had just stayed in his fucking car and left it to the police. But obviously I don’t know that’s what happened; it just strikes me as a plausible guess.”
This is all quite reasonable. I would just note that it is a far cry from what many anti-GZ voices have been claiming. Many of the “Justice-for-Trayvon” folks are convinced that GZ hunted down TM, gun drawn, for the express purpose of killing the “effing punk.” (I’m not asking you to answer for those other people’s opinions, btw.)
Yeah you think. Neighborhood Watch 101 training. Observe, record and call the police. But do NOT engage or confront. First day of class and in my city neighborhood watches have to undergo training to be registered. But I’m guessing this one wasn’t.
In fact, while Neighborhood Watch does not recommend confrontation, it does permit following at a safe distance. Zimmerman did receive training from the police; he was the organizer and motivating force behind his community’s NW program. He had worked fairly closely with the police, for quite a while, in trying to get attention for burglaries and similar crimes in his area. His stated reason for following Trayvon, which is consistent with the record of his numerous interactions with police prior to the shooting, was that in the past he had called in, but not followed, suspicious people who had later seemingly committed crimes but the police had been unable to find them; he was following TM to be able to give police a specific location. There is absolutely no evidence that GZ confronted TM; there is some evidence that TM confronted GZ. (Following someone is neither confronting them nor provoking a confrontation.)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/06/25/zimmerman-trial-trayvon-neighborhood-watch/2455163/
While we’re on the subject of ‘the tragedy would have been averted if X’ – I’ve seen the map of both men’s movements in the neighborhood that night as reconstructed from cell phone data, TM’s cell phone calls to his friend, the 9-11 tape, the forensics, etc.
It’s true that the tragedy would have been averted if GZ had stayed in his car.
It’s also true that the tragedy would have been averted if TM had just walked home. GZ had stopped following him, and was on the phone to the cops. All TM had to do was turn right and walk south to his house. Nobody was following him at that point, and nobody would have seen him simply leave the area and go home.
Robert, what’s your source for all that, please?
Also, would Trayvon have known that he wasn’t being followed at that point? (I can see being reluctant to lead the scary person following you back to your home, or being more concerned with trying to lose them.)
Being stupid shouldn’t effect anything. People may ignore training and fail to follow instructions and not behave rationally or be able to give a coherent account, but if that is a consideration in court it is the poor and disadvantaged who are going to be hammered.
I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to try to blame the whole incident on GZ just because he got out of the car. That strikes me as an arbitrary bright line that people are trying to draw retroactively (i.e., simply by getting out of the vehicle, GZ crossed a line that sealed TM’s fate). Obviously, with the benefit of complete hindsight, we can point to ANY prior moment in the sequence of events and say, if GZ had not done that particular thing, TM would still be alive. For example, it’s also true that if GZ had never left his house that day, TM would still be alive. This doesn’t mean that leaving the house was a mistake or represents the specific moment that everybody’s lives changed.
If there was such a moment, it was when one of the two men physically attacked the other. First, nothing either man did up to that moment was illegal. Second, fighting is dangerous: even one punch can cause grievous bodily harm. The throwing of the first punch was the biggest, brightest line that was crossed.
Amp – http://www.hlntv.com/interactive/2013/06/17/zimmerman-trayvon-map-interactive
Note, I was wrong about him being on the phone to the cops. He had hung up and was on his way to meet the cops who had been dispatched. My error.
Kelly – Then I would think you would hide, not flip a U and go back to the person who you thought was after you.
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So, according to some of the comments here, the neighborhood was high crime, and that was a reason for George Zimmerman to be suspicious of Trayvon Martin; but by the same reasoning Martin may have felt especially threatened by a stranger following him.
Neither is a reason to start a physical confrontation, but it seems like Zimmerman’s behavior is being judged in one context, and Martin’s in another.
Following at a safe distance in no way equates confrontation which training tells you not to do. If he was trained and contradicted his training then that makes him more culpable. If not in a criminal justice system sympathetic to Whites needing to protect themselves from African-Americans, in a civil court system which is hopefully a bit less guilty of that.
Hell, if Martin had been a white kid eating skittles and carrying a drink even with a hoodie on he would be alive today. Zimmerman would have taken one look at him and driven onward to look for his “suspicious” looking person “up to no good” or “acting like he’s on drugs” which contributed to over 45 calls to local police in less than two years. Excuse the bad word.
If you’re Black in just about any situation dealing with CJS, you have to be pretty much perfect just like rape victims did and still do in many cases. You can’t have a single flaw or a perceived flaw. Because like the rape victims you’re the one on trial. That’s just the way it is. I’ve seen it so many times.
I was refreshing myself on the history of the NRA (as a former junior card carrying member) and its incorporation the same year as the Civil Rights Act/Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 (during the Reconstruction Era) which pretty much handed over enforcement of civil rights violations including racial violence to the feds and away from local militias and other provisions. I captured some nifty quotes. Far from being an advocate of the right to bear arms and anti-gun control, they have an extensive history of compromising on the former and supporting the latter:
“I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”
—Karl T. Frederick, former president of the NRA testifying before Congress
Another more recent quote which was in response to the Black Panthers arming themselves under the current gun regulations of the 1960s. That led to the NRA helping to draft gun control legislation in 1968. That was praised by a certain former actor turned politician.
“There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”
—Then California Gov. Ronald Reagan
By 1976, the NRA had shifted to its current stance in part due to libertarians. It got a little crazy at that point because one of their arguments was that MLK, and the Kennedys died in the 1960s so the government could promote gun control.
The NRA’s background is important b/c they’re the strong arm of the Stand Your Ground/Make My Day (borrowing from Dirty Harry of course) laws in most of the states that use them. They’ve never been a strong advocate of the right of Black men and women to bear arms as much as they support the right of White men and later on, White women (as evidenced by a campaign to get more female membership). The NRA locally strongly supported the fatal shooting of Tyisha Miller who had a gun with her in her broken down car at 2am after a man had harassed her at a nearby 7-11 station.
Ironically in that case, it was battered women who related to her having a gun because some of them had slept in their cars after leaving their batterers at night and wished they had weapons to protect themselves.
Lovely! Now we have the before the ink on the verdict form even dries I’ll go find myself a literary agent and write a “tell all” book.
I was in a high profile jury pool (and I had to go through a court hearing in front of both counsel and the judge privately to avoid triggering a potential mistrial on that one) for a murder of a gay man outside a bar and about 4-5 people said they wanted to write books on the case afterward. One actually wound up serving but so far no book.
juror to write book!!!
There is no evidence whatsoever that GZ confronted TM, and some evidence that TM confronted GZ,
And he’s not white.
@168: Yes, but for good reason. GZ was a resident at the condo complex, the homewatch coordinator, and a guy who had actively reported on and counseled victims of the spate of burglaries and home invasions that had taken place there. OTOH, if there was any evidence whatsoever that 17-year-old temporary houseguest TM was even aware of the crime problem within the community, I haven’t heard it.
If it’s your suggestion that TM might have been just as much a “concerned citizen” as GZ, I’m simply not buying it. Apart from his youth and only temporary connection to the place, we know that TM was hardly a model citizen. He had reportedly received multiple suspensions from school, including a 10-day suspension. He liked to get into fights. And there were also reports indicating he had been caught in possession of women’s jewelry that may have been stolen.
These facts about TM haven’t received the attention they deserve, IMO, because the judge wouldn’t allow them to come into evidence at trial. As a result of that ruling, the prosecution was able to misleadingly refer to TM throughout the trial as an innocent young boy who had just gone out to get skittles for his little brother. That’s the image that took hold in the minds of a lot of the public during the trial. Talking about TM’s school suspensions, drug use, etc. was rightly perceived as a PR minefield that was best to be avoided. Even though this material was obviously relevant to GZ’s defense theory (i.e., to show that TM started the physical altercation), talking heads shied away from this part of the case IMO for fear of being portrayed as racist, disrespectful to the dead, and/or insensitive to the Martin family.
So Martin jumped Zimmerman while he was still in his car waiting for the police to arrive? Where’s that evidence?
Never said that Zimmerman, individually speaking, was white. He was multi-racial.
Ah, but this worked both ways didn’t it? I didn’t recall for example seeing allegations of child molestation by a family relative come out at trial either nor her allegations made two days after the crime of racial remarks he and his father made about African-Americans allowed either which certainly would hold greater relevance than the child molestation allegations which if allowed might have been an appealable issue if he was convicted. Not that they should have been allowed but they were excluded. And the judge’s comments about “battery of a police officer” being “run of the mill” and “mild”, he should be ashamed of himself. I’ve never heard charges against a Black individual as oppose to anyone else be referred to as either one of those characterizations.
Conrad @173:
I am not sure on what basis that information is relevant, much less, “obviously” relevant.
The Florida Rules of Evidence, like the federal rules and the rules of other states, excludes evidence where the potential prejudicial value outweighs the probative value. School suspension and drug use, even if true, would seem to fit into this category.
Likewise, Chapter 90.404 states, regarding character evidence of the victim:
School suspension and drug use are not relevant character evidence in this case (particularly the question of who “threw the first punch” so to speak, as far as I can tell and would have rightfully been excluded by the Court.
-Jut
@ 169: “[The NRA have] never been a strong advocate of the right of Black men and women to bear arms as much as they support the right of White men and later on, White women (as evidenced by a campaign to get more female membership).”
Well, “never” includes now, doesn’t it? Are you asserting that the NRA’s current position is that they strongly advocate the right of whites to bear arms but only weakly advocate the right of blacks to bear arms? Are you really intending to inform the readership of this blog that the NRA’s support for gun ownership depends on whether the bearer of arms is white or black? I find that very hard to believe as a factual assertion. What is you source for that claim?
If you’re only talking about the NRA’s position back during the 19th century, then I just don’t see the relevance of that history to the present discussion. I generally accept it as a given that virtually every institution in America practiced or supported racial discrimination in the 1870s.
I also don’t really see how the local NRA’s “support” for the Tyisha Miller shooting signifies a general lack of concern for black people’s gun rights. According to her Wikipedia article, she had passed out in her car with a gun at her side out and was having some kind of drug-induced convulsion. When the police tried to awaken her, she suddenly sat up and grabbed the gun, so they opened fire. Clearly, support for citizens’ gun rights doesn’t automatically entail support for every situation in which a drugged-up person with a gun places police officers or other citizens in immediate danger of being shot. Stated differently, I never understood it to be in the NRA’s position that, in any situation in which a citizen has a gun, that person is right and justified in their actual or threatened use of the weapon.
Not only that, but I don’t see how a single case from 15 years ago offers much support for the idea that similarly situated black and white gun owners are treated differently. I’m open to the possibility that this is true, but I don’t see how the case of Tyisha Miller even begins to prove it. What reason exists to support the idea that race played a role in her death? It seems like there’s a tendency for people to take any given shooting of a black person, by a white person (a cop, for example), and just assume it’s an example of how blacks are being systematically mistreated. I don’t accept the premise that just because something bad happens between people of different races, it was the difference in the races that brought about the bad result.
@174: I don’t really see how the allegations of child molestation of a family member 20 years earlier would be relevant to the prosecution’s theory of the case against GZ in the same way as evidence of TM’s MMA-style fighting would have been relevant to GZ’s theory of defense.
I also don’t see how racial statements allegedly made by GZ’s father could reasonably be used against him.
As for GZ’s own alleged racial comments, you’d have to source that for me in order for me to respond intelligently.
As for the assault on a police officer, I just don’t think it seems all that probative of given the actual circumstances and his age at the time (20?). If there had been multiple instances in which GZ had demonstrated he was interested in getting into fights with strangers and/or had used his firearm to terrorize people, that could certainly color my impression of him in a way that might cause me to seriously question his account of what took place with TM. But it appears the overall picture of GZ was that of a helpful, concerned neighbor who was interested in protecting his community, not just some hothead who was getting into melees all the time. Even the prosecution’s theory somewhat supported this image insofar as they cast him as a wannabe cop. “Cop” may hold some negative connotations for a lot of people, but it’s not exactly synonymous with “street fighter” or “outlaw.”
@175: I think you are exactly wrong. The statute states:
“90.404 Character evidence; when admissible.—
(1) CHARACTER EVIDENCE GENERALLY.—Evidence of a person’s character or a trait of character is inadmissible to prove action in conformity with it on a particular occasion, **EXCEPT** [emphasis added]:
(a) Character of accused.—Evidence of a pertinent trait of character offered by an accused, or by the prosecution to rebut the trait.
(b) Character of victim.—
1. Except as provided in s. 794.022, evidence of a pertinent trait of character of the victim of the crime offered by an accused, or by the prosecution to rebut the trait; or . . . .”
So evidence of TM’s penchant for street-fighting would be generally admissible.
Of course, it could still theoretically be excluded if it’s prejudicial effect substantially outweighed its probative value, but I don’t think there’s much of a case to be made for exclusion on that basis given the close nexus between the extra-curricular fighting TM was known to engage in and what GZ claimed he did on the night in question (obviously, before he even had any way of knowing that about TM).
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the reason the evidence of TM’s penchant for fighting was excluded wasn’t on relevancy grounds but rather on the argument that the texts found on his double-password-protected cellphone couldn’t be authenticated as actually coming from TM.
Conrad @178:
Okay, my comment was about this statement you made at 173:
You agree that drug use and suspensions are not relevant here, right?
Now, as to street fighting, for it to be relevant, the defense would have had to demonstrate a “character trait.” Not a “penchant.” The first question the judge should ask is: “what trait are you trying to prove?” The rule mentions a trait of “peacefulness.” What character trait would they attempt to prove and how would they prove it?
I think they would have to show a history of brawling and fighting (particularly with strangers) in order to demonstrate a violent or aggressive character trait. Watching a bunch of episodes of UFC on Spike TV and rough-housing with your friends, and playing Street Fighter, and talking tough on Facebook would not (should not) cut it. I don’t think you have that here.
-Jut
So Martin jumped Zimmerman while he was still in his car waiting for the police to arrive? Where’s that evidence?
There’s no evidence for that, nor is anyone (including GZ) saying that’s what happened. I already posted a link to the reconstruction of the mens’ movements.
Wikipedia, now there’s a source. If you ever want a more indepth account of Tyisha Miller, just let me know.
One thing to live it and fully research it. Another to read about it on Wikipedia.
As for Zimmerman being a nice man who got along with people in his community, maybe that’s true. But that was true of Martin too and not seen nearly as relevant. But I’m still waiting to see how Martin confronted Zimmerman first seeing as how Zimmerman by his own account didn’t stay in the car. He’s the one that started the interaction, that’s about the only thing we do know for sure. Why? Because he wasn’t inside his car and Martin wasn’t shot inside or on his car either.
I’m not actually against gun rights lobbying at all. I just don’t think the NRA is the best example given its origins and history which are documented outside of Wikipedia make it the kind of advocate for that interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that is really worth associating with. Personally I think gun advocates should come up with a different organization. I’m on the fence in that issue but what completely turns me off of it is the NRA kind of like how PETA turns me off of animal rights.
I don’t believe I was the one who said that the child molestation allegations should be admissible. In fact I thought that their inclusion might be an appealable issue by the defense. But as far as character goes, I’m not sure I’d minimize it nearly as much. My emphasis was on the judge’s conclusion that what’s called PC 243 (a) in my state would be “run of the mill”. It’s not at all. It’s not usually treated as “mild” either. Crimes against police officers tend to be treated more severely theoretically as a deterrent against committing crimes against them.
Though now it looks like juror B37 will have to shop her book elsewhere
But I’m still waiting to see how Martin confronted Zimmerman first seeing as how Zimmerman by his own account didn’t stay in the car. He’s the one that started the interaction, that’s about the only thing we do know for sure. Why? Because he wasn’t inside his car and Martin wasn’t shot inside or on his car either.
That’s absurd. What, Trayvon Martin owns the world, and anyone who isn’t in a bubble of their own private property who has any interaction with him must have been the one to start it?
You are aware that they were just as close to Zimmerman’s house as they were to the house where Martin was staying, right?
I agree the trace marijuana in his system shouldn’t have been admitted. The fact of the suspensions would be seemingly inadmissible in and of itself; but the behavior that led to the suspensions could be admissible depending on what that was.
I don’t see why a tendency toward physical violence shouldn’t be treated as a character trait for purposes of the rule. Evidence from his text messages of his fighting would seem to be probative of this trait.
Since there was evidence at trial that TM was beating up GZ “MMA style,” the fact that had a demonstrated familiarity with that style of fighting would seem highly relevant whether or not it qualifies as character evidence. It would just be relevant to show which combatant was more likely to be the one throwing the MMA punches.
Finally, my point wasn’t that all of that material should have necessarily been admitted but rather that the refusal of the court to admit it helped foment a rather sanitized version of TM that the prosecution could trumpet to the jury and the larger national audience. IMO, it contributed to a meme that TM was some kind of little angel whose reputation no one should dare to impugn lest they mark themselves as a racist monster.
Conrad @173:
That’s not what I meant; sorry if it came across that way. What I mean is, when I lived in a neighborhood with a crime problem and a friend from out of town was staying with me…that was something I mentioned before they went anywhere on their own. TM may not have been concerned for the other homes in the neighborhood the way GM was, but he could still be concerned above his ordinary level for his own (or his family’s) safety.
Robert:
Although Robert admitted that his claim that the above was based on objective evidence was an error, I don’t think he did so in a way that really repudiated the above statement. So, to make things clearer: As far as I can tell, looking at the link Robert provided, the only evidence for Robert’s claim seems to be George Zimmerman’s word.
Now, it’s possible that Zimmerman, despite his proven record as a liar on matters of substantial importance, was telling the truth in this instance. But it’s also possible that he was telling a self-serving lie.
Oh, and Robert: It’s true that I’m a middle-aged white guy. But as I recall from college, you yourself are both white – kind of incredibly white, in fact – and you were young at the same time I was, which would indicate that you’re just about as old as I am now. (In fact, you’re a good deal older, if you do what I do, and add five years per child to the age of any parent.)
So forgive me if I don’t take your expertise on how black teenagers talk to be authoritative. The actions and words attributed to Martin by Zimmerman are possible – ANYthing’s possible – but they are not even remotely plausible.
* * *
No one answered me the last time, so I’ll ask again:
It’s dark. You’re walking home from the store when you notice a stranger in a car following you, staring at you. (If it were me, at this point, I’d be thinking “maybe I’m just paranoid. I’ll turn off and he’ll drive on, because he’s not really following me.”) You turn onto a pedestrian path, where a car can’t follow, and the guy, who is bigger than you, stops the car, gets out and follows you. He doesn’t say a word to you, he just follows you.
Would you honestly not find that situation frightening at all? I sure would.
I’m not saying that it would justify attacking the man – obviously, it wouldn’t (although we don’t know if Martin did attack Zimmerman or not) – but I think any person with normal human empathy should at least be able to recognize that being in such a situation could feel both threatening and frightening.
I’ve said again and again that I can understand how, regardless of who started the fight, once Zimmerman was on the ground below Martin, being hit and having his head battered against the sidewalk (if that is what happened), he could be in genuine fear of his life. But virtually no one here on the other side seems to have any empathy at all for Martin, or is willing to admit that it would be perfectly reasonable for Martin to have been frightened in the situation leading up to the confrontation.
What specifically is wrong or misleading about the account I read in wikipedia and summarized in my comment? Surely it’s not your position that everything that appears on wikipedia is false.
Wait, are you talking about evidence that Martin had a history of jumping strangers and attacking them? If not, what EXACTLY are you talking about? Support it with links to a reliable source, please.
Once again, you’re reporting the testimony of the shooters as if it were proven fact.
The people who shot her claimed that she suddenly sat up and grabbed the gun. We don’t know if that’s true or not.
No, how about “one of them was walking away from the other, when the other, armed with a gun, pursued.”
This isn’t about Trayvon Martin ‘owning the world.’ This is about him attempting to avoid a confrontation, by attempting to avoid a confrontation. By – y’know – walking away.
Similarly this isn’t about forcing George Zimmerman into a bubble of his private property, or about how relatively close Trayvon Martin was to his home as opposed to George Zimmerman’s home, it’s about George Zimmerman creating a confrontation by getting out of his car and pursuing Trayvon Martin.
There are a couple of competing narratives here. One has a kid with no history of criminal violence assaulting a man following him for essentially no reason. The other has a well-armed man with a history of assaulting an officer following a teenager through the night and starting a confrontation that ended with that teenager dead.
Like they say in Alpha Complex, the best debriefing is the one where there’s nobody left alive to contradict your version of events.
—Myca
Amp – For reasons that I will not go into here, I am a lot more in touch with the underclass, including its young adult contingent, than you are. E-mail me privately and I’ll tell you.
“Once again, you’re reporting the testimony of the shooters as if it were proven fact.”
Didn’t you do that yourself implicitly with your link to the Marissa Alexander case?
This is about him attempting to avoid a confrontation, by attempting to avoid a confrontation. By – y’know – walking away.
According to the forensics, he was walking along the east-west axis when he and Zimmerman got into it. He had previously headed south, then reversed course and headed north. His house was south. How is this him walking away?
Following someone is not provoking a confrontation. Martin did not know that Zimmerman had a gun, until the very end of their fight; ‘he was scared that the armed guy with violence issues was chasing him’ is inoperative because he didn’t know any of that.
I do recognize that Martin had reason to be scared or alarmed; I do not think that Zimmerman’s behavior was ideal or even, in the final analysis, all that defensible. But there is zero indication that he started any shit. There is no right to have an ego zone around you that makes any approach, any following, any attention from elders a provocation, and that’s the second-best interpretation that can be put on Martin’s actions. (The best interpretation is that he felt physically at risk, that Martin thought Zimmerman was a thug coming to get him, and Martin acted in self-defense, possibly a bit too proactively, but with a self-defense motive. I don’t think that’s impossible, but unfortunately for people who want Zimmerman convicted of ‘something’ there’s no evidence of it. His conversation with his friend on the phone indicates that he was put off, not terrified that Zimmerman was coming for him; he was more pissed than scared.)
Ha! Myca with an on-topic, pertinent Paranoia reference for the win.
Grace
@190: But what reason (i.e. evidence) do you have that the police officers’ account was not true? If they just made it up on the spot to cover up the fact that they had all secretly conspired to murder a young black woman in cold blood, it was certainly lucky for them that the coroner’s report happened to show she was drugged up on something that could easily account for the behavior they claimed to have encountered.
This isn’t true at all, Ron. Regardless of what Bill Lee says now, at the time, the city said that SYG was relevant to their decision not to arrest:
The law prohibiting an arrest in cases of self defense is called the Stand Your Ground law.
The judge gave this instruction to the jury:
A jury member said this in an interview:
The idea that Stand Your Ground is irrelevant to how this even played out is ludicrous, Ron. That whatever news sources you rely on have been telling you that SYG was not relevant at all should suggest to you that whatever news sources you rely on are lying to you.
More info here: How Stand Your Ground Relates To George Zimmerman – Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Atlantic
“JUROR: Right. Because of the heat of the moment and the Stand Your Ground. He had a right to defend himself. If he felt threatened that his life was going to be taken away from him or he was going to have bodily harm, he had a right.”
Did she say SYG just like that, with the capital letters and all? The instruction may have been given, and perhaps that why she is using the phrase. But LOGICALLY it plays no role in what she’s saying. If you read her last two sentences there, she’s just describing ordinary self-defense.
Actually, I suppose where it could play into the jury’s thinking would be if one of them said, “Immediately after TM first punched GZ, why couldn’t GZ have just run away and not gotten himself pinned down under TM?” One possible response to that would be that he wasn’t required to do so under SYG. However, since there was no evidence presented that GZ COULD have gotten away after TM threw the first punch — and the jury did conclude TM threw the first punch — a better response would be that there was just no evidence to support convicting him of anything on that basis.
Seems to me that while the merits of SYG are debatable, this wasn’t really a SYG case.
Ron has said SYG is not relevant, and you’ve responded without actually referencing SYG at all.
Can you quote them specifically invoking SYG? There are many laws regulating arrest. The standard requirement for probable cause is the obvious one. When they say the law prohibited them, out of the many laws that exist how do you know it was specifically the SYG law.
Here is commentary on the possibility of a civil case by Trayvon Martin’s parents being blocked by Florida’s SYG law.