Stand Your Ground: George Zimmerman Charged

Because I'm having trouble understanding how the law is supposed to work in the bizarro world of chico's mind. The part I've figured out is that apparently Zimmerman is guilty. What principle we applied to arrive at the verdict isn't clear.

 

The experts did not say it was Martin screaming, they had not tape of martin to test. what they said was they felt it was not Zimmerman screaming.

What person on the scene said that they saw Martin screaming? I'm sorry but people who could not see the confrontation, and had know prior knowledge about the voice of either person do not count as being "on the scene".

On the other hand there have been reports that there was a witnness who claimed that they saw Zimmerman underneath Martin asking for help.

 

OK I understand a reasonable step process when the basic set of facts is not changed dramatically and there is only differences in the subtelties, but that is why I am wondering if there ever was a case that the prosecution argued that the jury can accept such a different set of facts, that it in essence becomes two separate trials.

It would just seem "unfair" to me, and I would think if somone was convicted under those circumstances they would at least try to appeal the conviction of the lesser charge.

 

There's very different ways of looking at all that. First, obviously the last Iraqi war was a preemptive strike. You try and kill your own "Saddam Hussain and his henchmen" on a personal level and you have not a chance in hell of invoking any sort of SYG law.

Second, we've seen plenty of videos of insurgents being taken out preemptively. A man with a gun, a man with an IED, those guys don't have to be in the act of threatening your life right now to kill them. If it wasn't preemptive we wouldn't have seen cases of mistaken identity where convoys of civilians with women and children were destroyed from the air. They weren't exactly in the act of shooting at anybody.

Just because someone higher up has to give an okay doesn't mean a killing isn't preemptive in a normal sense.

There are also all sorts of people who have been preemptively killed using drones.

Hell, the phrase "military target" itself assumes beating someone to the punch with a preemptive strike. Military targets go way beyond people currently shooting at you.

 

Michael Russ worrying about fairness brings to mind one thing:

"Iss not fair!"

 

The quote I saw was the expert saying he would stake his professional reputation that it wasn't Zimmerman screaming. There's only one alternative. There were enough people there to know that it wasn't a third party screaming, in what I've heard to date.

And yeah, the people who were hearing all the yelling, just like Martin's girlfriend who was on the phone, have some first hand testimony to give, semantics aside.

 

This is one of those cases, IMO, where this word reveals its inadequacy. I don't think he's the kind of guy who admires the Klan. Further, I don't think he would have called 911 if a 40 year old black man was walking down the street.

But I also don't think he would have called 911 if everything about Trayvon was exactly the same except for his skin color.

If you agree with me, the word "racist" is too blunt of an instrument. "Racially profiling" is clumsy but, to me, pretty precise for the circumstances.

 

You are right, not a racist in the extreme sense, but he sees a young person wearing a hoodie, and thinks it's suspicious.

Do we know if he even knew Martin was black initially? If it was dusk, he sees a young kid wearing a hoodie and thinks it's suspicious regardless of the color of his skin.

 

In zimmerman's initial call to the police, he said there is someone suspicious. The dispatcher asked if he was white, black or hispanic, and Zimmerman said, "he looks black."

 

Yeah, because that is 100% analogous to the Zimmerman case.

 

Do you dispute that the rule proposed is untenable, or do you want to step up to the plate and try to defend it?

 

I have no idea what "rule" you're talking about.

 

There is an eyewitness who saw the scuffle and said it was Zimmerman screaming. Z claimed that himself at the scene and a cop heard that claim. The girlfriend stated her call was cut off at the beginning of the scuffle. The audio expert who "would stake his reputation" also heard Zimmerman say a racial slur on the tape, despite other experts disagreeing. Other neighbors think it was Martin, but didn't see the struggle.

 

By trying to steal the woman's car, the man initiated the confrontation.

 

Isaid long ago that the person screaming is the key. Forget what Zimmerman said. How much credibility are you going to assign a guy trying to beat a murder rap? A witness is certainly good for him but we have no idea what credibility problems that person may have. How good is their eye sight? Their hearing? How far away where they?

I don't have any answers. I just posed the idea that if you could prove the person wailing for help was one or the other, you would have a determinative fact. The prosecutor mus feel pretty good about it I she went for 2nd degree murder.

 

I would give Zimmerman's statement a bit more credibility because it was at the scene. That's pretty quick thinking if he was already trying to create a story. That this story is supported by the only eyewitness to see the struggle almost certainly raises more than a reasonable doubt as to whether it was Martin screaming.

The affidavit only mentions Martin's mother identifying his voice from the tape as evidence that it was him screaming. Sounds shaky to me.

 

We can changing the hypo until any question about who initiates the confrontation is removed. For example, woman is at the mall looking for a parking space in a crowded lot. One spot opens up, but a man turns in first and beats her to it. The woman becomes angry and follows the man when he gets out of her car, yelling at him. The man tells her to leave him alone and keeps walking towards the mall, which just makes the woman even more upset and she continues to follow him and call him names. The man loses his temper and begins to violently punch and kick the woman, causing serious injury. Unable to get away or otherwise repel the attack, the woman draws a gun and shoots the man, killing him.

Is the woman not entitled to self defense, because at the time she pursued the man she was carrying a gun?

Or, to flip the first hypo around, let's take Demo's rule but this time the man was a repo man trying to repossess the car and when the woman comes out and yells at him, he says "Okay lady, calm down, I'm just the repo guy for the bank, I'm walking away now" but the woman is so angry that she pulls a gun out and starts shooting at the man, who returns fire and kills her. Is the man not entitled to self defense, because he regularly carries a gun with him at work as he goes around repossessing cars?

 

Did he? If so he must have changed his mind, because I only saw him saying it was "punks." Another expert said he thought it was Martin, and so did the woman who thought the cops tried to change her story. I don't know if the one guy who said he saw someone in red on the bottom and yelling automatically trumps all that. How can you be sure which one is yelling when you can't see that well? Eyewitnesses are also famous for getting what they "saw" wrong.

 

The expert with the computer analyzer said it was punks, the other "stake my reputation" guy said he heard the slur.

Read more: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/30822763/detail.html#ixzz1rxrWnwOL

Owen later concluded there was no slur on the tape.

The "ear witness" lady was on the phone to 911, she didn't have a clue what was happening, as was obvious when she told them that there was someone on the ground and a black guy standing over him. If i was the Prosecutor i wouldn't even call her as a witness. She has given so many inconsistent and blatantly false accounts of what she saw to anyone with a camera and microphone, she would be useless at trial. The defense would rip her to shreds.


You are right about eyewitnesses frequently getting it wrong, but the jury is still going to give their testimony more credence because they were actually there. And when you've got the only two eyewitnesses telling the same story, that's going to be hard to refute.

 

Rules of engagement for the military are an entirely separate matter though, aren't they. What we were talking about was whether a political decision to start a war, such as in Iraq, was similar to SYG laws and, whilst not identical, they're not dissimilar either.

By the time people in the military have been placed 'in theatre' THAT decision has already been made.

The decision as to which is, presumably, often a matter of interpretation of the evidence which, in this case, will tend to be one sided I assume?

Yes, IMO the word racist is used too often. In fact it could even be argued that it's beginning to lose some of it's meaning. It's discussed as if it's like a light switch which is either on or off when, in reality, what we're usually talking about is a range of attitudes which almost everyone shares when they come into contact with others different from themselves whether it's skin colour, religion, sexual preference, etc. etc. Unfortunately people have a tendency to see other people's bigotry whilst ignoring their own.

It's also noticeable that some bigotries have become almost acceptable.

It almost makes you wonder, when he was asked about the person he was following, Zimmerman should have said 'The guy looks Muslim'.

 

My rule? What are you talking about?

 

Good luck getting an answer to that question.

 

You're a looney