We’ve discussed all this before. Many people can be legitimately described as murderers even if they weren’t ultimately convicted (for example – KKK murderers who weren’t prosecuted or who were “exonerated” by a white supremacist judicial system in the early and mid 20th US). “Murderer” is not only a legal term, it’s also used outside of purely legal contexts.
As for the specifics of the Zimmerman case, that’s been done to death in other threads (and would be a hijack here), and the two of our systems of morality have been demonstrated to be so profoundly different that there’s no possibility of any better understanding here on what we find morally reprehensible.
No, you just don’t have a system of morality, you have a bunch of unexamined responses to things you find unpleasant. You are why we need laws, and why it’s so vital to apply them correctly despite the fact that it gives you a sad.
You can’t legitimately call someone who’s been found not guilty in a fair trial a murderer, and as yet no one has been able to show what was unfair with the Zimmerman or Rittenhouse trials. There’s no relevant evidence that was suppressed, there were high quality lawyers on each side, and the judges made no legal errors. The verdicts were fair, and should be respected. Even if that clashes with your childish desire for vengeance against people who did nothing but protect themselves.
I took my feelings there. My previous post containing nothing but facts belongs here, and I shall simply observe that my failing to cite a lack of something is because it’s impossible to prove a negative. You have the opportunity to show I’m wrong, but instead want to make it about feelings. Which are irrelevant when talking about legal or otherwise factual issues.
If the Zimmerman trial proves one thing, its that Arbrey’s murderers would never see justice if there wasn’t video tape. Fullstop.
One can get away with selecting, stalking, and shooting an unarmed black child (walking home at night) to death with simply saying “He started it; I was in fear for my life”.
This is an important lesson that everyone should remember. Without videotape there is no justice. With videotape there is a chance.
I mean, if you’re saying that people won’t get convicted without evidence that proves there guilt beyond reasonable doubt then you are, well, not correct exactly (and sadly) but at least on the right lines ethically. What you seem to be hinting at is that you want to see people convicted despite the lack of such evidence - if that’s the case then you are the dangerous vigilante, not the people defending themselves.
Do you honestly believe that people shouldn’t get away with alleged crimes if there isn’t solid evidence that they committed them?
Shooting Trayvon Martin to death is a crime. Zimmerman did that. He also did everything in his power to find and threaten Martin. The only evidence that Zimmerman is innocent is his own garbage words.
Its sickening that people will defend a man’s right to arm himself and shoot to death an unarmed child, walking home at night, after selecting and stalking him.
That is factually false, and repeatedly claiming it to be true when it’s been proven otherwise is silly.
Unless, of course, you have relevant evidence that it was a crime that was neither presented to the court nor revealed in the media. I doubt you have, no one else I’ve asked - in this thread or others - has been able to provide such.
There is quite literally no evidence he threatened him. None. Not a single piece. There is evidence he angered Martin, but that is far from the same thing. Also, even if he did everything in his power to find him, he failed, so that’s not really important. Again, though, following someone is not illegal.
Also factually false. The evidence from Martin’s friend, and from the injuries to both Martin adn Zimmerman, suggest his innocence.
Once again, not a thing that he’s ever been accused of, outside of threads like this. Do you honestly believe that Zimmerman had seen Martin before and had a pattern of harassing him? All the evidence suggests they’d never encountered each other before that night.
Those two things don’t follow, as you should know.
So threatening that Martin, still unarmed as you point out, went from the (presumably) safe place he was staying to confront Zimmerman.
Zimmerman was threatened at that point, which is why he shot him.
Martin was the one searching for Zimmerman just before the physical altercation. Then something happened where Martin ended up on top of Zimmerman, Zimmerman sustained head injuries, and the shot Martin. There was no tracking down and shooting on either part.
Can you please give the evidence you have that they’d encountered each other before that night? You keep using the word “stalking” so I assume you must have some.
In what has been shown, in a court, to be self defence. Based mostly on the evidence of someone who would reasonably have been expected to be biased towards Martin. Martin mentioned nothing about a gun, Zimmerman was carrying concealed, and there’s no evidence the gun became relevant until Martin attacked Zimmerman.
Look, maybe you have a different interpretation of the evidence. That might be reasonable, but until you share that instead of speculation piled upon falsehood, you will remain wrong.
So threatening that Martin, still unarmed as you point out, went from the (presumably) safe place he was staying to confront Zimmerman.
That’s what you do when your stalking killer finds you.
Zimmerman was threatened at that point, which is why he shot him.
Hunting an unarmed black child walking home at night can get scary. Lucky Zimmerman was able to arm himself, beforehand, chose his time/place/victim, and murder his prey.
Martin was the one searching for Zimmerman just before the physical altercation.
Nope. By all accounts Zimmerman was hunting Martin. A child. At night. Who was unarmed.
You keep using the word “stalking” so I assume you must have some.
What would you call someone hunting you at night? (Not that I’m ever going to conform to your vocabulary)
In what has been shown, in a court, to be self defence.
Yes, and Zimmerman got off scot free. Such injustice. Let this be a strong lesson to everyone. An unarmed dead black child means nothing when the stalking killer says “Well, I felt threatened and there’s no more witnesses”
You are still ignoring the actual facts of the case. There was no hunting, nor stalking, nor threatening misbehaviour of any kind - at least until after the point where they lost sight of each other. Before that there was simple, legal, ethically sound following and talking. Trying to make those things sound sinister for the purpose of getting an emotional response rather than focussing on the law and the facts is a failing, and it’s clear you neither know nor care about what happened here.
The only injustice done was that ZImmerman was charged in the first place, given the weakness of the prosecution’s case. Same with Rittenhouse.
You are weirdly hung up on the “dead black child” thing. His colour or age are irrelevant. Which is why it went the same way in the Rittenhouse case, with dead white adults.
…seems like an argument coming from an emotional core, not at all persuasive to someone interested in reasoned debate. I think @iiandyiiii has made a good point about the distinction between legal and moral judgments (neither of which must be a proxy for “reason” or “emotion”—it is possible to morally reason independent of the law).
I can think someone a thief even if the law would not call them a thief. I can think someone a murderer even if the law would not call them a murderer. I can even have good reasons, and articulate those reasons, for why I think that so without appealing for the law, but rather to, say, moral precepts that in 99% of real-world scenarios would be fully consistent with the law, but maybe differ in these sort of edge cases dealing with self-defense. Doesn’t mean I’m being emotional, just means I have a moral system that is distinct from the law. Not just me, but I suspect you and everyone else, too.
There is a separate, but related, argument to be had about whether the law should call someone like Zimmerman a murder, even taking the facts as they are.
I think this is the most important point to respond to. You can call them that, but in the event that they’ve been found not guilty of the allegations you are making in a fair trial (so not a mid 20th century Southern court such as the one trying Emmett Till’s killers for example) you should not call them that, as they are factually innocent in that case. In my opinion, making factual false negative statements about people is immoral. (As an aside, that is something iiandyiiii should consider if he keeps making certain claims about me).
There’s a somewhat valid question as to whether the law should be changed to prevent lethal force being used in self defence, although obviously I’m against it. I don’t think it’s a valid claim that the law should ever call someone who’s been found noy guilty a murderer. But there’s no good way to get from the facts presented at the trial to a reasonable claim that Zimmerman wasn’t defending himself, to consider him a murderer you’d have to say that self defence isn’t acceptable in those circumstances.
