Reasonable doubt was much easier to sow in the Zimmerman case. For one, Zimmerman did not testify. No one who testified had a good close-up look at what was going on at the time of the shooting and no cell-phone video was taken.
And yet, the actual events, as testified to by Zimmerman’s defense team, were substantively the same: A self-appointed guardian knew that someone “didn’t belong” there because of his race, pursued him, and eventually shot and killed him (because he was afraid that the victim would fight back against his harassment).
If Zimmerman had admitted to cornering Martin and brandishing his firearm at him(or there was video to that end), then it would not have been as likely to go in his favor.
As it was Zimmerman claimed to have lost track of Martin, and that Martin then ambushed him. I have my doubts as to this claim, but with just his word against a corpse’s, and no video, self defence held up.
And honestly, if these three good 'ol boys hadn’t videod their crime, and had spent 30 seconds getting their stories straight, they most likely wouldn’t have been charged, much less found guilty.
I don’t think it’s surprising. It just wasn’t a certainty, as it should have been.
The biggest head scratcher in this case is why on earth would the video have been released to the media? It essentially proved the prosecutions case. If it never comes to light are charges against the killers ever brought?
I would not think so, as this was indeed the vast majority of the State’s case.
Because, fortunately, these were some really dumb racists.
One would hope that if they were smarter, then they would know better to hunt down and kill a jogger in their neighborhood. The problem is the in between, not smart enough to not be racist murderer, but smart enough to have a chance at getting away with it.
Seems to have been because, believe it or not, they thought they’d acted entirely reasonably.
And apparently, at first glance, so did their local cops.
One would think the lawyers would have advised against it. Just let any firestorm die down. It probably does over time. In any event it has the best possible outcome.
The only conviction I don’t entirely understand or agree with is the malice murder charge for Travis but not Gregory McMichael. If one got it why shouldn’t both get it? They both had guns and if Arbery had confronted Gregory instead then he would probably have been the one to shoot him. I don’t know if either should have gotten a malice murder conviction though.
If Travis would have shot Arbery much earlier, it seems to me no additional charges could have been brought, even though I feel it would have been a more heinous act.
Travis was the triggerman. Gregory was armed but didn’t shoot.
It wasn’t Zimmerman who made that claim at the trial, it was the woman who was on the phone to Martin at the time. According to her, Martin had reached his father’s house but, instead of going in, turned back to find Zimmerman. That, combined with the inury to Zimmerman, are enough to provide reasonable doubt that he was the aggressor.
Of course, people who have only read media reports that support their preferred narratove will ignore the actual facts of the case.
Funny you say that as you invent things that fit your narrative.
And you say that this means that he ambushed him? Facts not in evidence. If some creep is following you around in the dark, you may not want them to know where you live. That doesn’t mean that you are going to attack him.
Contrary to how it fits into your preferred narrative, that was exactly the claim he made at trial.
Yes, him being the only one to be able to tell the story of what went down did lead to the jury being unable to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not act in self defense. That does not mean that that is how things factually played out. If a juror is 99% sure that Zimmerman was the aggressor, they still have to find him not guilty based on that 1% chance that they are wrong.
The absolute facts is that Zimmerman was playing vigilante, and killed someone due to his carelessness in his actions. Had he not decided to take the law into his own hands, and hunt down someone who was staying in the neighborhood, Martin would be alive.
And how this relates to the Arbery shooting, is that if all we had to go on was the word of these good 'ol boys, then you’d be saying exactly the same things in their defense.
Clearly you don’t know what happened at the trial, as Zimmerman didn’t testify. So, the rest of what you say is irrelevant, as it’s based solely on what you’ve read in biased media and not on the actual facts.
Although yes, obviously if there wasn’t enough evidence to convict Arbery’s killers I’d be saying they shouldn’t be convicted. It genuinely scares me that there are people out there who think differently, as those people are fundamentally opposed to justice and the rule of law.
Oh, on edit, there clearly was enough evidence to convict them, showing that the rule of law actually works. That they were convicted and both Zimmerman and Rittenhouse were not shows that the system can easily distinguish between self defence and murder. You, and others here, need to learn to do the same.
No, it doesn’t. Not at all. It says at most that, when the defendants shoot themselves in the foot by showing a video, they may wind up convicted. And that was only after a huge public outcry because the system was going to let them get away with it without trial. There’s a reason law enforcement is also implicated in this case. Justice didn’t happen because of the system. It occurred despite the system, because people fought the system.
What we know is that all three cases involved people put themselves into the situation where they felt their life was in danger. They all three involve people claiming self defense in situations they should not have been in the first place. All three involve situations where you can easily show that the shooter started the actual confrontation.
One trial going the way it should in no way proves that the others were fair trials. That would be like arguing that one person getting punished for cheating on a test means no one else cheated. It would be like arguing that, because one famous person got convicted of murder, OJ Simpson clearly was not a murderer.
The actual circumstances matter. The circumstances of Zimmerman’s issue was that he was a vigilante who ignored the cops and went out with his gun to confront this kid he assumed was a criminal due to his black skin. The circumstances of Rittenhouse was that a 17 year old deliberately went to a place where he believed there were riots, carried an impractical gun (because he wasn’t allowed to own one), all to “defend the neighborhood.” The only way you can defend your neighborhood from property damage with a gun is to shoot people.
These are not good people who were defending themselves from would-be attackers. They chose to put themselves into these situations that any decent person would avoid.
Because of that, you will never convince people that it was okay for them to shoot their victims. It was only “self-defense” by the perverse meaning of the law and its inability to prove otherwise. The system failed. Just like it almost did in this case, if not for the “mobs” who put pressure on it.
I didn’t say that he did.
Good dodge. Make up a reason to not respond to actual debate and facts that you can’t handle.
Right, as I said, if there was not video of it, then you’d be taking their side of the story. Just as you take Zimmerman’s when he is the only one to tell the tale of that evening.
That alone should give you pause on your certainty of what happened, but that would require some self reflaction.
There may be one or two who think that way. I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it.
But, there may still be those who question the story that was given, and think that if the whole story had been told then, the jury would have come to the result it ended up coming to in this reality, where there was video of the incident.
Right, because they took and publicized video of their actions.
No, it says that the system can see that if it doesn’t have enough information to conclude something beyond a reasonable doubt, that they should err on the side of the defendant. It certainly did nothing of the sort of distinguishing between self defense and murder.
As I said, if there was no video of the Arbery murder, you’d be saying exactly the same thing about these guys as you say about Zimmerman.
And you could learn to be a farmer with all the straw you are throwing around.
Yes you did, you directly said he made that claim at the trial. That’s false, he made no claims at all at the trial apart from pleading Not Guilty and claiming self defence.
Yes, as that’s what “innocent until proven guilty” means. Again, obviously I’m not going to consider someone guilty when the evidence doesn’t show that. It would be absurd to do otherwise.
To take the Zimmerman case as an example, you can speculate all you like about what might have happened. What you should not do is assume those speculations have any basis in reality, unless you can find evidence to prove them true.
It’s amazing that anyone was ever convicted for anything before smartphones and security cameras.
Some of them plead guilty. Others were black people.
But lawyers are certainly not required to do whatever it takes to try to get their clients off. They also have a duty to maintain ethical standards. I think there’s a good case to be made that (for example) seeking jury nullifcation through thinly-veiled appeals to racism is a failure of ethics.