Of course. In fact, every single law ever changed was changed because of peoples’ opinions.
Me boyo, I assume you were raised Catholic, or at least Christian. Like Jesus in Gethsemane, you turn the other cheek and accept your fate, no matter how unfair. You are not their judge.
(Looking at that) God, damn, I was a great Christian, once upon a time. But where did Peter get that sword?
To the contrary, it’s clear from your commentary that you still fail to grasp the boundaries of the law, since it is manifestly not based on “reading the intent inside somebody else’s heard [sic].”
The legal standard is clear, and the problem with convicting Zimmerman was the lack of evidence to show each and every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. You are unable to correctly articulate the elements of the crime with which Zimmerman was charged, and have exhibited a remarkable willingness to substitute your opinion for the actual elements of the law.
That’s an absolutely unsupportable conclusion. When Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam were tried for the murder of Emmett Till in Tallahatchie County in 1955, the jury was all white men; Zimmerman’s jury was neither all white nor any men. In 1955, the sheriff arrested two prosecution witnesses to prevent them from testifying. No witnesses were locked up by anyone in 2013 to keep their stories away from the jury. In 1955, the sheriff provided beer to the jury to drink during the trial. The jurors in ZImmerman’s trial were not permitted to drink alcohol during the trial. The judge refused to permit Carolyn Bryant, the woman at whom Till was said to have whistled, to testify. No similar judicial exclusions handicapped the Zimmerman prosecution.
In short, you don’t appear to have much awareness at all of what happened in 1955 and how different the trial in 2013 was. I advise you to educate yourself.
Not to derail the thread, but wasn’t Zimmerman only half-white, half-Hispanic, but the media always played up the “white” part?
911 operators generally aren’t law enforcement officers so Zimmerman didn’t disobey the police. Granted, I would have stayed in my car rather than risk engaging someone I thought might be a thief or a burglar, but he didn’t disobey any lawful order.
Yes.
I think it’s a stretch to say they “always” did but for the most part that’s true. And of course a name like “Zimmerman” doesn’t sound very Hispanic (because it isn’t, his dad is white).
Those saying Zimmerman was “acting like a mugger” should have stepped forward back during the investigation so that the police could have known there were witnesses. It’s too late now though.
I recently watched a documentary about capital punishment in America. An official commented that the condemned almost never offer resistance when the time comes for them to be taken to the execution chamber.
Presumably, they are long since resigned to their fate and not even willing to put up the futile resistance, especially since it’s quite a few personnel who will be ‘escorting’ them to the chamber.
In his case it was rather a rather short-lived and violent criminal record.
(The evidence supports Zimmerman’s story that) Martin was in the act of beating Zimmerman’s head against the concrete when he was shot. He absolutely deserved to die. Or at least, he deserved to be shot to put an end to his unlawful assault, and whether he lived or died, either outcome was (and is) acceptable in the eyes of the law. Similar to the Gender Equality vs “You hit like a girl” thread, if Martin hadn’t thrown that first punch, it wouldn’t have ended badly for him. Martin was the one that turned the encounter violent.
The police, quite rightly in hindsight, concluded that the evidence showed it was justified self-defense. And the prosecutor they eventually got to push the case, Angela Corey, absolutely wanted a conviction.
Or maybe it’s a case of “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”.
Bricker, you can throw in all the legal points you want. But when the prosecutor decides he’s only going to make a token effort, what occurs isn’t a real trial. The fact that something called a trial was played out in a court room with a judge and a jury and several lawyers present doesn’t make it a real trial.
Zimmerman shot Martin, who was unarmed. These facts aren’t in dispute. The police arrived and took Zimmerman in for questioning.
Zimmerman had shot an unarmed man but he claimed he had felt threatened by the unarmed man and had acted in self-defense. The police apparently chose to accept Zimmerman’s statement at face value and released him.
The police hadn’t even identified Martin at this point. They had no idea if he had a criminal record.
Maybe I’m being cynical but I believe if an armed black man had shot and killed an unarmed white man, the police wouldn’t have simply accepted his statement that it was self-defense and released him.
Here is the interview Angela Corey (the prosecutor in the Zimmerman case) gave after the trial. I’d encourage you to watch it and try to judge for yourself whether they were just making a token effort or not. Personally, I find her last statements in the interview very telling.
I’m sure that a moment’s additional thought will bring you to the realization that legal points are precisely what’s required to convict a criminal defendant of a crime. So far from being irrelevant distractions, the legal points are key to the understanding of the case and what happened.
That’s not what happened. The realest real real real realio effort could not supply evidence that did not exist.
It’s not a crime to shoot someone who is unarmed, so perhaps you have finally described the basis of your confusion: you maybe believed that all the prosecution had to do was prove that Zimmerman shot Martin and Martin was unarmed? And then, when that did not result in a conviction, you decided it meant a half-hearted prosecution effort?
Well, problem solved: it’s not a crime in Florida to shoot someone who is unarmed. Other factors must be present before there’s a crime. Merely proving that one person shot another when the latter was unarmed: NOT ENOUGH for a criminal conviction.
Still: nothing you said describes a crime.
Maybe. But who cares, since whether the police released him or not did not transform his actions into a crime.
It’s really very simple. Identify specifically what crime you believe was committed, identify each and every element of that crime, and then explain what evidence was adduced at trial to prove that crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
That’s how crimes are defined and how the prosecution secures a conviction. In this case, that did not happen. It’s not about the jury disbelieving evidence. It’s about the evidence not being presented, and the reason it was not presented was that it did not exist to be presented.
I agree with you on this.
And I disagree on this. I think it’s likely that arguments weren’t made and evidence wasn’t produced because the prosecution wasn’t really interested in obtaining a guilty verdict. I think Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense held in court not because it was true but because it was inadequately challenged by the prosecution.
Or are you going to continue to pretend there had never been a unfair trial involving a black person in this country’s history?
Correct AFAIK. And if you can’t flee, as in the case of someone punching you in the face, knocking you down and sitting on your chest pounding your head against the ground, you have the right to self-defense then as well.
Well, no, they didn’t just take his statement at face value. They interrogated him for some hours, and the evidence that he had been assaulted (the black eyes, facial contusions, and gashes to the back of his head) were immediately apparent.
The police also continued to investigate the case even after they released him. And subsequently developed all the evidence that proved the Zimmerman’s statement was substantially correct.
If you think it is likely, I expect you have some evidence to show it. What evidence wasn’t produced? What arguments weren’t made?
[ul][li]Zimmerman claimed Martin punched him in the face. Zimmerman had black eyes, a broken nose, and Martin had a mark on his knuckle consistent with having punched somebody. [/li][li]Zimmerman claimed Martin bashed his head against the ground. Zimmerman had gashes on the back of his head consistent with having been struck against a hard surface. [/li][li]Zimmerman claimed Martin sat on his chest and held him down. Zimmerman had grass stains and moisture on the back of his jacked. Martin had grass stains on his knees, and none anywhere else. A witness said he saw Martin on top of Zimmerman.[/li][li]Zimmerman claimed he had been following Martin, but lost sight of him, and then arranged to meet the police. Transcripts of the call to the NEN operator show this to be the case. Dee Dee testified that Martin told her that he and Zimmerman had lost contact with each other, and that Martin had been near his father’s house and then doubled back to confront Zimmerman.[/li][li]Zimmerman claimed he was screaming for help. A witness said that Zimmerman cried to him for help during the fight. [/li][li]The fight went on for some little time, between the end of what Dee Dee testified and the time when the police arrived on the scene. Martin was shot once, at close range. If Zimmerman approached Martin with gun in hand, why did Zimmerman wait for almost a minute, and allow Martin to break his nose, blacken his eyes, and beat his head against the ground, before firing?[/ul]Those are the parts of Zimmerman’s story that are backed up by evidence. What evidence do you have that disprove any of this, and prove something else?[/li]
Regards,
Shodan
What specific evidence do you contend existed but was not presented?
Certainly there have been many. An example was the Emmett Till trial raised in this very thread, and I was able to provide specific examples of evidence the prosecution failed to present.
But there is a logical fallacy called “argument from ignorance.” It arises when the rhetor argues that because we don’t know the details, his proposition must be true. (“I’m adopted and my parents haven’t told me.” “How do you know?” “Because my parents haven’t told me I’m not adopted, and even if they did, they’d just be lying.”)
Your argument falls prey to this fallacy. You don’t identify the evidence that you claim was wrongfully never presented, but you are certain there must have been some such evidence. Arguments that should have been made were not.
What evidence? What arguments?
Do you contend that there has never been a fair trial involving a black person in this country’s history?
Regards,
Shodan
Of course Martin was committing violence against Zimmerman at the time he was shot. He was acting in self-defense. If he had fought just a little bit better, he might even still be alive.
Yes, the jury gave the correct decision, in that they found that the prosecution had not made a convincing case against Zimmerman. But that’s just because the prosecution chose not to make such a case. It would be really easy to show that Martin was in reasonable fear for his life at the time the confrontation started, and also really easy to show that Zimmerman was not in reasonable fear for his life at that time. For whatever reason, the prosecution chose not to do so.
For the first point, it was certainly reasonable for Martin to be in fear for his life, because the truth is always reasonable. He was in fact killed, and thus it was reasonable for him to fear being killed. For the second, we have from Zimmerman’s own testimony that he did not act in a manner consistent with how a reasonable person would act if in fear for his own life.
Scenario: They are coming to take you to the electric chair/gas chamber…but your lawyer is on his way to the governor with evidence he is sure will exonerate you or at least cause the governor to put a temporary halt to the execution. You honestly believe that if you just go with the flow he won’t reach the Gov in time, so what should you do?
The reason Martin was killed is because he initiated a physical confrontation with Zimmerman. People in this country are generally not allowed to punch someone for watching or following them in public. If we had some evidence that Zimmerman did something more sinister and threatening than watch / follow Martin, that might change the calculus, but there doesn’t appear to be any such evidence.