Looks like we found someone who disagrees! Terr’s response seems to be that since GZ dodged a conviction, we should just let him go, nothing to see here, and hey, he has black friends so he can’t possibly be a racist!
I’m for the DOJ or TM’s parents bringing a civil suit to GZ and bankrupting him for what I consider to be TM’s murder but only IF there’s a case. If there isn’t then there’s not much more we can do about it except leave him as some social pariah
At the risk of being accused of trolling again, even on the Daily Show last night, Jon Oliver said something like ‘In Florida you can get a gun, follow an unarmed minor, phone the police, have them explicitly tell you stop following the minor, keep following the minor, then get into a confrontation with them and if at any point you get scared, you can shoot the minor to death and the state of Florida with say, well, look, you did the best you could.’
Can you point, specifically, what part of my response to you could lead you to such ridiculous conclusions?
Well, I know that was intended to me more funny than right, but it’s just plain wrong. And not that funny.
No. He’s saying there is no good chance of a conviction. You predicated your statement on the idea that there was a reasonable chance of conviction.
Firstly, I think you just dodged the main point of my post which was specifically about the TM/GZ case. Secondly, I think you’re moving the goal post.
Thirdly, I think she should not have left the scene and returned with a gun. Once she left the scene, she was no longer in danger. From your cite:
Fourthly, I think she should have accepted the plea deal.
Fifthly, I think you’re never going to admit you’re wrong and are just going to tap dance over to something else.
Sixthly, if you do, don’t expect me to respond.
It seems the jury felt otherwise.
From the link:
*
“I think all of us thought race did not play a role,” the woman known only as Juror B37 said about the jury’s deliberations, during an interview on CNN Monday. “We never had that discussion.”
Instead, Juror B37 said the jury of six women spent hours poring over the law and the evidence from the trial before determining that Zimmerman did not meet the standards required for a second-degree murder or manslaughter conviction.*
Turn in your Race Card, sir.
Actually, the police definitely did NOT “explicitly” tell Zimmerman to stop following Trayvon Martin. I wish they had. I wish they HAD screamed, “SIT TIGHT AND DON’T MOVE. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T PURSUE HIM!!!”
George ZImmerman was, in my view, a well-meaning bonehead who NEEDED to be told, in no uncertain terms, “Let the professionals handle this.”
But that did NOT happen, contrary to what the media have tried to assert. The transcript of Zimmerman’s conversation with the 911 operator follows:
At one point, the operator asks if Zimmerman is following Trayvon. Zimmerman says “Yes.” The operator then says only “We don’t need you to do that.” They continue talking for a while longer, and the operator NEVER again says, “Stop following him- stay in the car” or anything like that.
Look, I have a 9 year old. If he’s doing something dangerous, like playing with matches, it’s not NEARLY enbough for me to say, “Uh, I don’t need you to do that.” I need to ORDER him “STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING, NOW!!!” “I don’t need you to do that” is a mild suggestion, not an order. He’ll feel free to keep on what he’s doing, and if I just carry on conversing with him, he’ll assume I didn’t really mean what I said.
I do not believe George ZImmerman was a closet Klansman who set out to shoot a black kid. I DO think he was a nervous wimp with delusions of heroism. He was an accident waiting to happen. Trayvon, meanwhile, was a wannabe gangsta. BOTH of them were idiots who got into a deadly confrontation that didn’t have to happen.
If EITHER of them had shown a lick of common sense, if EITHER of them hadn’t adhered to a stupid macho code, Trayvon could have gone home to eat his Skittles, and ZImmerman wouldn’t be getting death threats today.
As it is, I think Zimmerman deserved to be tried and convicted on a much lesser charge than murder.
And it wasn’t “the police”, it was the 911 operator, who has no authority to tell anyone anything.
Pretty much agree with that. As others have said, I think GZ was morally responsible for the death of TM. I wish we had some law that would make him liable as well, but FL simply does not, given the evidence at hand.
I love this idea. I think he did violate Martin’s civil rights. And I should note that I say this as someone who believes the acquittal in the murder charges was the correct verdict.
As I’ve said before, I haven’t followed this case that closely so if I seem evasive, it’s only because I’m more concerned with the broader issues of racial equality or the lack of same rather than the particulars of the kabuki dance played out in the Zimmerman case. Do I think justice was done there? If I had to answer yes or no I’d definitely have to say ‘no’, but I’d also freely admit that is mostly a gut response.
However as to the broader issue of whether or not racial preference, bias or outright bigotry is alive and well in Florida’s justice system, there seem to many respected people who are also asking that question. Whether or not the Zimmerman case is an example of that will be left to be seen and if discussing the broader issues are more appropriate to a separate thread, then I hope one will be started.
The statute itself still sets the stage to tell what would generally be within or outside it.
And just because the NAACP is calling for a prosecution by no stretch of the imagination means they’ve reviewed case law and found previous examples where people in Zimmerman’s position were convicted of civil rights violations. They want Zimmerman’s hide, period. If the statute has to be stretched way beyond any previous case to nail him, then stretch it.
I’m not a lawyer and have no file of case examples to show, but every legal talking head, as opposed to politician or activist, I’ve seen on TV seems to say the statute has generally been used to cover cases which a plain layman’s reading of it would seem to cover. Ie. they’d have to prove Zimmerman simply shot Martin because Martin was black. And any common sense evaluation of this case so far, where essentially no direct evidence of a racial motive by Zimmerman has been found, and a jury found he acted justifiably even when no motive had to be proved in addition, would say that such a prosecution would be extremely difficult, which seems in accordance with the lack of any similar cases brought to light even by obviously anti-Zimmerman media and their analysts. The simple explanation would be that nobody has been railroaded that way, yet.
But I think the theory of NAACP and others is that if you pump up the political pressure enough, you can not only force elected officials to order such a prosecution, but at some point you can get a jury pool biased and or intimidated enough to convict, the actual law be damned. And that’s basically what the people outraged by the recent verdict wanted, since Zimmerman was obviously not proved guilty under the law as written (good law or not) and the evidence gathered (whether or not there were serious errors in that process by the state).
The black left as exemplified by the current day NAACP has a pretty clear general view that the white power structure corrupted an ostensibly color blind legal system (and American society as a whole for that matter) in a pro-white way in the past, and so now they’re going to corrupt it in the other direction.
Say what now? If he was not guilty of murder in general, then he is definitely not guilty of murder because of racial reasons.
Jon Oliver does not correctly summarize the law of Florida.
Do you believe that his summary DOES accurately summarize the law of Florida?
I agree with all of this except the last sentence. Should being a dumbass be a crime? If so, many of us are in trouble.
But the second paragraph is absolutely true. Z’s first words should have been “Hey pal, do you need some help? I noticed you looking around and thought I could help you find something since I’m from the area.”
Martin’s first words should have been, “Can I help you sir? I noticed you following me and that’s making me uncomfortable.”
If either had done that there would have been no shooting.
It even goes beyond that. 911 dispatchers say things like ‘we don’t need you to’ not as some annoying vague passive-aggressive phraseology for ‘don’t do it’ (which agreed they have no legal authority to tell you anyway). They make those disclaimer statements so the 911 caller can’t sue them if they get involved and get hurt, claiming they thought the police were somehow deputizing them, and likewise if the caller ends up doing something wrong a victim of that wrongdoing or their family can’t sue the municipality claiming the 911 caller was acting as an agent of the police.
The idea that ‘the police told Zimmerman to back off’ is, in short, a total fallacy. The prosecution did not even make an issue of the ‘we don’t need you to’. They urged the jury to infer an unjustified killing from the fact that Zimmerman left his vehicle to follow Martin and his general supposed ‘wannabe cop’ attitude (though the jury correctly rejected that and focused on whether Zimmerman was in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury in the final confrontation, which was the correct focus under the law). But the prosecutors did not harp on the 911 operator’s comment, because it was basically irrelevant.
If I understand what I read in another (GQ, I think) thread, that’s not an issue here. He was tried for murder by the state of Florida and would be tried for civil rights violations by the federal government.
If it results in somebody’s death? In general, yes.
I’m not sure how relevant this is to the current discussion so I’ll refer you to this quote, reproduced here for convenience.
I’ll briefly elaborate by analogizing to the US Constitution. Many people, the Tea Party for example, are fond of reading the constitution and complaining that it’s not enforced as written. Well, there’s a reason for that. It was never intended to be. It was written broadly and vaguely with the intention that the institutions it created, the tripartite form of government in general and the judicial system in particular, would apply it’s principles to real life and thus give form to its principles.
A piece of legislation like the Civil Rights Act is very much like that. To what extent I can’t say since I’m not familiar with it’s case law. However it would not surprise me to find that even things that seem well defined in the statute are less so when you start reading precedent.