Since you assert that both are liars, why do you choose to believe one over the other?
Regards,
Shodan
Oh Bullshit. I am not gonna even bother playing this game with you. You act as though you haven’t made opinion statements phrased as facts without citation. For example:
I would like a cite first that the state’s case “tanked” rather than them just having been bested by the defense. Additionally, I want a cite that Zimmerman’s honesty was not the reason for said tanking.
I’d like a cite that the jury might have voted to convict if they learned about unrelated bad things he did in the past.
I like a cite that the law as applied in the Zimmerman case is poorly conceived.
I would like a cite that Zimmerman did not in fact violate the law as opposed to just not being convicted of violating it.
No reasonable person parses the above the way you attempted to parse what I said, and ask for a citation on something so transparently obvious unless they are just trying to be intellectually dishonest.
Should I go on with more examples of your uncited claims, or do you think it might be best to not bother playing childish games in the future?
Additionally, you avoided my question before about what specifically you think Zimmerman lied about during his trial?
I never said the answer was to treat everyone equally bad. I was commenting on how such lofty aspirations, and the ridiculous contortions some make to justify giving someone the benefit of the doubt, are selectively applied by most. Additionally, I was responding to the comment that:
[QUOTE=dracoi]
But we don’t convict people of murder just because they’re assholes.
[/QUOTE]
Which is obviously false.
Convicting someone for the “wrong” reason doesn’t mean they are not guilty. You seem to be intimating that they are related when they are not.
That sounds good, but it’s impossible in practice given such things are being judged by people with their own baggage and prejudices.
I agree, but it will never happen. And since we are calling out people, I ask again what you think I “blatantly lied about.”
Five reasons.
- His lawyer, who I imagine he conversed with around that time, said he had a gun on him at the time.
- His ex-wife, while on the phone in the heat of the moment, said he had a gun.
- He is generally known to carry a gun.
- He has murdered someone with a gun in the past, and has allegedly threatened his current girlfriend with a gun.
- The police didn’t search his car at the time leaving open the possible he had a gun.
For Zimmerman’s story that he didn’t have a gun on him to be true, we would have to believe that his wife and his lawyer both lied or were mistaken. That seems less likely than him lying to cover his ass IMO.
This is substantiated by numerous legal commentaries during the trial. Here’s a good one. And the Zimmerman honesty factor is self-evident: Zimmerman did not testify during the state’s presentation of their case.
“Might” is a verbal auxiliary used to express possibility or probability. Cite.
That’s only my opinion. I can’t cite it, and therefore I withdraw the claim that it’s obviously true.
No game. If I can’t cite a claim in GD, then you have every right to call me on it.
But I admit that requesting this kind of support in MPSIMS is inappropriate, and I already apologized.
During his trial? Nothing. Never said he did.
To the police? I did not believe his story about the encounter.
It means they should have been found not guilty, but were instead convicted. It sounds like you’re in favour of getting a conviction by whatever mean necessary, correct or otherwise, if you think someone is guilty despite not being able to prove it.
Legal commentaries are opinions. Hardly something, even in significant numbers, you can use to prove your statement that the state’s case “tanked” and the reasons for said “tanking.”
His direct testimony is not necessary to gain an opinion of his honesty given the fact that his account was played for the jury, and numerous people testified to their opinions of his honesty. So I reassert my initial question. Please cite your claim.
Great. Please cite you claim that they might have voted to convict. What are you basing that claim on in this specific case?
Geez, I guess I commend your commitment to this charade.
What specifically?
There’s an old joke that goes something like this:
A elderly woman calls the telephone company to complain about the foul language she heard being used by workers who were repairing something on the pole near her home. When questioned, a crew foreman submitted the following account: “Well, me and Clarence was working on the problem, and Clarence was up on the pole and he accidentally dropped his toolbelt right on my head. So I looked up at him and said, ‘Really, Clarence, you must learn to be more careful.’”
That describes what I don’t believe about Zimmerman’s account. It makes very little sense to me that a simple inquiry along the lines of “What are you doing here?” would trigger the rage and physical attack that Zimmerman claimed Martin launched at him. I find it much more likely that Zimmerman used more rude, foul and accusatory language than he was willing to admit to, knowing that the only witness was dead, and that even a video camera (if one happened to be mounted on someone’s door and caught the proceedings) wouldn’t give the lie up.
Basically this. It takes two to tango, and here we have a tango that ends up with someone dead with a hole in their chest, yet George tells it like he had absolutely *nothing *to do with how it escalated to that extent. Innocent as the new-fallen snow, he is. There’s zero evidence of -anything- remotely suggesting Martin would go from running away from the creepy guy in the car to sucker-punching him and launching a massive attack on his head via concrete sidewalk unprovoked.
We know that Zimmerman jumped a cop in bar. He’s now ‘allegedly’ :rolleyes: pulled a gun on his wife, and his girlfriend, breaking tables & iPads and leaving targets with bullet holes in them. And yet we’re supposed to believe that when he was ‘out looking for a street sign’, he was ‘totally not following after Martin no-sirree’, and when Martin ‘suddenly appears’, and asks if he has a problem, George’s response is, ‘why Clarence, I don’t have any problem whatsoever’ and reaches for his…phone, which he can’t find even though according to him he was just on the phone literally *seconds *ago, and he’s backing up towards his truck and Martin sucker punches him.
Exactly. It just doesn’t pass the smell test.
Unfortunately, not passing the smell test is insufficient for a finding beyond a reasonable doubt of guilt. And as to the charge of second degree murder, there was simply no evidence on the record that would allow a jury to find all the elements of the crime.
I’m sure that Zimmerman lied. But i don’t know how much he lied, and what actions his lies covered up. And in this country, where we require evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, “I don’t know…” is not really a standard upon which conviction can be rested.
But if we stop talking about criminal conviction for second-degree murder, and start talking about basic questions of honesty…then I am absolutely convinced that Zimmerman’s story was self-serving crap.
Due to politics, I usually read your posts with a :dubious: eye, but virtually all your explanations regarding law earn my grudging respect.
In my opinion though, the problem is The Law itself. It has been amended, stretched, distorted, perverted beyond all intent of the Founding Fathers. Instead of being our proud heritage, it has become a disgrace, allowing all manner of travesties as both intended and unintended results. The death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman is one of these. For most of those responsible for the debacle of Stand Your Ground this was an unintended result but it would not surprise me in the slightest if for some of those, this was an intended result.
I agree that Florida’s version of SYG is unwise in the extreme. I agree with the basic concept of self-defense – but to exercise it as a legal defense, the burden should be on you. In other words, if you kill someone, the state must prove that you did it; the burden should then shift to you to prove, by preponderance of the evidence, that the killing was justified in defense of your own life or safety.
By requiring the state to disprove self-defense, Florida opens the doors too wide and allows killers to escape the legal consequences for their acts too often.
In my opinion, of course.
It wasn’t the law that led to Zimmerman’s acquittal. We already know at least one of the jurors based their assessment on the idea that Trayvon had acted inappropriately, when this belief wasn’t supported by the evidence. Why should this be overlooked?
We can play “what if” all we want when discussing the law, the judge’s decisions, and the prosecution’s strategy. But if we refuse to admit the obvious–that the jury came into that trial biased against the victim for reasons that had little to do with the law, the judge’s decisions, and the prosecution’s strategy–then the lesson that this tragedy represents will be forever lost on us, and stuff like this will happen again.
That Zimmerman continues to advertise his capacity for deceit and violence, despite receiving the biggest pass for wrongdoing anyone could ever receive, only underscores how massively duped people were when they jumped on his side and blamed the kid for his own murder. Will anyone man up and admit they were wrong? No, of course not. But the truth is the truth.
If Martin had been on trial, no juror would have been permitted to make that kind of inference.
But jurors assessing Zimmerman’s guilt are certainly allowed to make such leaps of inference about how Martin acted.
The reason for this was explained to you, and all other readers of the several excessively long Zimmerman threads. It appears not to have sunk in, however.
And it certainly WAS the law that led to his acquittal: the prosecution failed to adduce any evidence to support the element of malice, hatred, or ill-will required for second-degree murder.
If they can make any inferences they want to make, regardless of what the evidence actually supports, then it’s stupid to say the law is why Zimmerman was acquitted. It’s more accurate to assign responsibility to the jury’s imagination and willingness to swallow bs, no matter how wrong and silly it is.
“Making such leaps of inference” is a load. The juror faulted Martin for defending himself against the man who confronted him. Never mind the fact that Zimmerman denied confronting the kid, so it wasn’t even that she afforded him any credence in this part of the story. The “leap of inference” made was that Martin was in the wrong because he didn’t run away, and this “wrongness” enabled Zimmerman to shoot him dead.
You may consider such thinking fine and dandy. But let’s not pretend the law is why such crazy notions exists.
A while back I did the research and found that most states require the state to disprove self-defense.
Frankly anything else is horrifically unjust, and makes a mockery of the idea that you have a right to defend yourself. Sadly, I live in such a place.
Ah here it is:
Apparently only one state does not have the “the state has to disprove self-defense” rule - Ohio.
The SCOTUS ruled a long time ago that “Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the face of an upturned knife." There’s an assumption that the person claiming self-defense did not have time to call/wait for help to arrive or perform a medical/mental examination of their attacker or do anything other than defend their life. Self-defense is self-defense and requires an imminent danger state of mind. You can not use lethal force against someone who is trying to force your closed and locked front/bedroom/basement door open (the Joe Biden gambit). There is no imminent danger. Call the police and wait for help to arrive. If the door is forced open then immenent danger does exist and someone could legally use lethal force force to defend themself.
However, if the state can prove that imminent danger did not/could not have existed at the time lethal force was used, the self-defense claim fails. (Depending on how the jury/judge views the evidence, of course.)
I wonder how much a BMW X6 cost and I wonder if the one that Zimmerman is driving is a rental or what. I wonder if he’s paid his lawyer yet. I wonder how the people that donated to him feel about how he’s using those funds.
I’m just wondering this morning.
He means the requirement for the state to prove you had the opportunity to retreat.