During the pendency of Zimmerman’s trial for second-degree murder, you repeatedly offered analyses and predictions about how the jury would view the evidence, what instructions the law would allow the jury to hear, and what the results would likely be. You even invoked your supposed expertise as a vet during one exchange about Zimmerman’s head injury:
Only to be rebutted with a series of citations:
At which point you admitted there was a small chance you might have been mistaken, and then quickly changed the subject.
It’s quite astonishing to me that after that extensively flawed track record, you now feel confident to again enter the discussion with your opinion about the factual application of the law to the case at hand.
The last prosecutor who tried GZ didn’t have much of a case either but that didn’t stop the prosecution (or MSNBC/CNN/ABC) of trying to make the charge stick. The only witness to the latest charge doesn’t want to testify. There is no “case” to present to a jury.
Understandable mistake. I can’t count the number of times I’ve shattered a glass table with a shotgun in a calm, non-threatening manner and then tried to barricade the door when the police responded to my wife’s frantic 911 call. Around my house, we call that “Sunday.”
It’s Very typical in domestic disturbance cases. Cops show up while they are fighting. Haul someone off to jail. Then the spouse decides they don’t want to press charges.
Sometimes its the lady freaking out and trashing the house. Other times its the guy. domestic cases are a PITA for cops.
Her current statement will make a prosecution very difficult. The strongest evidence for the violence is her claim – which she now recants. If she does another about-face and avers it happened, the jury will certainly be asked to consider her recantation as evidence of her lack of credibility.
Not so far as I can see – he was charged with felony aggravated assault, misdemeanor battery and misdemeanor criminal mischief, all of which arose from the claims that he broke the table and threatened the girlfriend with a firearm. I’m not aware of any charges arising from being “barricaded in the house with a shotgun.” According to his version, she broke the table and fabricated the threat, an account she now largely accepts. What other evidence are you thinking of?
Criminal mischief. Maybe. As I said, I have no real reason to believe this incident ever actually happened. I also don’t know who owned the stuff in the house; obviously he can’t be guilty of criminal mischief if it was his own shit.
And a PITA for prosecutors…
Although prosecutors can move ahead without the cooperation of the victim, it makes it difficult to convict if there is no physical evidence of injuries, he said.
“Juries really want to see the alleged victim on the stand talking about the case,” McChesney said. “It’s very hard to convict in a case when the victim isn’t there.”
However, in Zimmerman’s case, Scheibe provided a real-time account of what was happening on a 911 call.
“You point your gun at my fricking face,” Samantha Scheibe is heard telling Zimmerman on the 911 call. “Get out of my house. Do not push me out of my house. Please get out of my house.”
Seconds later, she told the dispatcher, “You kidding me? He pushed me out of my house and locked me out. … He knows how to do this. He knows how to play this game.”
Yes, and that real-time account is almost certainly admissible against Zimmerman, regardless of how Scheibe ultimately testifies. So it’s not correct to say they have no evidence – and of course I didn’t say that.
But if Scheibe takes the stand and says, “Yes, that was what I said on the tape, but I said those thing because I was furious with him, not because they were true,” I believe any jury would have difficulty convicting him.
She could be charged with filing a false police report or misuse of emergency services but they’d have to prove BARD that it wasn’t true. She can’t be charged with anything for recanting her assertions against Zimmerman, no.
