Stoid, it’s one thing to request that the scope of the conversation be circumscribed or defined in order to eliminate hijacks, or to focus on a particular aspect of a subject. But your criteria seem to limit this conversation to just you and Bricker, with no room for anyone else to even participate.
If you feel that Kimmy_Gibbler’s contributions constitute a hijack, then why not simply take Bricker’s advice, which you quoted in your post, and ignore it?
You don’t get to say, “Please stay out of our thread.” That’s not how this place works. If you and Bricker want to essentially have a two-person mock trial, that’s fine, but you can’t prevent other people from chiming in with their opinions and questions.
I didn’t say stay out. You’ll note I didn’t make a fuss about the other people’s participation. I said stop playing lawyer. Stop inserting yourself into our two-person trial. Stop chiming in about legal tactics, because that’s not what the thread is about.
Bricker is 100% capable and since he is the person who is volunteering to be Zimmerman in order to test the story, he can object when he thinks it’s appropriate or otherwise explain and discuss it with me when he thinks the questions aren’t working for the purpose of the thread.
We can always ignore threadshitting and jerkiness and trolls and anything else that people do to spoil the thread, but we also call it out and we can always ask nicely for people not to do it. And people can always be unpleasant in response. Happens every day.
Perhaps not, but it’s fascinating that Stoid’s main strategy is to badger Zimmerman into (hopefully) admitting that Martin’s race played into Zimmerman’s decision-making process.
Yeah, I almost feel like it’s necessary, actually. Except that it depends on what Stoid’s goal is. Is it to see if the story will hang together in court, or is it to see if the story hangs together for Stoid?
Well, I know this is important, but I wasn’t checking my watch or anything as these events happened. I don’t think anyone can say, “I left the movie theater at 7:23 and 45 seconds,” you know.
As best I recall, it was about 7:00 PM when I first saw the person I now know was Treyvon Martin. Like I said, he was walking along the street, away from your purple circle on the map towards the #2 area on the map, but walking really slowly and checking out the houses like he was trying to find one with nobody home.
I was in my truck. I had just turned right from Oregon Ave and was on what I now know was Twin Trees, passing perpendicular to an imaginary line drawn between points 1 and 2 on your map. I stopped briefly after I passed him as I made the call so he was actually coming towards me. Then he passed me and I began to follow him in my truck, passing along the yellow arrow on your map. Then he started running, and I followed him, and he kept going straight even though the street curves, basically cutting between two buildings.
At first I stopped, then started moving slowly, like I said. I didn’t really change direction.
It was maybe a minute after I saw him. Maybe less. It was obvious right away he wasn’t just walking along like a regular person would do if he was caught in the rain, so he caught my attention right away. Since we have had several break-ins in the neighborhood, and that’s what they do, they try to find a house with no one in, break in, and steal whatever they can sell quickly. Like I said, I was driving past him, perpendicular to a line between 1 and 2 on your map, and then I slowed on the street so he was walking towards me from purple circle 1.
Asked and answered.
[li] Where was Trayvon when you told the dispatcher he was coming towards you?[/li] Asked and answered.
I was in the green circle, and he was running towards blue oval 4.
I didn’t remember which curve of Twin Trees I was on. See, maybe it sounds a little silly but Twin Trees isn’t a straight block type street. It curves in three places, so it runs east-west, then north-south, then east-west again, then north-south again. And all the buildings are the same. And it was dark, and raining, and I already thought I screwed up by telling the police the wrong address, I think I told them 111 for the clubhouse address. So I got out of the truck to see which one of the curves of Twin Trees I was on.
First I followed him in the truck, then I got out of the truck to check the sign, and I did that at #3 circle on the map.
The dispatcher didn’t say, “We order you not to follow him.” But, yes, I wish I hadn’t followed him.
Objection: calls for speculation. A witness may be asked what he saw, and what he took certain events to mean (basically, what he thought, if his thoughts are then relevant to what action he took. A non-expert witness can’t generally be asked his opinion on what a set of facts means, and a witness can’t generally be asked to speculate on what might have happened if some set of facts not in evidence or not at least proferred had occurred. But I’m going to let pseudo-Zimmerman answer this question anyway, for two reasons: (1) the answer doesn’t hurt him, and (2) the prosecution can’t impeach him – that is, show evidence he’s lying – on it. The reason is that these are collateral issues to the facts at trial. You cannot let the trial devolve into a mini-trial on the issue of whether the witness has a habit of reporting young Asian men to 911. His testimony can stand unchallenged. His testimony will include the claim that burglars don’t get dressed up to rob houses. Maybe true, maybe not, but you can’t impeach him with a burglary expert showing that 11% or burglaries are done by men in suits and ties.
If I saw a guy in a suit and tie walking in the rain, slowly? Yeah, I’d think he was on drugs too. Maybe not a burglar, because as we all know burglars don’t get dressed up to rob houses, but I’d sure think he was a stalker or a mental patient or someone acting weird and I’d call, you bet. Same for anyone.
Actully I don’t, I’m just being thorough in probing all the aspects that people are talking about. I’m on record already in several places with my genuine belief that while he absolutely did do some profiling, it’s ridiculous to think otherwise, I dont’ think that’s a big deal or an indication that he’s some racist fuckwad out to kill black kids. I think he’s an idiot who shouldn’t play with guns.
Plus my witness seemed a little defensive about it…
Now I must review his answers. Along with doing some real life.
