Is there a transcript of the bond hearing?
Wow, they charged him without even talking to him. No predetermined outcome there.
Your scenario would have failed on step 1 because any woman would have called 911 if she thought Zimmerman was stalking her. In fact, the reaction of anyone but an adolescent male would be to call 911. Zimmerman wouldn’t have been following her in the first place unless you have some 911 calls to report suspicious women in his neighborhood made by Zimmerman. A woman wouldn’t have stopped and turned around and tried to confront Zimmerman, while an adolescent male who was 6 inches taller than Zimmerman would be quite likely to. Also Self-Defense 101 would have been to call 911 and keep going instead of letting Zimmerman catch up with her. Martin died 70 yards from his Green’s townhome. If he had run for another 15 seconds and would have been safe in her house.
If you are going to assume it was a woman, why don’t you assume it was a 10 year old girl while you are spinning your fantasies?
I wrote this 4 pages ago for this thread. I wasn’t going to post it, given this has been determined to be a hot-button election issue and that in an election year with 2 identified candidates, all the swift-boat boiler-rooms are fully up and running.
I fully expect a quick dis and some laughing seconds by user names that I’ve never seen before and who will quickly stop posting after the election.
“Say Thank You to PAC Money from A-holes who Don’t Pay Taxes, kids…” :rolleyes:
I have no direct evidence;** this is just a speculation thread anyway**. My speculation is limited to just my impressions about the man, not the crime. Again, its just my impression. So here goes…
The actions I’ve read and the statements I’ve heard Zimmerman make lead me to suspect that he is a high-functioning person with some sort of mental defect that I’m not trained to diagnose.
His repeated failures to be a cop (I bet those psych exam results would be an interesting read if they could be examined).
His need to police his neighborhood armed & looking for trouble, w/o any supervision or training or accountability.
His entitlement to disregard the instructions of a police dispatcher as if he was pretending he was starring in an action movie.
His low and distant sounding voice while being asked questions, like he was in a fantasy/trance and trying to talk himself into playing the role.
In my opinion, which is just speculation, he is one of those people that never should EVER be allowed near a gun, loaded or otherwise. I have no direct evidence to show that guns excite him much more than an average adult
or that this excitement might impair his judgment when he’s near them, but I would not be surprised if it is ever released that this is the case. I’m not saying he’d giggle like Beavus & Butthead or make “Gooch! Gooch! Gooch!”
noises like sheriff Roscoe near a Desert Eagle, but I bet it’d be close.
I’m not surprised that he was found to be in Florida; I’d guess that if Florida had the toughest gun laws in the nation and Alaska had the easiest, we’d have found him in a parka in Fairbanks.
Moth > Flame
Zimmerman > Gun
Not true. I am a woman, and the scenario looks like this:
[ul]
[li]I’m walking alone, I see some guy wathing me from his truck. Creeps me out, but he’s entitled to look at me, I’m not going to clog up 911 because of my paranoia. I keep moving.[/li][li]Then it seems that maybe he’s actually following me, creeps me out a lot but still not clear. I quicken my pace, I actually break into a little run. I’m almost back to my apartment, after all…[/li][li]I think I lost him. I don’t see him anywhere and I’m talking to my girlfriend.[/li][li]I turn and bam, there he is, right in front of me. This is the first time he’s out of his vehicle and he’s right ***there. ***[/li][li]911 is out as a first move because there’s no time. My fear is that he’s trying to abduct or rape me, so I’m going to DO something. Mace, pepperspray, crotch kick… THEN I’ll call 911.[/li][/ul]
Incorrect, as just demonstrated.
I’m sure you aren’t trying to say that Martin was under some special burden of understanding why Zimmerman might be stalking him and would therefore be obliged to avoid overreacting?
Martin had no idea what was in Zimmerman’s mind. He just felt threatened, period. Same with Example Woman. She has no clue about anything except the fact that she feels very vulnerable and this man is behaving in a manner she finds extremely alarming.
More incorrect assumptions. I’m 5’8" and have spent my life weighing between 160 and 320, and I would just roll into a ball and cry and the slightest suggestion of a threat. My older sister is 5’2" and 130 pounds soaking wet and she’d kick your ass soon as look at you before she’d let you lay a finger on her. If she was in that situation, she would absolutely have confronted Zimmerman, and might easily have gone straight to the pepper spray without asking any questions. (When she was 19 years old a man broke into her apartment and reached under the covers to feel her up. She pretended to be asleep until his hand started to go under her shirt, at which point she grabbed his arm with both hands and started screaming at the top of her lungs for my other sister, with whom she lived, to call the cops while she kept holding him trying to keep him in place. He got loose and fled. But that’s just the kinda gal she is…)
I disagree. I’ve heard enough about how overburdened 911 is to not call them unless I have a reason I’m pretty sure about. As I laid out, I would easil consider it overreaction until it was too late.
The point of all this being very simply to determine at what point does Zimmerman’s behavior become a legitimate issue? If I were Trayvon Martin I would have felt very threatened. I know because I feel, as a woman and a wuss, very vulnerable and someone following me around when I am walking home would freak me out. If that person suddenly popped up on foot in front of me, I can see being scared to death and reacting defensively. So I can see Martin doing so.
If I did that as a woman, how would the law see my actions?
If the law would say my actions could be considered reasonable given Zimmerman’s behavior and my complete ignorance of his purpose, wouldn’t the same apply to Martin’s actions if his defensive act was to punch GZ vs. pepperspraying him? And if one is going to argue that they are actually different, then you have to explain why/how. Given that Mystery Female and Martin are both completely ignorant of GZ’s intentions and thoughts, they both feel threatened by the mysterious and disturbing behavior of Zimmerman, why would Martin have a special burden that makes him more responsible for going physical defensively than she would be? And if the law would in fact find that she AND Martin were reasonably justified to be frightened of Zimmerman, then that has to be taken into consideration when assessing who “started” it and who was acting from self-defense. If she’s acting from self-defense, then so is Martin, and Zimmerman has to be held to account for being a fucking asshole who created the situation that ultimately “forced” him to pull his gun, i.e. being Stalky McStalkerson.
Was anybody else amused when Gilbreath said he hadn’t seen Zimmerman’s medical records and O’Mara offered to give him a copy? Is it just me or is that a pretty serious oversight to not to try to get those records? I assume they would at least need a court order to get those records, but you would assume they would at least try.
If O’Mara can do this to the prosecution now, what is it going to be like after he goes through discovery and knows everything the prosecution knows?
Also did you notice the part where the FBI couldn’t identify the voice on the 911 recording?
Are you saying that this is how the Zimmerman/Martin incident went down? If so, do you have any evidence for the bolded part?
[quote=“Stoid, post:246, topic:619125”]
Stoid you just spun out a theoretical scenario and when I pointed out the correct reaction, you turn around and pull your gender card and say that isn’t how you would react. First I call BS and say that isn’t the way a typical woman reacts and frankly I don’t think you would have actually reacted to that situation like you state. I point out that an extra X chromosome doesn’t make you an expert on how women would react. You have perverted ideas about how self-defense works. You do call 911 and you do your best to avoid a confrontation. I’ve already stated in the previous thread that Zimmerman was an idiot to get out of his truck.
If you want to spin imaginary scenarios, then you should go to the 2nd amendment thread instead of trying to give Martin a sex-change operation.
Ok, I spent at least 10 minutes trying to decipher this post and I still have no clue what it’s about. Why did you chop up Stoid’s post instead of just quoting it? And furthermore, WTF?
I’m saying we don’t know, that’s certainly a very strong possibility, given the conversation with the girlfriend, and if it did happen that way, then Martin being freaked is understandable.
“The correct reaction”? You really believe there is an absolute correct and incorrect in this situation? Seriously? AND you think that YOU know what it is? And if there is a “correct” reaction, what does it mean if someone fails to react “correctly”?
You mean rolling into a ball? Probably not. I would probably have hustled as fast as I could, which isn’t very fast.
nor am I saying I’m an expert, apart from saying that it’s hardly outside the reasonable range of likely reactions. Unlike you, who seems to have decided there there is only one “correct” response and you know what it is. Presumably anything that doesn’t fall within your definition of correct is then incorrect and…what? They had it comin’?
Self-defense in what sense? The real world how one-defends-oneself sense, or the legal sense? And what do you mean by “perverted”? Because I’ll tell you this: it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the correct, unperverted response to anything Martin might have done, given the evidence we’ve heard about so far, is to blow a hole in his chest. I think that’s pretty fucking perverse.
The relevance of which at this juncture escapes me.
I have to say I’m puzzled by your strong resistence to considering this question directly. Instead of debating the legitimacy of the scenario I posed, (which, seeing as I AM a woman, I do have a little bit more knowledge of the potential for a woman to react as I describe. The only thing that would prevent me personally from taking the pepper-spraying, ball-kicking get-the-fuck-away-from-me-Stalky-McStalkerson-RapeyMan route is my fundamental cowardice and absolute conviction that I am so completely inept at employing violence that any attempt to take charge physically will fail miserably and will almost certainly be turned against me.) accept it as a possibility. How do you think the law, or a jury, would look at GZ’s culpability in driving a woman to attack him in that way? Would they have more sympathy for her doing so because they perceive women as inherently more vulnerable, or not? If they would, is that legitimate?
What is she were a gun-totin’ sureshot, like my big (yet physically little) sis, and her response when she was approached, was to shoot Zimmerman, killing him? Would she get off on self-defense?
If the answer is yes, or likely, then turn back to Martin, to his reaction to the same behavior, and explain how Zimmerman gets to claim self-defense and have it stick?
I am looking for anyone to address this directly, which so far no one has done.
Some thoughts while I’m reading the CNN transcript, which is maddening because they frequently break for commercials so there are apparent gaps in the proceedings. This exchange between the prosecutor De La Rionda and the investigator Gilbreath confuses me:
DLR: And during your reporting there was mention of two fork marks, those are actually the language, the words Mr. Zimmerman used to describe Mr. Martin, or the people he felt were breaking into those houses? Correct?
G: Yes sir
DLR: And I’m not going to repeat the word, for the purpose of the record but they should speak for themselves.
Big WTF. I assume this refers to the “fucking coons” or “fucking punks”, whichever, but do they have to be that coy in court about recorded evidence? Aggravating not knowing which they are claiming.
And then later on we have this:
Gilbreath: We have Mr. Zimmerman’s statements, we have the shell casings and we had Mr.Martins body.
Shell Casings? Plural? That is the first I’ve heard of multiple casings or shots.
Stoid, the point at which you can use the pepper spray is the point at which a reasonable person would feel threatened. Also, stop referring to a single incident as “stalking”, it isn’t.
I will contend that being approached by someone who asks what you’re doing is not a reasonable point to feel threatened, without any other aggravating circumstances. It may be reasonable to feel suspicious or uncomfortable, in which case calling the police would be the right thing to do. So what if they’re busy? That’s what they’re there for.
It may also be reasonable to feel pissed off by someone doing that. Frankly, tough. If someone else’s legitimate behaviour pisses you off, you just have to deal with it.
I am not arguing that it is legally stalking, I am arguing that that is how it would feel.
You know, it does not bolster your argument or contention to deliberately leave out pertinent aspects of what happened.
If you honestly believe that Zimmerman’s behavior was 100% acceptable and in no way aggravating, then characterize it honestly and accurately. Deliberately leaving things out makes it seem as though you are perfectly aware that his behavior was aggravating to the situation,easily perceived as threatening, and you are consciously trying to make it seem otherwise.
In other words, by dodging you confirm.
There is a simple problem. You wish to discuss things that have no relation to the topic of this thread. If you want to do that, then start a new thread on that topic.
Stoid, I am puzzled why are you aren’t getting a simple answer to your question.
Why don’t we do it this way?
Let’s say Martin didn’t punch Zimmerman, but that he whipped out a can of Mace and went to town on him. Let’s say Zimmerman stumbles backwards, busts his head on the concrete and then Martin towers over him to continue spraying, all the while yelling, “Stop following me, you evil person you!”
Would Zimmerman have a right to stand his ground in this situation?
There is a basic problem that is hard to reconcile that Martin was frightened by Zimmerman but didn’t call 911. The fact that he kept talking to his girlfriend and didn’t go home simply reinforces that. A more likely scenario is that Martin was angered by Zimmerman and confronted him. “Why are you following me?”, isn’t the words of a man who is frighted. That are the words of someone who is pissed off. When Zimmerman replied “What are you doing here?”, it set Martin off and he punched Zimmerman and knocked him down. If Martin had turned around and walked away at this point instead of continuing to fight then the whole event would have been over with Zimmerman’s bloody nose.