the picture clearly shows 2 wounds. not sort of, but clearly as in no doubt.
I don’t find that terribly troubling. Look at a high-res pic of the back of his head. The one laceration noted by the EMT will be the lower one, which is nearly an inch in length. The top one was too small to be either noticed or noted by the EMT.
Maybe he thought it was just dried blood when he looked at it. Maybe because it was so small he figured it was more of a puncture than a proper laceration.
I think that if Zimmerman was going to take the time to jazz up his injuries he’d manage a little better than an extra 5mm cut. (Who cares about a 5mm cut? I have one on my chin right now, because my safety razor wasn’t properly tightened this morning. I don’t recall my life flashing before my eyes, so I think this is very unlikely to be more embellishment to shore up a shaky SYG defense.)
There is clearly a single wound.
That looks like it’s relevant for a potential federal hate crime investigation, but I don’t see how it affects the claim of self defence. Zimmerman could have actively been looking to kill himself an “N Word”, and still been in a situation where he was entitled to defend himself. Specifically, if Martin was on top of him, preventing him from escaping, and Zimmerman was in reasonable fear of death or serious injury, it wouldn’t matter who started the fight or why.
ETA There’s observably two wounds on his scalp.
That you would even say something so unbelievably ludicrous is very enlightening to just how biased you are in your views concerning this case.
Are you seriously saying that a gun-wielding racist attempting to commit a premeditated hate-crime murder is entitled to use deadly force when his unarmed intended victim punches him in the nose and pins him on the ground? (Those being the only two things we can be reasonably sure that TM actually did.) Holy shit! Even in that insane hypothetical, you’d still grant GZ the right to self-defense while still denying it to his intended victim?!
I had backed away from these threads because I was tired of the repetitive and circular arguments constantly stating the same bald assertions as if they were known hard facts. But until now, I didn’t even have *a clue *to the extent of the futility in continuing to argue with the likes of you. I just wish you would have offered up this gem from the start, so that we would all have known exactly how seriously to take anything you’ve said on this subject.
I’m saying that Florida law allows the use of deadly force in self defence, if someone is in fear of death or great bodily harm, if they have exhausted every opportunity to escape. What part of this is factually incorrect?
At no point have I denied that Martin had exactly the same rights. I have questioned how climbing on top of someone he’d just punched to the floor, and slamming their head against the ground, is justified in self defence, though. If you can point to anything Zimmerman did that made that response legal, go for it.
(Damn “token expired” bullshit just swallowed my probably much more eloquent post. Here goes again.)
Not so fast, we’re talking about your inane hypothetical that illuminates the extent of your bias/ignorance. I don’t need to talk about what Zimmerman actually did, because you stipulated that:
(Bolding of bullshit is mine.)
Of fucking course it matters who started the fight and why!
Let me give you a more simple hypothetical, and this time I’ll make both parties non hoodie-wearing white guys, to make it even easier for you:
An armed robber walks into a liquor store and points his gun at the clerk, demanding all the money. Instead of reaching for the money, the clerk reaches for a gun and aims towards the robber. Before the clerk can fire, the robber shoots and kills the clerk in “self-defense.”
Do you honestly believe it doesn’t matter who started the encounter, and why?! The armed robber just gets a pass for killing the clerk because the clerk had (rightly) threatened his life?! And note, in this situation, BOTH parties are equally armed, and the robber didn’t even have the premeditated intent to kill the clerk.
In your astonishing hypothetical, GZ had the premeditated intent to commit a random hate-crime murder with a firearm against an unarmed victim. And just because TM had the audacity to punch and pin down his hypothetical would-be cold-blooded racist murderer, you think that’s enough to give the attacker the legal cover to carry out the crime he intended to commit from the beginning?!
What country/planet do you live in where this would fly? Maybe we can publicize this to all our criminals and they’ll go your way for the easy pickings. We’ll throw in Zimmerman too, if/when he gets off/out, since you seem to like him so much.
After watching the video here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/21/v-fullstory/2860569/zimmerman-told-police-trayvon.html, GZ’s story is so full of shit it squeaks.
According to GZ’s story, Martin is on top of him and is repeatedly banging his head against the concrete. GZ says he tried to ‘shift/squirm his body’ to try and get his head off the concrete. WTF is GZ doing with his hands and arms while this is going on? He can get enough leverage with his arms to try and squirm off the concrete but he doesn’t, you know, punch back? Try to grab Martin’s arms? That would seem to be the most instinctive and quickest way to stop someone from banging your head into a concrete sidewalk. The only assumption we can make is that Martin, in straddling GZ, was sitting on GZ’s arms. More on this later.
By the time he’s doing this squirming, Martin is no longer banging his head against the concrete. We know this because GZ says that he (GZ) started screaming, and Martin put one hand on his nose and one hand on his mouth and told him to ‘shut the fuck up’.
GZ says that while he was squirming, his gun was exposed, and Martin was able to see the gun. A black gun. Holstered in a black waistband holster. Which is worn off to the side towards the butt. Which GZ would be lying on top of. Martin was still able to see this. In the dark. (GZ stresses later at how dark it was).
Upon seeing the gun, Martin doesn’t go back to banging GZ’s head against the ground. He doesn’t immediately try to grab the gun. No, he sits up *and makes a bad-ass speech. *
Oh, and even after sitting up, Martin was still apparently able to keep both hands on GZ’s mouth and nose, because after making his bad-ass speech, GZ feels Martin ‘take one hand off his mouth and slide it down his chest’.
But no worry! Because GZ says he used his right arm to ‘pin’ Martin’s arm, then he grabbed the gun himself, unholstered it, and shoots. With his right arm.
If GZ uses his right arm to pin Martin’s arm…how the hell can he unholster his gun? In the video, GZ clearly demonstrates using his -right- hand to pull the gun and shoot…but he can’t use his right arm; it’s pinning Martin’s arm, remember? And didn’t we say above that we had to assume that TM, in straddling GZ, was sitting on GZ’s arms?
TM also apparently says ‘you got me’ after taking a fatal gunshot wound to the chest. Seems unlikely - and anyway, nothing of the sort is captured on the 911 calls, but anyway.
GZ caps this whole story off by saying that he pushed TM off him, and TM ended up -face down, with GZ straddling him. He then says that when ‘Martin was hitting me in the face, it felt like he was hitting me with something’, so GZ thinks that maybe TM had a weapon - which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If TM had a weapon, surely he’d be hitting GZ with, you know - the weapon. And we know he wasn’t holding anything because GZ says TM had ‘one hand on my nose and one hand on my mouth’.
Anyway - at this point GZ says he still doesn’t realize that his shot had hit Martin, and he wants to make sure TM isn’t armed, so he grabs TM’s hands and pushes them away from TM’s body.
Except that TM was found face down…with his arms and hands underneath the body.
At this point, remember, GZ -still- doesn’t think that his shot hit TM - he thinks that TM has just ‘given up’, and he asks one of the bystandards for help in ‘restraining TM’. GZ gets up off TM because TM had ‘just, you know, stopped struggling’. But when he sees a flashlight coming towards him and someone asks, ‘who shot him’, GZ says ‘I did’. So did he think his shot hit TM or not?
His story has more holes in it than a pound of swiss cheese. As far as I’m concerned that video is a slam-dunk win for the prosecution.
To make my above hypothetical even better, change that to the clerk actually does manage to fire his gun, but only slightly injures the robber before the robber shoots and kills the clerk.
Good analysis, DragonAsh, but I think the biggest WTF? is the idea that Zimmerman supposedly got out of his truck to look for a street sign/address. Not for the street where he was parked, mind you. But for a completely different street located more than a block away.
An astute follower of this story would know that the mystery street that he was supposedly trying to identify was the same street he lived on. Anyone who can accept this part of his story as truth has to be a moron, I’m sorry.
Notice also in the reenactment how Zimmerman talks about how he walked all the way over to the street so that he could get an address, before deciding to tell the cops to meet him at the mailboxes (which is another lie…in the end, he tells the cops to call him later so he could direct them to his location). So what was the point of making this journey to Retreat View then? You mean to tell me this guy exited his car, walked all the way down the T in the dark after a “thug” just circled his car in a menancing fashion, for a reason that ultimately served no purpose whatsoever?
Martin was killed approximately 50 feet away from the T where Zimmerman said he was punched. His accounts vacilate between him immediately falling backwards to him stumbling around a little, but even if we posit that the latter is truth, a distance of 50 feet would require a whole lot of stumbling from just one punch. It’s not something that could easily be glossed over in a statement.
GZ says he was still on the phone w/ dispatch when he reached the other side of the block to get the address.
But, iirc, he never gave that address to the dispatch.
How much leverage is necessary to grab a hand?
How much leverage is necessary to bite a hand that’s on your mouth?
Does a lack of leverage mean that you should abandon your survival instincts which tell you to do things like cover your head against blows, or try to clear your blocked airways?
I don’t find that to be a sufficient explanation for GZ laying back and taking a beating.
You’re saying that he couldn’t’ve been effective. I am saying that he doesn’t seem to have even tried.
Idk, did that witness say that?
Iirc, that’s not GZ’s story. GZ was out of the vehicle to get a street address.
Can’t appreciate a good joke from a master comedian like Twain, huh? Too bad. Levity never hurt anyone.
I didn’t expect anyone to take that joke as an argument that M was justified in attacking anyone.
That’s just a joke that you stuffed with straw and beat.
If it was me and I was being assaulted, there would be signs that I had fought back–there would be bruising on the guy where I grabbed his hands and wrists, there would be claw marks on his arms and face, there would be bite marks on his hand, etc.
Responding in this manner to an assault, particularly one with life threatening aspects to it, seems like the response of a reasonable person.
In the video, GZ stresses several times that he had to get out of the truck to find a street sign so he could tell the dispatcher where he was. "They said they needed to know what exact address you’re at’.
Except that’s a complete lie - GZ gets out of the truck and starts running after realizing that Martin is starting to run away. And he doesn’t want Martin to get away (just prior, he says “these assholes. They always get away”).
The dispatcher doesn’t ask for any specific address until 3 minutes and 30 seconds in to the phone call, long after GZ says he lost sight of TM. And the dispatcher doesn’t come close to making any specific request for Zimmerman’s location: he asks Zimmerman ‘what address he’s parked in front of’. GZ says he doesn’t know, the dispatcher says ‘OK, want to meet in front of the mailboxes then’, and GZ says that’s fine, and he asks the dispatcher to have the cops call him when they arrive.
There was no need to give the dispatcher a specific address, so there was no need to get out of the car to find a street sign. But that’s the pretense GZ uses for getting out of his car in the video statement. And it’s a crock of shit.
He then says he put his phone away, and all of a sudden Martin appears ‘out of nowhere’, and says, ‘you got a problem?’, so he reached for his phone to dial 911. He couldn’t find his phone, and while he’s searching for it TM punches him in the nose hard enough to knock him down, then straddles him before the head slamming begins.
First of all, this of course completely discredits the notion of being ‘ambushed from behind’ because according to GZ’s own statement, he heard TM, saw him, and had time to reach for his phone.
Secondly - does GZ think we’re all idiots? You see someone you believe is acting suspicious and you call the cops about it. You think they might be on drugs, and you think they might be armed (‘he has his hands in his waistband’ etc.). You’re telling me that when he suddenly comes face to face with this same attacker…GZ’s first instinct wasn’t to reach for his gun, it was to reach for his PHONE?? Really? TM’s right there! In front of him! Did he think TM was going to wait for GZ to finish his call to 911 before continuing the conversation??
And when suddenly confronted with the scary kid, he gets so involved with searching for his phone that he forgets TM is in front of him, and lets TM get close enough to hit him and knock him down with one punch? Really? That’s his story? He’s an armed neighborhood watch guy, confident enough in his abilities that he got out of the car to chase after a possibly drugged-up, possibly armed suspect, yet he just lets the suspect hit him in the nose? What if TM -had- been a bad guy with a gun?
That, to me, is the biggest red flag in the world - GZ is lying about shit he didn’t need to lie about, because by -far- the most natural thing to do a this point would have been to draw his gun and warn the attacker off. In trying to paint himself as completely innocent, GZ asks us to suspend every last shred of common sense and logic. The classic case of a habitual lier.
After getting up off of TM, he asks someone that has come close if ‘they’re a cop’, and the person says ‘no, I’ll call the cops’. GZ says, ‘no, I don’t need you to call the cops, I already called them, they’re on the way. I need you to help me restrain him’.
If GZ didn’t need to have the cops called because he had already called and theyr’e on the way…why did he say the first thing he did when confronted with Martin was to reach for his phone to call the cops? He didn’t need to call the cops, they were on the way.
It’s a bit worse than that, even. The dispatcher suggests meeting by the mailboxes (because according to GZ, that’s where his truck was.) He says, “Yeah, okay.. uh.. actually can you have them call me at this number when they get here and I’ll tell them where I am?” This pretty clearly shows that he intended to follow at that point.
It appears Zimmerman got out of his vehicle to keep an eye on Martin and during the discussion with the 911 dispatcher headed back toward his truck to meet with the police. So what’s your point? What does this have to do with Martin’s actions?
This isn’t a situation that I would joke about.
:rolleyes:
Your Walter Mitty fantasy fight is nonsense. You’ve obviously never been in a street fight. Once someone is on top of you you’re screwed. If they don’t have your arms pinned the best you can do is try to shield your face.
Well, in his mind, he had to lie about this. If he told the cops he pulled out his weapon just because the kid asked if he had a problem then he’d be guilty of aggravated assault.
But you’re right; what he said stands out as a lie because it is the complete opposite of what someone in his position would do. In a threatening situation, a phone is not one’s first line of defense; people who are afraid will either run or prepare to defend themselves. The fact that he was quick to tell others not to call the cops just a few minutes later only underscores his inability to keep up with his own false reasons for doing what he did.
The lie that is the most unnecessary is when he stressed how he spread Martin’s arms apart. This part of his story clearly is contradicted by other evidence, but it is not immediately obvious how it is self-serving. And yet he links this detail to a self-serving apparent falsehood (that he told a neighbor he needed help restraining Martin…who apparently was so thugalicious he was a threat even with a bullet in his chest). This makes me think this is not an innocent gaffe. I think it’s a lie-mistake, if this makes sense.
This is 100% speculation, but I wonder if this is what really happened: Martin fell on his back, not forward. Zimmerman was concerned that this might not look right so he decided to flip Martin on his stomach. A prone Martin fits the “he was laying on top of me!” narrative musch better than a supine Martin. So he rolled him over. Instant problem: this move caused Martin’s arms to be tucked under his body. “Won’t this look suspicious?” Zimmerman wondered to himself. Yup, it would look better to have the arms out. So he decided to outstretch Martin’s arms.
But uh oh, a witness came over before he had time to do this. Zimmerman’s mind was racing at this point. He immediately went into CYA mode and stopped thinking about Martin’s body. The kid’s arms were still tucked under his body, but Zimmerman, in his haste, conflated his intent to outstretch Martin’s arms with him actually doing so. And so when he reenacted the scene a day later, he ended up treating this like a memory. Why did he emphasize this detail so much, though? Maybe he thought a witness saw him do it, so he had to explain it away? I don’t know.
At best, the mistake about him stretching out Martin’s arms is just one more indicator that he’s a poor historian of what really happened that night. At worst, its an indicator that he lied to cover up the fact that he manipulated Martin’s body somehow. It smells fishy regardless.
Alright, I’ll play along; did Martin have Zimmerman’s arms pinned?
Well, you’re on a higher horse than me.
:rolleyes:
Lol!
Walter Mitty was famous for biting hands of people who were smothering him?
Not how I recall it. I recall Mitty as being more bold than all that.
But it’s been a while. Perhaps he would have been satisfied with grabbing wrists etc.
The comparison seems hyperbolic over-exaggeration, imho.
Which would yield some defensive bruises on your arms.
Grabbing at someone’s hands when the hands are on your mouth and nose is a seemingly reflexive thing. No Walter Mitty heroics involved, imho. ymmv.
If someone has a hold of your head, you know where there hands are. As long as your hands can reach your head, then they can reach the other person’s hands.
These really aren’t heroic measures as you allege. They’re more akin to baseline activities than over-and-above activities.
imho.
ymmv.
You don’t point a gun at someone to threaten them, you shoot to kill or you keep it hidden.
I suggest you actually read the threads here about this issue, with particular reference to Florida self defence law. In Florida, if someone is reasonably in fear of death or great bodily harm, and has exhausted all possible avenues of escape, they may use lethal force to defend themselves. The Stand Your Ground law removes the requirement for being unable to escape if the person defending themself is not committing a criminal act.
I don’t care how ridiculous you find this law, it’s the law of the state Zimmerman was in when he shot Martin, and the law by which he will be tried.
To answer your hypothetical, if the robber had reason to be in fear of death or great bodily harm, and had no means of escape, in Florida he would be legally allowed to shoot the shopkeeper.
As I said, you don’t point a gun at someone to threaten them, you shoot to kill or don’t use it at all.