And of course I still submit that any eyewitness testimony should be taken with a huge shaker of salt, since George has testified that it was too dark to determine if a bystander standing close to him was a police officer or not.
In the second interview eyewitness #6 said that the darker man was laying prone on top of the lighter man. He repeatedly calls it wrestling, which would not necessarily make it clear cut that the person getting the worst of a wrestling match would feel threatened. So, to answer your original question:
Please show where anyone other than GZ is currently claiming that Martin was straddling him. Therefore, it’s meaningless to doubt or not doubt this. Let me change that: Since Witness #6 states that he saw the person on top prone, then yes, I believe it’s reasonable to doubt that in the absence of other, more compelling evidence.
Sorry, I had thought that we were going to have a reasonable discussion. If you are going to propose absurdities in rebuttal, I presume that you don’t mind if others follow suite.
We have one witness who says that he is certain that he saw Martin on top for 10 seconds. He did not see the whole fight. Going by what we know without GZ’s statements, as you have asked, then no, based on this witness’s statement, I cannot conclude I have enough information to tell it was a righteous shooting or not.
Next question? With the ridicule which you have shown me, I presume that you will offer no possibilities other than what is supported completely by witnesses.
I don’t need a scenario for Zimmerman actions. We already have his statement. Martin’s action are pretty simple to explain also. He wasn’t scared of Zimmerman. He was pissed off that this guy was eyeing him like he was a criminal. I had something like this almost happen to me. I was in a 7-11 when a guy stormed in and demand to know why I kept looking at him. I said because he was sitting in his car with the engine running and I thought it was odd. He looked around and realized there were witnesses and stormed out.
Trayvon was sitting on John’s porch talking to Deedee when he saw Zimmerman walking back to his truck. He decided to go and confront Zimmerman. From that point we are in Zimmerman’s scenario.
This scenario assumes that DeeDee is lying. She is trying to protect her boyfriend, Trayvon. She knows he started the fight. That is why she never called the police. It was only when Crump started asking her questions that she came up with this story. I that that de la Rionda suspects she is lying, but without her he didn’t even have probable cause for an arrest.
It is possible that Martin had other motives, but this seems consistent with his actions.
Link. What I saw was that he said he saw one man on top of another, and the one on the bottom was wearing red. Which was Zimmerman.
Again, link for “prone”. Here is witness #6: page 38. page 86. Yes, “straddle”.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/Zimmerman_Discovery.pdf
When you offer absurdities, I offer absurdities in rebuttal.
I assume Martin was the darker man. So ISTM that this backs up Zimmerman’s account.
I don’t get what you mean. How does the witness calling it “wrestling” make it any less threatening? I don’t think the witness was characterizing it as a friendly match. In any case, we have Zimmerman’s broken nose, black eyes, and the wounds to the back of his head, as evidence that this was a more serious encounter than a wrestling match.
Going just by one witness’ statement, correct - there is not evidence enough to conclude that it was a righteous shooting. But I don’t think anyone is claiming that it is. One would hope that a reasonable person would consider all the evidence before deciding that.
Zimmerman alleges that Martin was on top of him, bashing his head against the ground. We have the witness who says he saw “the darker man” on top of the lighter one, and the wetness on the back of Zimmerman’s shirt, which tends to confirm that Martin was on top, and the wounds to the back of Zimmerman’s head, which tend to confirm the bashing part.
Zimmerman alleges that Martin punched him in the face. We have the fact that Zimmerman had a broken nose and a black eye, and Martin had a scrape on one knuckle, which tends to confirm that part of the story as well.
Keeping also in mind that Zimmerman is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Therefore, even if we wind up saying that we can’t tell what happened for sure, Zimmerman walks.
Regards,
Shodan
Of course it does. The problem is that her account actually makes sense in light of the fact that Martin was on the phone at all. To believe Zimmerman, you have to believe that Martin intentionally launched into a violent assault with an open call on his bkuetooth earpiece.
Phone records show that the call ended after the struggle started. This makes it quite plain that Martin was caught off guard.
No, I’m not particularly wondering why, I assume he’s doing whatever’s best fro his client. And no, it doesn’t change what the state has to prove at all.
I think it’s entirely possible there won’t be an SYG hearing, if O’Mara feels certain that Zimmerman will be cleared at trial, but not certain he can win the SYG hearing. Which is what the evidence currently in the public domain would suggest is the case, and where the minor inconsistencies in Zimmerman’s story might actually matter. They won’t matter at all at the trial.
That is assuming she is telling the truth. You seem to assume that she isn’t lying even though they had to track her down. Even assuming her statement is accurate when she didn’t give ut until weeks later is problematic.
Methinks Zimmerman has a far bigger motivation to lie than the girlfriend does. Why would you assume she’s lying but GZ isn’t?
You are forgetting that Zimmerman gets civil immunity if he wins the SYG hearing. Even if Lester calls it a push and dumps it on a jury, they still get to look at the prosecution case. They can prepare more for the parts they had problems on. Trials with modern discovery rules are more like chess than poker. You know what pieces the opponent has, but not what moves he will make.
Because he is innocent, so he doesn’t have a motive to lie. He can be confused and inconsistent, but that is normal human behavior. You seem to assume that Zimmerman has an eidetic memory and any inconsistency in his statement is a lie.
I’m not assuming that Martin has a plan, but that he was acting on impulse. A rational person would have gone to Green’s house and drank his ice tea. A rational person doesn’t attack a total stranger.
BTW, Martin had a wired headset, not a bluetooth. Somebody who had actually looked at the evidence would know that.
Also the cellphone records in any case are not accurate enough to establish that he was still on the phone when he assaulted Zimmerman, so your premise has to assume she was telling the truth.
That’s not an assumption, it’s the application of reason. Without considering her statement at all, the fact that he had an open call in his Bluetooth headset which terminated during the struggle (as evidenced by phone records) makes Zimmerman’s account seem dubious.
Dee Dee’s account is, in contrast, perfectly in accord with the evidence. Occam’s razor cuts on the side of her account being substantially true.
The Cellphone records aren’t accurate enough to know if Martin didn’t hang up before he confronted Zimmerman.
I’d suggest you go listen to DeeDee’s statement before you hang your hat on her statement.
Her account was given to police several weeks after the incident, after she had spoken to the Martin family’s lawyer. It would be surprising if it wasn’t in accord with the physical evidence. I wish I could say it was surprising that anyone would take it seriously - it would probably not count as admissible evidence even if she’d reported it straight away - but reading this thread makes it clear that people will clutch at any straw to show Zimmerman is guilty.
Or perhaps Martin acted impulsively in attacking before hanging up. Sometimes teenagers do things like that.
I fully realize it is not admissible in court, but Martin’s school record seems to indicate that he didn’t always think things thru carefully before he acted.
Regards,
Shodan
Three weeks. And Crump (Martin family lawyer) knew about it a few days after the incident. Crump sat on this for three weeks before revealing it to the public and to the police. Do the anti-Zimmerman people here think that is a bit suspicious?
If we assume Martin is innocent, then the girlfriend doesn’t have a motive to lie either.
Minor inconsistencies are one thing. The inconsistencies I’ve pointed out in at least four different posts are hardly ‘minor’ and in fact all but prove GZ’s story is a complete crock. Once again, I’m amused - and not a bit surprised - that none of you have even attempted to refute any of the inconsistencies. In your world, everything GZ says is gospel, unless it’s wrong, in which case he is just confused.
Umm yeah, you actually do, since he’s a known liar, and his statements are full of inconsistencies and implausibilities. But I understand why you wouldn’t want to attempt to reconcile his narrative into something believable - better to just take the 5th and keep your yap shut. You’re obviously much smarter than Zimmerman in this regard.
So, the kid with no history of violence, who’s out of his element, walking back home with a snack, having a conversation with his girlfriend, and getting ready to watch the All-Star game, just decided to launch a completely unprovoked, sustained, and brutal attack, on a completely innocent and blameless adult, just for eyeing him and nothing more?
Yeah, I said I thought it would be good for a laugh, but really, that’s just sad that you can be so easily convinced of something so preposterous. I bet you also buy the cheesy lines that Zimmerman says Martin said.
Cite?
Now you up the levels of absurdity. She was trying to protect him? Newsflash: He’s dead! She has nothing to gain by lying, and could theoretically have much to lose if caught lying. And if she *were *inclined to lie in order to falsely incriminate the man who shot TM, she could have easily come up with much, much, much more incriminating things to say she heard. Of course, in that case she’d have to be careful to not make up things that were too absurd to believe, like GZ did.
Seriously, you abandon any claim to objectivity and the ability to think critically when you completely buy GZ’s whole fantastic story, ascribe such absurd motives and actions to TM, then to top it off, you completely dismiss DeeDee’s quite reasonable and believable testimony and accuse her of lying when there’s NO reason to believe that she is.
Again, it would be pretty funny if it weren’t so sad.
Any other Zimmerman supporters want to step up and try to compensate for how bad **Joel **is making you all look?
Didn’t the investigators find Trayvon’s headphones in his hoodie pocket, along with the metal button that had been on his hoodie? If they didn’t find Zimmerman’s fingerprints on them, there’s good reason to suspect Trayvon put them there before the incident started.