The ME’s report indicates the bullet’s path was horizontal. Meaning, parallel with the ground.
If Martin was leaning over a supine Zimmerman when he was shot, it is much more likely the bullet would have entered at an upward, downward, or sideward angle. Him getting it in at a perfectly straight 90 degrees from that position is just one more improbability the jury will have to swallow.
This trajectory is what you’d most likely see if both guys were perfectly parallel with one another (e.g. standing or kneeling in front of each other), with the shooter taking aim. Not just firing in the middle of a desperate struggle.
:rolleyes: Um, no - I’d consider it an argument / scuffle that should have ended as a scuffle and instead ended up with someone dead with a hole in their chest.
Yes, because the injuries he had were already sooooo life-threatening, he might have bled to death. I mean, he was bleeding so profusely that not a drop got on Martin or on George’s jacket, shirt, jeans or shoes.
George repeats several times that he was knocked down with the first punch - including in the audio recordig from his first interview the very night of the shooting. He says he fell -back- ‘in to the grass’. At no point in any of the interviews does he even mention any sort of 50-feet struggle down the path.
It’s only when he gets to the actual site in the re-enactment that he probably realizes that ‘getting knocked down right away’ doesn’t really match ‘dead kid’s body is way down there’, so now it’s ‘I was trying to push him off me / we struggled’ etc.
Other main thing is - in the re-enactment he says that Martin approaches him -from- the southeast. If that’s the case, Martin punching him should cause him to fall backwards to the northwest. How the struggle ends up going 50 feet directly south - somehow missing a tree that’s right in the way, btw - is a mystery. But I don’t think there’s any doubt the skercufflel at least started near the T, based on where various items of George’s were dropped.
Although it’s odd that Martin’s grocery bag was found down the path, and Martin’s cell phone was found near the body.
“The law, in its majestic equality, demands equal vigilance of the man with a 9mm pistol and the one wielding a bag of Skittles to ensure that whoever he points at doesn’t drop dead.”
*
–Analtoe France*
Hey, if those donations keep coming in, they may just end up going right to Martin’s parents in the end. Wouldn’t that be some delicious irony for the Z supporters lol.
“Parallel with the ground”??? What does the bullet path have to do with it’s relationship to the ground?
Terminal ballistics suggests that the bullet entered from the front of the chest then mushroomed and fragmented along a straight path. The bullet struck the heart and a lung and a fragment punctured the other lung.
External ballistics suggests that the bullet was fired from close range while the weapon’s barrel was pointed directly at chest/heart. The weapon, not the combatant’s wrists or arms or body positions.
Zimmerman wasn’t trying to stop the blows he had already recieved when he shot Martin.
Zimmerman was trying to prevent being struck again.
If new, credible, evidence comes to light that Zimmerman was not lying on his back when the shot was fired or that Martin was not on top of him beating him when the shot was fired, that will change my impression of what happened that night.
Florida laws says Zimmerman is allowed to lethal force to defend his life.
This translates into a projectile that is going from left side of Martin’s chest to the right side.
BTW Biodigital Human is handy here since you can turn off the organ you aren’t interested in.
But in terms of probability, I am not sanguine about this outcome.
If Zimmerman is acquitted by reason of his self-defense claim, he will be immune from civil suit.
As I have mentioned before, this means that if the Martins were to sue Zimmerman, and he is acquitted at the criminal trial, not only is he immune from their suit, but he can recover his legal fees, costs, and lost wages from them.
Eyewitnesses say Martin was over Zimmerman’s head.
“Horrizontal to the ground” is your reference point. Martin’s torso could have been horizontal, vertical, or any angle in between relative to “the ground”. The barrel was pointed directly at the chest/heart area when the bullet left the muzzle. This bullets actual trajectory had nothing to do with the angle of the ground.
I’ve already said that main target of any suit will be the homeowners association and as far as I know they have no protection from a law suit. A lot of black people are going to end up paying money to the Martin family if they win a civil suit.
And if Martin was perpendicular to the ground when he was shot, the vertical axis of Zimmerman’s gun would have most likely been ____ to Martin’s chest, for the bullet’s path to be straight and horizontal.
You fill in the blank. Here are your choices.
Parallel
Perpendicular
at a 45% degree angle
at a 100% degree angle
Zimmerman claims he was lying on the ground when he shot the kid. He claims he shot the kid while simultaneously pinning Martin’s arm with his shooting arm, which means Martin had to have been leaning over him at an angle. From this extremely close and uncomfortable position, how likely is it that Zimmerman would have pointed his gun at exactly the right angle needed to achieve the type of trajectory you’d usually see if the gun was aimed and fired from an upright position, at an upright target?
If you plot it out the trajectory of the bullet was only a foot or maybe a foot and a half. If was kind of a fluke, since it went between the ribs without touching them. Other than that, there wasn’t anything remarkable about the trajectory.