So, to follow up your example, the prosecution will have to prove that Zimmerman could not have shot Martin from the position he claims to, not simply that it’s unlikely.
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No, the prosecution is only tasked with proving that Zimmerman shot Martin for unlawful reasons.
They are not required to go through a point-by-point rebuttal of every claim Zimmerman has made. Wanna know why? Because Zimmerman doesn’t even have to testify. Funny how you remember this when you think it favors Zimmerman, but then you forget this when you want to make the prosecution’s task look harder than it is.
The state only needs to present the forensic evidence and have an expert interpret the findings to the jury. We can expect the prosecution to ask this expert “based on these findings, what was the most likely position of the shooter relative to the victim?”
They also might ask, “How likely is it, in your expert opinion, that the shooter was prone, with the victim lying on top of him, when the gun was fired? What is the basis for this assessment?”
What comes out from this testimony is enough to allow the jury to draw inferences about how Martin was shot. The jury is not under any requirement to entertain any of Zimmerman’s outlandish claims, and the prosecution doesn’t have to entertain them either.
So you’re saying the the likelihood of the shot being as it was is so small as to implausible?
If you have some hard data to back that up, I’ll jump on your bandwagon.
If you just “feel” that it’s implausible or “common sense” tells you that it’s implausible, then, meh.
So what studies do you have in re people getting off shots similar to the one which Z indicates occurred?
But, all the same if the studies indicate that it’s more likely than two people having identical fingerprints, I think you argument may be still sunk.
Cool. And the defense, of course, will bring their own expert witness that will say that it fairly likely that the shooter was prone.
Apart from which, there will be testimony from witnesses that saw Martin sitting on top of Zimmerman a few seconds before the shot. Occam’s razor and all…
I’m so very keen now to get everyone’s view if this was a different state. Keeping up with State laws can be difficult at times.
Of course all the standard rulings apply…reasonable doubt, innocent until proven guilty etc.
Someone made a joke to me earlier…I admit…I laughed.
They said ‘well THEY got OJ and WE got Zimmerman, so once they acquit him, we’re all even.’
I almost started to give rebuttal about two entirely different cases and decided it wasn’t worth it.
My problem with the pro Martin vs pro Zimmerman camp is that it should be pro justice and nothing more or less.
Some people seem to be so desperate to be right, they remind me of those crackpots that say things like ‘well the universe is so big, there MUST be life out there’ ‘there HAS to be life out there’ which is another way of saying ‘I NEED THERE TO BE LIFE OUT THERE!’
Living room logic is not useful in a court room.
You can’t honestly expect a court of law to accommodate people’s personal whims. And no self respecting juror should require it either.
After listening to everything, I couldn’t send old boy Zimmerman to jail - not with what we know at this point. Personally I don’t care about him, I don’t know him, but I do care about what happens to our law.
We live in an age where it’s become a legal system not a justice system, and that saddens me. If we put him in jail without the right evidence he is guilty, the legal system will have won again.
They are allowed to do that, but that means simply that they do not accept that it’s evidence of what he claims, they may not conclude that the opposite is true, or use it as evidence for the opposite.
So, if Zimmerman says he shot Zimmerman in the manner he did, and the jury disbelieve him, in the absence of any other evidence they may only conclude that thy do not know the manner of the shooting.
In short, a lie gives no information about the truth.
Some jurisdictions require that the defendant prove that they acted in self defence. Some prohibit firearms, and using one would be a crime that would negate ones right to self defence. I don’t know about specific US states, but both of those are the case in the UK.
There are two different issues here though. One is whether the law itself is just. The other is whether Zimmerman should be judged under the law that applied at the time he acted, whether just or not.
My opinion is that no action, ever, should be retrospectively criminalised. Yes, even then, Godwin.
If Florida law allows someone to kill someone in self defence even if they started the fight, and the plain language of the law allows that in certain circumstances, then that is the standard that must be used.
I’ve not seen a thread about what actions should be allowed in self defence, in what circumstances. It seems that people who feel the law is wrong would rather try to twist facts to convict Zimmerman than try to change the law.
They cant decide that its straight from the pen of Shakespeare either, afaik.
I think what was being discussed was whether or not a juror could pay Z testimony no never mind.
We should probably check on that. Bricker previously stated that the juror could draw his own conclusions about why Z shot M even if they believed Z’s account about why he shot M. They may be allowed to decide facts based on incomplete information.
If you spin theories that aren’t supported by evidence, then you aren’t speculating, you are jerking off. I had theories that turned out to not be supported by discovery evidence and changed my mind. Anybody who hasn’t changed their mind based on discovery evidence is in denial. You may not change your mind on Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence , but scenarios that aren’t consistent with the evidence are fantasy. You have a right to your opinion, but not to your own facts.
I don’t know what you would need to persuade you beyond common sense, to be honest. But there are plenty of blogs that have dissected this subject down to the gristle. You’ll have to wait until trial if you want to hear an expert officially weigh in with their opinion, but here is what regular folk on the Internet have pointed out.
What makes you think this? You don’t need a “study” to draw an interference that helps build a case for conviction. You don’t even need to quantify probability with hard numbers. All you need is have a good reason that an alternative explanation for an event is implausible relative to the most likely one. Ballistics and other forsensic clues is used like this all the time.
A witness says they saw someone matching the defendant’s appearance running out of the front door, carrying what looks like knife covered in blood. Hours later, the man of the house is found dead from stabbing wounds. The witness is the defendant’s neighbor and therefore knows what he looks like very well.
Is it wrong to use this testimony, in addition to other evidence, to infer that the defendant was most likely the murderer? Is it necessary to prove alternative explanations are as rare or rarer than fingerprint matches, just for a jury to factor this into their assessment of guilt or innocence. Hell no. In this hypothetical, there are no “studies” to support the idea that its implausible someone else did it. There are no hard numbers either. It’s common sense: you see a guy running out of the house with a blood knife, then he probably was the killer.
Same goes for Zimmerman. If the forensic evidence suggests that Martin didn’t lay a finger on Zimmerman and that he didn’t pose a danger to him under the reasonable person standard, then Zimmerman probably killed him for unjustified reasons. Other evidence is needed to tip the “probably” to “definitely”, of course. But you can’t dismiss anything as irrelevant. The jury can factor in any evidence that is on the table.
Your civility is awesome.
So everyone who spins a theory which is based on Z’s highly questionable narrative is engaged in some sort sexual self-gratification?
Idk about that.
Some of the screeds have been much longer than I would expect someone typing with one hand to pull off.
But, I s’pose since I am not willing to ask anyone or otherwise check or examine the issue more closely, I’ll just take your word for it.
Perhaps yo have some experience in these matters which I lack. Idk. :shrug:
If I don’t have access to data about the likelihood of such a shot occurring, how am I to make a determination as to how likely it is?
I need some sort of data to use so that I could determine with any degree of certainty that it was impossible for Z to have gotten off the shot he claims.
Even wildly improbable things happen.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that our legal system should never consider the fact that in the real world unlikely things happen frequently.
I agree that both of these things, the apple and the orange, are fruits and are approximately the same size. But in the end, they’re not really the same thing. imho. ymmv
I though we were discussing whether or not a juror should consider that unlikely things happen all around us everyday when assessing the evidence before him.
He spends a lot of that telling us about how awesome his thinking skills are. Kudos to him.
He then neglects to account for the fact that there’s another of Z’s joints involved besides the elbow which can affect the angle of the barrel of the gun–the wrist.
:smack:
Also he doesn’t seem to account for the possible variations in M position.
frisntints
in this one, if the guy on top was a scooch further back and leaned over a little more, [or if he curved his back a little bit differently] even the trajectory figured with only the elbow could have come in roughly horizontal relative to M’s waistline.
This does not demonstrate the impossibility of the shot occurring as Z relates, nor does it make the shot appear implausible, nor even unlikely.
ymmv.
All we know from the angle of the wound is the angle of the bullet’s trajectory relative to the part of M’s body the path is in.
We can’t determine the angle of M’s body to the horizon, nor the angle of the barrel of the gun to the horizon.
Even though that guy has awesome brain skills, his case isn’t all that conclusive, imho.
The same way you figure anything out. You use what you know about physics and human anatomy to come up with a conclusion.
Specifically what kind of data do you need?
If a ballistic expert told you it was unlikely based on their years of experience and study, would you still require all this data?
But we’re not speaking about unlikely things happening in a general sense. We are talking about a specific claim that is unlikely based on what we know about the world, when viewed in combination with other evidence.
That isn’t what we’re discussing. This tangent started because you asserted the unlikeliness of Zimmmerman’s claim about the shooting is iirrelevant. I countered by saying that this assertion is false. It is more than reasonable for the jury to take one whiff of Zimmerman’s story and reject it as too unlikely to be plausible. In other words, just because “unlikely things happen all the time” doesn’t mean they have to believe a specific unlikely thing happened in this specific case. They can infer from the evidence that the more likely explanation is the truth, and they can reject the least likely explanation that is unsupported by the evidence. If this wasn’t the case, circumstantial evidence would not be admissible.
So how did Zimmerman say he was holding his wrist during the shooting? Here’s a hint: he held it straight in front of him during the reenactment. Do you still not understand why his story is fishy on its face?
Look, no one is forcing you to believe anything what some yahoo on the Internet has written. All of this no doubt will come out in trial and the information will be put in its proper context by an expert witness. The only reason I posted that link is that you seem awfully surprised at the notion that the ballistics even matter.
But it is interesting that you feel you have enough “data” to scoff at the guy’s analysis, but somehow the absence of “data” prevents you from scoffing similarly at Zimmerman’s claim.
You’ve never been in or witness a situation where someone was restraining another by holding on to their clothes and the person being restrained wanted them to let go and forcibly shoved them? I probably hang out in bars a bit more redneck than the average doper, but I can’t believe you’ve never seen this at some point from playground scuffles all the way on up to adults.
If Zimmerman is holding on to Martin and gets shoved and loses his balance he isn’t likely to let go. Instinct doesn’t tend to sacrifice a grip for the unknown. Now we know Zimmerman outweighed Martin, so it isn’t out of the question that the difference in mass caused Martin to be dragged down on top of the falling Zimmerman. Then more shoving, perhaps in the face, with Zimmerman still clinging to Martin’s clothes.
It isn’t that far fetched, Martin has very little injury to his hands and knuckles for such a purported beating. Zimmerman has little or no evidence of defensive wounds for such a struggle. Two participants, Zimmerman clinging desperately to the hoody, and Martin open handed shoving Zimmerman in the torso and head to break free would be expected to have the relatively mild injuries that have been entered in to evidence.
What I know about the world is that strange an unlikely things happen in it.
And the reason why it’s irrelevant is because unlikely things happen. Just being unlikely does not mean that it didn’t happen. Jurors should consider that unlikely things happen, imho. It’s just a fact about the world as we know it.
Each juror gets to make up their own mind. But the fact that there was some angle which was an unlikely angle for the bullets trajectory is not the same as it being impossible. Unlikely things happen. Why can’t this be one of the many unlikely things which occur in the world?
No, they do not have to believe it. They do not at all. But there’s nothing about being unlikely which renders it identical to impossible.
And his re-enactment is 100% percent identical to how things went down?
Or is it unreliable?
Remind me again.
Imho, there’s room for some error in his next day re-enactment. I don’t think that he had anything to reference and study in the meantime. So, if he mis-remembered something as un-thought out as the angle of his wrist, it seems well within the bounds of acceptable human memory performance.
What is it w/ people on the internet and there relentless need to estimate what I do or do not understand?
I think he lied about a number of things in his re-telling. I can’t tell the upper limit on how many things.
But I just don’t happen to find the hypothesis that there some physical impossibility which prevented the bullet’s trajectory from arising from the physical circumstances which Z alleges.
You’re free to make assumptions about me and my capacity to understand things based on that as it pleases you.
I think that’s a sign that your seemer is out of whack if that’s how things seem to you.
I guess I haven’t explained myself well. I am objecting to or “scoffing at” your assertion that there’s something so unlikely about Z account of where and when he fired the gun that it makes it virtually impossible to be true. That stuff you say you’re thinking about me not “scoffing at Z’s claim” is something that originated on your side of the screen.
I don’t doubt that there’re things which can be determined from ballistics. Thank you for the concern that I was amazingly ignorant. I appreciate you taking the time to fight that perceived ignorance. All that gratitude notwithstanding, what’s at issue is not whether there’re things which can be determined from the bullet’s trajectory, but rather whether or not there’s something inherent to the bullet’s trajectory which rules out the possibility that Z was more or less how he says he was when he fired.
