He wasn’t on the highway. He was on a private road in a gated community
Well, either way, it wasn’t a game changing point I was trying to make.
It’d have just struck me as amusing, if right from the outset Z had been breaking a law to help uphold it, or assist in its furtherance.
It’s my belief that a belief that Zimmerman is lying does not allow you to conclude that the opposite of what he cays is true, and that the decision on whether any part of his statement is true should be based on the evidence, not your opinion of his character.
In general, we think of two different types of acts that are illegal: malo in se acts are those wrong, in and of themselves. These are acts that we as humans know innately are wrong; acts that we don’t need the law to tell us are wrong. It’s this kind of act that gives rise to the oft-quoted “Ignorance of the law is no excuse?”
An act is malum prohibitum if it violates a law but is otherwise morally neutral. These are are acts that are wrong only because they transgress a regulation. Can you depreciate non- taxable income brought forth in the previous tax year? Maybe, maybe not; you can’t rely on your moral inner sense to guide you.
Using a mobile phone while driving is in the latter category.
And if it truly shows a disregard for the law, then what about your clear desire to use this fact against Zimmerman in explicit violation of Florida’s evidence code 404(b)? Does that show your disregard for the law?
Why not?
True. What it does allow me to do is make a mark in my “negatives” column. Things he said that didn’t seem to be contradicted would go in the “positives” column.
I’m basing all my decisions on the evidence Z has provided himself with the nen call, the reenactment, his interview with Hannity and his videoed statements at SPD.
404(b) seems to refer to the victim. Do you mean 404(a)? Whichever you meant, I’m not sure why you are so keen to clear it up. It’s not like I was suggesting pinning the case on him using a mobile while driving.
If you are only considering his statements, and not any other evidence, you have no way of telling whether or not they are true. I’m glad you’ve finally admitted that you’ve not even considered any other evidence, and simply disbelieve Zimmerman without reason.
Sorry. I was quoting by habit the Federal version. In Florida, it’s 90.404(2)(a):
You were suggesting that if using a mobile phone while driving was illegal in Florida, that would show Zimmerman’s propensity to disregard the law – the precise inference forbidden by Florida’s rule of evidence 90.404(2)(a).
So since you wanted to do that, may we conclude that YOU have a propensity to disregard the law?
Why or why not?
It was you that said
so, are you now saying the evidence of his lies could not in his own words, but has to be in some other form of evidence? Anyway, I mispoke in the post you are addressing. I’m not only considering his statements, I’m just saying, imo, there’s enough clues there alone not to trust anything he says.
For what relevance you think it has, I do have a propensity for disregarding some laws, but wouldn’t you think that would have me siding with the accused? After all, I’ve shared his experience of being accused of something I didn’t believe I was guilty of, got found guilty because the prosecution told a better story than my legal advisor did*, and received an 18mth prison sentence.
- Well, that and my own stupid mistake of being forthcoming with the police, because I believed I’d done no wrong and was merely defending myself.
You may choose to regard his statements as untrustworthy based on internal evidence. You may not conclude that they are false.
Your argument relies on saying “Zimmerman said X, I don’t believe Zimmerman, so not only is X false, but also Y is true”. Both those inferences are invalid, both in court and in informal discussion.
If you think Zimmerman’s statement is false, provide the evidence. If you think it’s internally inconsistent, all you can conclude is that some of it is false, not which parts.
You need, as has been repeatedly pointed out to you, external evidence, and you have repeatedly failed to provide such, or to discuss that which has been provided for you
Umm, please explain why one cannot decide that Z’s statements are false.
I have never heard this before. What prevents one from being able to conclude this?
/looks at formerly quoted section above. Looks at the latter quote. Looks at former quote. looks ate latter quote.
hed esploadz
So are we allowed to realize that Z’s statements are false or not?
I may not be able to determine ALL of the false parts. AFAICT, I CAN tell that some particular parts of Z’s account are false. That’s how I was able to reach the conclusion that he was attempting to deceive.
It’s more like “Z said X. I have no good reason to believe Z and other statements contradict X, so now I’m going to treat Y as being very dubious and look for other inconsistencies.”
How many internal inconsistencies would a prosecutor need to present to = “beyond reasonable doubt he’s lying”? It’s not like the external evidence in this case is completely exculpatory for Z.
As I understand it, that’s only part of the battle.
It’s not enough for the prosecution to show that Z lied. They also must prove that he committed murder.
We don’t know what is behind the lies. It may be something other than evidence that Z committed murder. It may be something which would not invalidate Z’s self defense claim. Imho, I don’t think that Z’s judgement about what was or was not worth lying about is reliable. Z may have decided to lie for some dumb reason.
But as I pointed out earlier, in a “shooting the breeze” sense lying about the circumstances around a homicide tends to make people think that you’re covering up a murder. But I used the example of a kid and a cookie jar. But that standard, fortunately, is not the standard in a court of law.
Imho, it’s quite possible that Z did commit murder AND that he won’t be convicted. Also there’re a number of variations on that which are also possible.
Imho, lying about the circumstances in re a homicide shows that Z has some serious ethical deficiencies. But we don’t send people to prison for that.
We send people to prison for what they do. And to establish what they have done we require a jury to decide that they have no reasonable doubt that the person on trial did w/e wrong thing they’re on trial for.
No amount would suffice to prove any given statement false. Frankly, it doesn’t matter if you can prove he’s lying or not, it matters whether you can prove his statement false or not. Neither one of those would suffice to show the other.
Disbelieve him all you want. You will still have to prove that a reasonable person, in Zimmerman’s situation would not have been in fear of death or serious injury, OR prove that Zimmerman, unreasonably, was not in such fear.
To try to explain this again, concluding that someone is unreliable does not mean you can infer that any given statement they say is false. Proving that one statement is false (using external evidence) tells you nothing about the truth of another statement. Showing that their statements are inconsistent tells you that some of their statements are false, but nothing about which ones.
That’s the logic of it. The legal side is that his statements must be disproved with external evidence to be considered false, if one simply believes him unreliable one considers that his statements have no evidentiary value at all.
It’s really not complicated, it’s common sense put in a slightly more formal way.
So, what you seem to be saying is, even if it could be proven that Z was lying through his teeth when he described his actions prior to the fight, a jury has to discount that completely and just concentrate on Z’s subjective state in the moments before he fired his gun?
Btw, I’ve yet to see any evidence that Z is a reasonable person.
There’s no amount of internal inconsistency which can prove any of Z’s statements false?
Does this principle apply to all statements? Or is it just a special property of Z’s statements?
So Z could be lying by saying something which is factually accurate?
idk. But I had always thought that a prereq for lying was that you were saying something which was not true.
If Z is lying, it kind of changes the appraisal of what “situation” Z was in. Imho. ymmv
If I can’t determine that one of their statements is false, how am I to reach the conclusion that the account is unreliable?
It tells me that the reliability of that statement should be questioned and held suspect. imho, that’s “something” about the truth of another statement. I suspect that’s why a juror has the freedom to decide to disregard all of someone’s statements if the juror decides that the person is attempting to deceive.
For someone who had his head banged against a hard object, Zimmerman’s statements are fairly consistent. As an example, three witnesses stated the altercation started at the top of the key, then moved south. It’s no benefit for Zimmerman to claim otherwise, in fact it helps him, but Z appears to think it begin further south of the T. One could speculate that after being struck, and perhaps shoved, due to being dazed he didn’t realize how much further south he ended up. The only functioning flashlight he had, still at the T is further evidence the witnesses were likely correct.
Hmarvin, what happened with that update you gave us concerning Omara and the state last week?
Why would any witness be aware of where the confrontation begun? The events described as supposedly happening at the T weren’t loud and vocal. Z’s screams for help aren’t supposed to have begun until he was getting the shit beat out of him on the ground, which we know had to be somewhere around where TM’s body was found.
Yes, let’s just forget all about how he said he was hit once, was knocked to the ground, and immediately straddled by TM.
Sorry, but this is just proof his flashlight was at the T - it’s not evidence that he was ever there.
There’s an interesting part in the reenactment where twice he walks past the “dog post sign” and never mentions banging his flashlight against it, like someone alleged he did upthread.
Let’s think about this logically. IF Z was stood at the top of the T trying to get his flashlight working - I imagine to point it in the direction TM had gone, would be his explanation - is it really likely that you’d not be facing the only direction anyone might have a chance of sneaking up on you?