There is no evidence that is satisfactory beyond any reasonable doubt that indicates Z’s head was ever pounded against anything, let alone the edge of a concrete paving stone.
Some people of w/e relative reasonableness you care to ascribe to them find the phone call as evidence that Z followed M.
I don’t think that’s what was said. I may be wrong some more and again, but I think point was recklessness rather than foreknowledge. And, iirc, the recklessness was related to “Zimmerman [proceeding] against the advice of the police dispatcher to follow Martin, a person he believed to be an armed criminal, taking his loaded pistol with him, when there was no compelling reason to do so”
Afaict, there’s no mention of what you objected to.
Except the whole following M thing. Can a reasonable person view the facts and decide that Z followed M?
I have operating under the impression that Z did in fact exit his vehicle. It seems very unlikely that Z was actually in his vehicle the whole time rather than where witnesses and Z himself have placed him. w/e
I guess, ymmv.
:shrug:
Other than the exiting his vehicle [which apparently you disbelieve] and following after M.
But to me, it seems that once Z exited his vehicle and followed M, Z was increasing his proximity to M.
But you also disbelieve the following part as well as the exiting the vehicle part, no?
Approaching someone is starting a fight now? Or is it not?
I am not sure about that phrasing, but perhaps.
The issue expressed seems to be about what responsibility one assumes when one is armed and one pursues someone who one assumes is up to no good and who is also possibly armed.
You don’t really seem to take issue with that rather just with what the facts of the case are.
I think that a reasonable person could look at the evidence presented and reach the conclusions I have reached and/or the ones presented by Bricker as the possible assessments of jurors.
Yes, that’s kinda the point. Ironic how many times you’ve criticised him for not being perfectly accurate in his reenactment and testimony.
Relying on the professional assessment of a police officer at the scene is sensible, especially where it agrees with all the other evidence. As it does in this case.
There is no basis to your arguments, that’s the criticism.
The phone call where Zimmerman says he stops following Martin, and you can hear him stop moving? No, no reasonable person could find that is evidence that he did keep following Martin after he was told to stop.
They may choose do disregard the evidence as inconclusive, and rely on some other evidence to reach that conclusion, if such evidence exists. I’ve yet to see that evidence.
There is no evidence that he continued to follow Martin after being made aware that doing so was reckless.
In my opinion, no. The evidence of the phone call suggests he stopped following, the other physical evidence, including the location of the flashlight and the location of the fight, suggest he was not following Martin, based on where Martin would have been if he’d continued home.
What evidence do you have that he continued following him?
Not to speak for Magiver, but I suspect his point was that the fight started after Martin approached Zimmerman, not the other way round.
No, the issue is that there’s no evidence Zimmerman pursued Martin. If there was, we would have a different situation.
Then please lay out how the evidence shows beyond reasonable doubt that Zimmerman illegally killed Martin.
That is, any reasonable scenario apart from Zimmerman’s guilt is proven false by the evidence. You could start by proving false the scenario where Zimmerman is in fear of death or serious injury as Martin is trying to grab his gun, which was inadvertently revealed during the fight, whilst Martin was on top of Zimmerman preventing him escaping by any other means.
Forgive me for expecting a reenactment to at least try and represent events as closely as they occurred. What is the point of them if they are just going to go through the motions half-heartedly? I thought a reenactment was supposed to be a tool for helping the justice-seeking process, not a means for a potential murderer to present his defence in the most favourable light.
Can you also forgive me for not relying too much on the professionalism of a cop who omits any mention of someone else being at the scene when he arrived, like it didn’t matter in the slightest and wasn’t worthy of being reported.
Are you trying to say that there is no basis for doubting Z’s innocence regarding ANY charge, or just the one the state is pursuing? Aren’t you one of the ones insisting he shouldn’t have even had to face further investigation, nevermind a manslaughter or 2nd degree murder charge?
Well, actually, there’s recorded evidence that indicates he continued to run for 10 seconds after saying “Okay” to the dispatcher’s suggestion that he didn’t need to follow him, so are you suggesting that he began running in a different direction from what he’d previously been heading?
Odd you wish to have a conversation with someone so unreasonable as myself.
gl w/ that.
You appear to be confusing the reenactment by a suspect, where he cannot be expected to incriminate himself, and a reenactment by third parties to try to jog witnesses memories.
In both cases, the point is to show the points the people involved consider important, to the best of their knowledge and/or memory, not to provide an exact repeat of the actions. Do you think the police should have provided someone to punch Zimmerman, then be shot?
No, because you are simply continuing your pattern of picking and choosing what to believe based on irrelevant details, and your personal preconceptions.
No, I’ve not said any of this. I’ve said I agreed that he shouldn’t have been arrested at the scene, as he was neither a flight risk nor a danger to anyone else. I’ve said the police should thoroughly investigate the killing, which they have done. I’ve said that, in my opinion, he probably won’t win the immunity hearing, and I agree with Bricker that there are the grounds for a manslaughter charge, although I don’t believe the state could win that case. In which case, it would be pointless but not actually wrong to bring the case. I do believe it is wrong to bring the murder charge, as there is insufficient evidence to support it.
As you’d know if you bothered to read my posts.
I’m suggesting that, after telling the dispatcher he was going to stop following Martin, and before he got anywhere near Martin, he stopped following him. Your ten second claim fully supports this. Therefore, he was not engaged in any threatening or reckless behaviour that we know about from that point on, and so was not responsible, as far as we can know, for the confrontation.
It’s an attempt to show you the error of your ways, and to educate the masses of readers who are no doubt waiting with bated breath for my next insightful post.
Zimmerman’s nen call indicates clearly that even he wasn’t sure if Trayvon was near enough to be able to hear him give out his address to the dispatcher, so why are you so certain of how far away Trayvon was when Z stopped? Do you imagine Z was speaking loud enough to be heard by Trayvon down at Brandy Green’s?
Seeing as we don’t know for sure where Z was when he stopped running, or when he started, don’t you think it’s a little premature to make any such determination?
The most we can assume about his little jog after leaving his vehicle is that he wasn’t heading AWAY from TM.
No. He stopped following Martin while out of sight of him. Therefore, that act of following was not the act that provoked the fight. It may be that it was a reckless act in the first place, but as it did not lead to any consequences, it was not criminally reckless. As has been explained repeatedly to you, the simple act of following someone is not a threat, it must be accompanied with some specific act that would make the person being followed reasonably believe they are in imminent danger.
Since you now appear to accept Zimmerman did, in fact, stop following Martin, can you explain how they came to be in contact?
I don’t recall saying I believed he’d stopped looking for Z, only that he’d stopped running after him.
As to how they came into contact, I’m going to guess that Z wasn’t being entirely truthful about which way he ran, and that he actually ran down TTL to get ahead of Trayvon at the first break between the houses.
Well, actually…you can.
As I have explained before, if “questioning the character” means asking about prior bad acts, those acts are in admissible to prove that the accused acted in conformity therewith. And you can, in fact, kill someone and then refuse to testify without that refusal being considered negatively by the finder of fact – that one of the rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
Hah, I always thought Zimmerman’s re-enactment was done before he was arrested?
Seems confusion on the purpose of the re-enactment in that it’s supposed to be a video version of a written account of what happened. I’d suspect it to be damn close but not even identical to a written version and certainly not 100% accurate to the evening in question.
The video seemed so so unscripted(and still does), the way he talks is full of grammatical errors, run on sentences, natural word stumbling.
Not sure why the big argument over the video.
The clearly video highlights the discordance between Zimmerman’s account of what happened and other, more objective evidence.
I would expect Zimmerman to make a few mistakes about when certain things happened and how. I would also expect him to misjudge distances by a few feet.
What I would not expect him to do is make claims that would require the work of supernatural forces to be true. No self-respecting, intelligent adult should expect that either.
Zimmerman claims he spotted Martin walking past Taffe’s house. Seconds later, Martin supposedly passed by his truck at the clubhouse. Then after a few more seconds, Martin supposedly was running across the dog path at the south end of TTL. Then he double-backed to Zimmerman’s truck, and walked around the truck 3 times. Which is then when Zimmerman busted out of his truck like a maniac to look for a “street sign”.
If we pair this sequence events up with the NEN call, we’d have to believe that Martin did all this walking, pacing, and running in less than a minute. This despite the issue that allegedly triggered Zimmerman’s report in the first place was that Martin was walking slowly in the rain. Yeah, okay.
Something stinks high to heaven in his reenactment account, and that is why the video matters. If gives us some insight into what Zimmerman will gibbergabber when he takes the witness stand, and some of us (like me) can’t wait to see how the prosecution trounces this.
I don’t understand why the court has allowed the defense to pursue Martin’s alleged hobby of street fighting.
again, there is a ear witness who heard 2 people running by. They took the same path.
Zimmerman was waiting to be connected to the dispatcher while he was parked near the clubhouse. All of the conversation with the dispatcher happens after he drove his car away from the clubhouse.
The other thing is that there are other videos in evidence that possibly contradict Zimmerman in ways that us little people can’t appreciate because we are not CSI detectives.
One such video is the clubhouse video. Another video is from the 711. Footage from these sources, when pieced together, may very well clearly show Martin’s trajectory on the night in question does not match with Zimmerman’s story. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the prosecution has included both in discovery.
According to Martin’s gf, the kid had spent some time at the mailboxes, taking shelter in the rain for several minutes. But according to Zimmerman, Martin traveled from Taffe’s directly to the dog path, without stopping. Whose account is most likely supported by the video evidence included in discovery? Whose account is most likely contradicted by it?
The 711 surveillance video shows us when Martin left the store, because it’s time stamped. I suspect none of the folks defending Zimmerman realize that Martin’s departure from the store does not line up with the time at which Zimmerman supposedly spotted Martin at Taffe’s. It’s as “off” as the rest of the alleged timeline.
So explain how Martin magically appeared at the end of Twin Trees Lane only seconds after Zimmerman left the clubhouse? Then explain how the kid had time to double-back and circle Zimmerman 3 times, too.
Bonus points if you can do it with a straight face.