I wasn’t going to pick this apart but it deserves some discussion. First, you’re right. We don’t have enough facts. But you said this after a series of what if’s. Those who you see as defending Zimmerman are not really defending him personally, they’re defending the evidence against his story. As it stands NOW. That can’t be repeated enough. It’s consistent and that is not easy to do when the police are minutes behind the event. Zimmerman can’t easily create and stick to a story that he has to maintain over the next 5 hours. It’s not easy to do. It’s not impossible but it’s pretty hard to do. That’s why suspects are grilled over and over and over. It’s to find major flaws in their testimony. If Zimmerman says his head was bagged 3 or 4 times and then says 30 or 40 times then there’s a big discrepancy. If he says a few times and they ask him to quantify it and he says 3 and changes it to 4 then it’s not a big discrepancy. This will come out in court.
What bothers me in the various postings is the hand wringing involved based on a perception of what OTHER people think. I pointed this out above regarding a number of posters. It’s not productive as a human being to project what another person thinks and then react internally to it.
Your last sentence is disturbing on face value because you appear to be taking it personally when your position is challenged: “They don’t consistently defend one side, scolding only the posters who they don’t like.” Why, for the love of God, do you think one poster doesn’t like another and would scold them for it? I don’t care or take offense if someone doesn’t like my opinion.
Discussion is what people do who disagree. The worst that should ever happen is a zero sum gain of knowledge.
But from your perch of objectivity and dispassion, don’t cluck your tongue at me (or people who I have been agreeing with) and ignore the extremists on the other side. Posters such as Terr and JoelUpChurch. We can discuss and debate all day, but don’t tell me I’m the crazy person in the thread without saying nary a word to posters who have crossed into the twilight zone of argumentation pages ago. If you’re truly objective, your tongue clucks at everyone, not just one side. Double-standards in the clucking is what make me roll my eyes.
I can show you dozens of cases where people with CCW licenses protected themselves, legally and justifiably, from situations that could have led to their deaths. Do you deny that happens?
This in inarguable, though. Few people are without bias, and its delusional to pretend otherwise.
The minority who is truly bias-free probably wouldn’t care enough to post at length in this thread and the several others like it. The most they would do is lurk. That’s why you generally don’t see me, for instance, weighing in on threads about sports. I’m completely indifferent to all teams and players. Not staking out a camp usually means you don’t care.
Yes. And this thread is in IMHO and this is the place for opinion. My opinion on the scenario changes as information comes out. I’ve always expressed my disappointment in Zimmerman regarding him carrying the gun. With it comes the moral responsibility to maintain the greatest distance from confrontation as possible. Both Martin and Zimmerman are entitled to their suspicions. Both of them are entitled to maintain a social indifference to the other and by doing so remain silent to the other regarding their intentions. Both are responsible for not starting a fight.
If Martin started the fight with a sucker punch then Zimmerman lost control of the situation. He has a legal right to defend himself but he lost control of the moral right to defuse the situation.
The court can’t dispute Zimmerman’s right to defend himself given the situation. What it is tasked with is determining if Zimmerman had reason to believe his life was in danger (use of deadly force) and also whether or not he started the fight.
OK, on the discussion side, I’ve addressed everyone making a challenge-able point. As far as I can tell, nobody has singled you out. I would humbly suggest not adding commentary like “tongue clucks” or the idea that people view you as the “crazy person”. We’re just discussing.
I’ve read the same site. Interestingly enough, it says that in order to be eligible for an expungement in Florida, you must not have previously received an expungement. So we can infer that at most, only one of these arrests was expunged.
Secondly, it says that an expunged record should be unavailable to dissemination to any entity, either public or private. And yet the State has seen fit to make these records publicly accessible.
OK, the mouse in my pocket would be the others who have discussed it with the same POV as mine. As the case stands now, in court, Zimmerman’s story is consistent with the evidence. That’s the LEGAL argument. Surely you’re aware of my moral argument. I’ve posted it enough.
You shouldn’t feel you’re opinion is not respected just because it’s argued against. What I have dished out to you is attempts to quell all your misgivings of what other people think. I’m trying to dish out a little love but you’re not getting it. Nobody thinks you’re crazy or that you opinion doesn’t matter. I’ll stop pointing that out from now on.
This is entirely wrong, and if you’d actually read my posts you’d know I live somewhere where guns are pretty much illegal, and certainly not prevalent. I’m quite happy with that situation, but were I to live somewhere they were prevalent, I’d get one.
I don’t think this is relevant, however. If Zimmerman was entitled to defend himself, it doesn’t matter if he did it with a gun, a knife, his fists, or if he choked Martin with his own bag of Skittles.
It’s a tragedy that Martin died. It’s a tragedy whether he was murdered, whether he brought it on himself, or even if it was some horrible misunderstanding. In all but the first case, of course, it’s a tragedy for Zimmerman as well.
That said, it would be far more of a tragedy if the law is perverted to lock up someone without sufficient evidence to placate a mob, or if someone found not guilty has their life ruined by said mob.
Which he did not do! In fact, he did the opposite of that! So he is morally (and I believe legally!..instigator instigator instigator) responsible for the death of Trayvon Martin.
And on that note:
AND
the part that seemingly ALL you “hehaddarightcuzhewasskeered!!!” people CONTINUE TO COMPLETELY IGNORE…
I don’t care if Martin hit first, and I don’t care if Zimmerman was convinced he was going to die any second…did he try anything OTHER than blowing a hole in Martin’s chest? I am 99.9999% certain he did NOT, not least because absolutely nothing has emerged to suggest that he did.
And it MATTERS, people.
(before you go there: INSTIGATOR…done it over dozens of posts. Go back and read it again.)
Yeah, I know. You dig guns. You think they’re a good idea. So did Zimmerman.
Now a 17 year old kid is dead and if there’s any justice in the world, an irresponsible paranoid wannabe batman will spend some serious time behind bars thinking about what a bitchen idea guns are, and what a bitchen idea it is to play like you’re a cop.
For every ridiculously rare instance in which someone successfully uses a gun to defend themselves against a genuine criminal, there are thousands of suicides, accidents, and family murders on the other side. So count yourself incredibly lucky that you do NOT live in a place where guns are legal, because all it does is end up killing and maiming huge numbers of people.
It frankly seems like more of a Bricker question, but most people who seek Expungement usually just care about it for employment purposes. If you apply for a job they don’t the potential employers seeing the arrests. If Expungement doesn’t block that, then I don’t understand the point. I don’t know if Expungement would block a reporter from seeking an arrest report if they requested it by number instead of name.
I guess I am still a little confused. If you acknowledge that there’s been a report that the charges were expunged, I’m surprised you’d ask for a cite, at least in the way you did. In other words, you knew that a cite existed; had the poster you asked come back with it, you then would be in the position of explaining you were only trusting things quoted by an official.
I also note that if that’s your rule, it seems to me you’re not following it; you’ve asserted a number of things that are media-sourced only.
In Florida, your understanding is wrong. And it’s possible that I contributed to that incorrect understanding by making a similar sweeping statement about expungement in the early days of the thread.
But in Florida, the law makes several exceptions to the rule that an expunged record just doesn’t exist. One is if you’re a candidate for a job in the criminal justice system. Another is if you’re a candidate for admission to the Florida Bar, or if you’re seeking employment with the Department of Children and Family Services.
And the biggie for our purposes: if you’re a defendant in a criminal prosecution.