Unfortunately, this scenario is contradicted by Dee Dee’s account of the incident.
Thus we are confronted with two outcomes, depending on who we are.
[ol]
[li]If we are on the jury, since there is no evidence that this happened, we would be legally obligated to acquit.[/li][li]If we are just trying to figure out what “really” happened - (chill, Bricker, everyone knows that is not the purpose of a trial), since there is evidence that this did not happen, we would be obligated, in justice, not to assume it did.[/li][/ol]
Regards,
Shodan
Oh you mean the complete and utter speculation that Martin doubled-back to specifically go attack a guy he was just running away from? That dog is just not going to hunt, no matter how many times you let him lose.
That Zimmerman and Martin lost contact with each other is not speculation; it’s backed up by Dee Dee’s account and what Zimmerman is recorded to have said to the 911 operator.
You keep coming up with stuff that not only has no evidence to prove it, but is contradicted by what we know to date. And when people point out things that are backed up by the evidence, you call it “speculation”. It isn’t.
DD’s account makes little sense. If she’s believed, than Trayvon never hid, never was chased back to the T, but just walked, for several minutes, mind you, until Zimmerman, somehow caught up with Martin. If you believe DD there really wasn’t any kind of footchase. Someone managed to imaginatively claim that the affair begin near Brandi’s house and moved north, to avoid the problem, but there’s no evidence for it. Apparently Martin is slower than the average box turtle. You can have a several minute head start while someone is talking on the phone, more than enough time to get home, and you only make it slightly past the T, if you accept DD’s account. The reason that Zimmerman never chased after Martin, IMO, after he had finished hitting his non operational flashlight on the sign post, heard on the dispatcher call, and no, it wasn’t chambering his gun, a bullet is ejected when you do that, and his gun would have been empty, is the lit flashlight was found near the T, where witnesses claimed the fight started. Zimmerman had no way of knowing that Martin was unarmed, so being armed yourself isn’t necessarily any advantage. If Zimmerman was pounding his flashlight on something, he wasn’t moving, just pounding his flashlight on something, so, more than likely, after being unsuccessful with the flaslight, he may have waiting a minute or so for the cops to arrive, than headed back, to be confronted by Martin.
“Losing sight of,” in the dark, in the rain, does not equate to Martin going all the way back to his father’s house and then all the way back. Zimmerman lost sight of him, because he went behind the houses. When Zimmerman made his way to the back of the houses, it’s seems he found sight of Martin pretty damned well.
If Zimmerman even *suspected *that Martin was armed, then he’s a fucking idiot to go after him at all – even if he himself was armed with a bazooka and air support.
He called the police. Nice job spottin’ that suspicious shufflin’ negro, now let the police do what they do. He’s not Sgt. Rock; there was no need to set up a perimeter and maintain line of sight for the proper coordinates to point the cops toward.
Although I wouldn’t expect a Doper to comprehend, but a 17 year old brain does not look like an adult brain by a long-shot. The individual who was legally, morally, emotionally, and physically an adult was Zimmerman. The use of quotation marks is nonsensical.
By the way, Evil Economist, you might want to just stop now. You’ll get more stonewalling (bricks included) here than in those Israel threads in Great Debates. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that most of posters are thirsty to see another black person shot and killed. Of course, they’ll jump in and cry foul, but they know it’s true. Half of these clowns populate the innumerable threads supporting that blacks are intellectually inferior, so it’s natural for them to defend someone who they, unconsciously or secretly, admire for “thinning out the herd”.
One thing I can say during my time on these boards and this topic is that white people, on average, can’t smell bullshit even if it’s right in front of them. I see why they keep voting for narcissistic politicians to represent them, it’s so apt and common, the phenomena ought to be a proverb. For the small minority of whites who can smell bullshit (god bless you), they take a five minute look at Zimmerman’s interview and can easily figure out he’s lying through his teeth. The rest of the flock, however, are as lost as lambs and are serenely oblivious to the bullshit wafting from their fingertips.
The force used in defense must be proportional to the force being defended against. If someone grabs your jacket, you are not entitled to punch them in the face, then ground-and-pound their head.
Also, detained through threat? Threat of what? His pistol was holstered, based on Zimmerman’s injuries.
Detained through force? What force? Martin had no injuries inflicted.
Anything “could of happened”. But we actually have evidence of what was actually said and that evidence comes from someone who is not biased toward Zimmerman. So either you have one of those brain injuries that makes you forget everything you heard a day ago or you are so biased as to ignore reasoned arguments based on evidence.
Again, we have the evidence of what happened from both Zimmerman and Martin (via DD). We have an ear witness that heard 2 people running. It’s safe to assume that one was Martin and the other was Zimmerman. We have the testimony from both Zimmerman and Martin that they lost sight of each other. Zimmerman’s account was recorded on the call to the police. We know from this call that Zimmerman stopped running based on the sound. We have a pretty good idea where the fight began based on the objects dropped. This location was out in the open so the only way the confrontation could occur is if Martin approaches Zimmerman from another location. So if Zimmerman is still on the sidewalk in the open walking in the direction of his truck then Martin has to come from somewhere that was not visible to Zimmerman because Zimmerman has a commanding view of the backyard area. According to Zimmerman Martin comes from the Southeast direction. This coincides with Martin’s stated location. He states he’s not going to run home because he’s right there. It’s not a conjecture, he flat out states his location.
Hunting is exactly what the dog was doing.
What nonsense. A 17 year old is just as capable of choosing to follow the law or morality as someone older, and to argue that Martin wasn’t physically adult is ridiculous. Emotionally, maybe not, but one isn’t allowed to punch people in the face because of emotions at any age.
That’s utter nonsense. Race is irrelevant to this case, and no-one is happy that Martin was killed. I can only speak for myself, but I am happy Zimmerman was able to defend himself from an unprovoked attack, but it’s tragic that he had to kill to do so.
The only intellectual inferiority I see is from those who want to ignore the evidence so they can stick to their pre-determined conclusion that Zimmerman is a murderer. I neither know nor care what the skin colour of most of the people doing that is.
(Bolding mine)
And here we go with the racist generalisations.
Anyway, so what if Zimmerman is lying? That doesn’t make him a murderer, or any sort of criminal. Although to consider him a liar, you’d have to explain why the evidence points to the truth of his story, rather than falsifying it. Plenty of people have claimed he’s lying, but none have been able to back it up with anything more than vague and irrelevant “feelings”, or the assumption that, since he’s known to have lied at other times, he must be lying now. Which means nothing.
Honesty is right in that a 17 year old lacks the full capacity of reason. And in this respect Zimmerman should try to defuse the situation. But based on the evidence Martin didn’t give him any time to do so.
Unless adults are to assume everyone under the age of 21 is bat-shit crazy then we have to look at the situation and see where it went south. It started when Martin confronted Zimmerman. For whatever reason he chose to do this it spun out of control faster than Zimmerman could deal with. It appears that Martin was spoiling for a fight.
I’ve been in altercations with adults who could probably have made my day a little less sunny. With minimal conversation we straightened things out.
One doesn’t need full capacity of reason to know that it’s both wrong and dangerous to start a fight with someone you don’t know, for no good reason. You should know that by the age of about 5.
Yet we allow 17 year olds(soon would have been 18), to have sex, smoke tobacco(and possibly marijuana in some states), attend a college, drive an automobile and many other things requiring maturity and responsibility via their thoughts and actions.
And equally when a child commits murder or a heinous act, we still convict them.