The LEGAL reason is that it is not necessary - Zimmerman is presumed innocent. There doesn’t need to be anything that puts his self-defense assertion beyond undermining.
He is innocent until proven guilty, and the prosecution has to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. His defense team doesn’t have to prove anything.
Regards,
Shodan
No, because in one specific circumstance, he would still be able to defend himself using lethal force in that case - namely, that he had exhausted all possible means of escape other than lethal force. As Bricker reminded us maybe 10 posts ago…
How is it that you can have three legal experts (BottledBlondJeanie, Bricker & Richard Parker) tell you that you are wrong about a legal issue but still be smug enough to write something like this? It’s truly baffling.
It’s very simple. The prosecution cannot have a strong case unless it addresses the issue of self-defense. If Zimmerman’s claim is that he felt in fear of his life because of Martin’s actions then the prosecution must prove (beyond all reasonable doubt in Florida) that the claim is bogus. If they don’t, the jury must acquit.
I really don’t understand what is so hard to get about this concept.
Prosecution will not be able to use the word “profiled” in their opening statement.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/17/194209/at-zimmerman-trial-prosecutors.html#.UcDOoZwqX-8
It is a major pretrial victory for the 29-year-old Zimmerman, who in the days and weeks immediately after Martin’s death was denounced as a racist, made into a social pariah and became the subject of a federal civil rights investigation.
The decision to ban the word “profiled” or any variation of it came one week ago, on Day 1 of Zimmerman’s trial, but Circuit Judge Debra S. Nelson handled the issue quickly, and there was almost no discussion of it in open court.
“I don’t have any objection to not mentioning these words,” said lead prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda, and the judge quickly moved on to another issue, jury selection.
De la Rionda was referring not only to “profiled” but also five other words or phrases that defense attorney Mark O’Mara had asked the judge to ban in a motion he filed May 30, asking her to prohibit several “inflammatory terms”.
The others are “vigilante,” “self-appointed Neighborhood Watch captain,” “wannabe cop,” and the phrases “He got out of the car after the police told him not to,” and “He confronted Trayvon Martin.” Nelson has not yet issued a formal ruling on the matter.
Wow, that’s incredible. It’s even more incredible that in a country where there ought to be freedom of speech, you have these lawyer clowns saying what words can or cannot be said in a courtroom. The problem with the “self-appointed Neighborhood Watch captain” is true and “He got out of the car after the police told him not to” is partially correct. The defense ought to want to take these “inflammatory terms” head on and knock them over one-by-one, but that’s clearly not the goal. When the prosecution breaks out the thesaurus and says “He got out of the car after the dispatcher told him not to” in the courtroom, these banned words become nothing but a narcissism over small differences.
It’s a great exemplar of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
Just like with the rules for character evidence, the rules are written the way they are for good reason. If something’s prejudicial value exceeds its probative value, it shouldn’t be brought up in the courtroom. Zimmerman’s neighborhood watch status has no bearing on his guilt or innocence, but loaded terms like “self appointed” and “wannabe cop” do have prejudicial value.
Again, a trial is a finding of specific facts (did the accused commit a certain act under certain circumstances), not a moral judgment on the life and character of the accused.
Lol, at the idea that “profiling” is off limits because it’s prejudicial, but “murderer” somehow isn’t.
Can the prosecution openly call Zimmerman a murderer (as opposed to “we will show that Zimmerman committed murder”, etc)? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they couldn’t.
Does it matter? The defense is trying to ban “profile” and all of its variations from the court room, not just in the sense of calling Zimmerman a “profiler”.
It matters if you mean to contrast it with “murderer”. If neither are allowed, there’s no contrast.
Is it possible that what you consider to be “freedom of speech” is actually a distortion of the facts or a consideration that hasn’t yet been introduced in court?
GZ didn’t get out of the car after the “dispatcher” told him not to. No one told GZ “not to get out of the car”. GZ was told, “We don’t need you to do that.” Facts not fictions. What can be proven or disproven.
A witness can not recite Shakespeare or mathematical theory if that has nothing to do with the specific case (ie I invoke my freedom of speech to recite Shakespeare wherever I damn well feel like reciting Shakespeare). The judge could ask the witness to stick to providing relevent responses and they could hold the witness in contempt of court if they don’t.
Actually, neither.
What, in addition to making it a point to “disprove” you gotta do it with special, never previously used evidence? That would be even weirder than what was actually happening.
What I was being told (god, please dont’ make me copy and paste it all, really.. if you’re weighing in, you must have read it with your own eyeballs) was that there had to be a specific, distinct, separate, distinctly separate, discrete, explicit, unambiguous and direct “disproving” of the self-defense claim itself. As a thing distinctly apart from any “proving” of a crime committed by the defendant. That resoundingly proving the “positive” of a criminal act, “positively” committed by the defendant, resulting in the impregnable certainty of every juror, and thereby (depending on circumstances peculiar to each case, of course) obliterating any possibility that the defendant acted in self-defense, was not legally adequate. That the “negative” of self-defense had to be specifically and directly disproved.
I gave an exampled of the prosecution doing such an effective job of proving guilt that they didn’t even deign to acknowledge the self-defense claim, instead letting the evidence presented for proving guilt do the talking, saying everything necessary to make clear that self-defense wasn’t possible. I was told, no, not good enough. Gotta “disprove”.
And I responded with the truth that successfully proving A, beyond any doubt, can automatically disprove B since if A is true, B cannot be, and vice versa.
I was told, nope. Won’t do.
Well, I was simply describing the self-defense claim being legally and effectively disproved “by inference from the case in chief.” Which you and the Florida Court of Appeal agreed is a true statement. That’s it.
Element of what, the crime? Yeah, I know. Not an issue. Because self-defense isn’t an element of the crime, and the prosecution doesn’t prove it, it disproves it. So lumping self-defense in as “an element of the crime” that must be “proved” makes no sense. If you want to say it’s an element of the case as a whole that must be addressed in some fashion, (if you want a legally sound conviction) well, that’s a horse of a much more sensible color that have no disagreement with.
To recap: there was never any disagreement about the need to “disprove” self-defense, it was only about whether it had to be done explicitly or could be done implicitly. The answer is that it can be done either way.
(Although I would think it is almost always the wiser course to directly and explicitly walk the jury through the evidentiary dots they need to connect to make absolutely sure they recognize how and why the self-defense claim is crap.)
I would love to read that motion.
Yes, but there’s also context. In this particular instance, (depending on the prosecution’s spin) how Zimmerman thinks and acts is meaningful in determining what could and did happen that night. A given set of circumstances and actions can mean very different things depending on the experience, intelligence, character, belief systens, etc. of the people involved. So where is the line, and how is it defined?
I believe the line is where prejudicial value exceeds probative value.
As the legal teams struggle to find 40 or 30 jurors (both numbers have been reported by the media) before they advance to the next phase of voir dire, it’s occured to me that they will not be able to find 6 jurors and 4 alternates in Seminole County.
What happens then? I assume that either or both legal teams can ask for a change of venue. If the judge agrees, how is it decided which Florida county will hold the trial?
Has a local trial (GZ hasn’t been charged with violating any federal law) ever been moved to another state?
I can let “wannabe cop” (a little) and even “profiling” slide (barely). But to ban “Self-appointed Neighborhood Watch captain” is ridiculous because that’s exactly what Zimmerman was. It would be like Harriet Tubman or Dred Scott vociferously fighting the term “runaway slave” during a trial, not because that didn’t describe their illegal behavior (it does), but because it has some intangible prejudicial value on the outcome of the trial. :rolleyes:
When the defense has to carve out its own list of banned watchwords and phrases, it suggest that the case itself is built on a kind of superstructure of subterfuge. If the justice system was in the business of making a trial free of bias, they’d run the whole thing blind, with the accused sitting behind a curtain of anonymity, an jury hearing evidence from audio and PowerPoint presentation from the lawyers. Much to my own chagrin (and yours, too, I imagine), this is not the case. When you’re charged for a crime, it’s not only public record, but everyone gets to look at you and make their own biases, including Zimmerman’s weight. Who’s going to believe he’s contrite when his predicament obviously increased his appetite to gain over 100 lbs? Who goes on trial for murder and gains weight during the trial? Who’s going to believe he’s running around being a neighborhood watchman with a BMI over 30? If he keeps getting big, people may start joking that he ate Trayvon. Sounds irrational, right? Well, you might want to ask Governor of New Jersey why he decided to start tackling his weight before 2016. For better or worse, people equate fat with laziness, poor-impulse control, and stupidity, a trap (or cream-cheese cake) that Zimmerman has fallen face-first into. Poor thing.
The defense has asked the judge for a ruling. The defense doesn’t get to decide if “wannabe cop” or “profiling” will be allowed. The prosecution could request that “angry, wannbe street-fighter, thug” not be allowed. Doesn’t mean the judge will agree.
Unless evidence is introduced that “wannabe cop” and “wannabe street thug” can be proven to be relevent to the actual chain of events, what’s the point of using either phrase except to try to prejudice the jury or ignore the facts?
Does being a self-appointed Neighborhood Watch captain make him more likely to have committed murder, less likely, or no different?
Also, could the term negatively prejudice someone?
My answers are “no different” and “yes”, so barring that term is sensible to me.
I don’t think this sort of thing is all that uncommon. It suggests the defense and the judge are both doing their jobs; defend the accused to the best of their ability, and conduct a fair trial, respectively.
While there is merit in that idea, making criminal proceedings public record, and indeed open to the public, is a check against corruption, in the form of unfair trials, be it railroading a defendant or stacking the deck to ensure their acquittal.
Again, we see this aspect very differently. One cause of overeating is stress, and who wouldn’t be stressed by a murder trial, guilty or innocent?
And while the obese may be thought of as lazy, impulsive, or stupid, they aren’t thought of as dangerous, great fighters, or murderers, so he has that going for him.
More. His delusions of holding a nonexistent position of authority are directly related to his inability to correctly perceive the threat posted by Martin both at the beginning of the encounter and at any time that he had to make a reasonable man’s evaluation of whether his own life was in danger.
No, what you have repeatedly been told is that they cannot prove the crime without disproving self defence, and “positively” proving all the other elements will not suffice to prove that a crime was committed, let alone that the defendant committed it, without disproving self defence.
If the defendant claims self defence, and said claim is reasonable, then the jury cannot believe beyond reasonable doubt that he’s guilty unless the prosecution disprove that claim.
There is no claim that they have to use new and different evidence, or anything like that - but they do have to show that the evidence disproves self defence.
Let me try to make it very clear and simple. They do not have to disprove self defence apart from proving the defendant committed a crime. If they do not disprove self defence, they cannot have proved that the defendant committed a crime, and conversely, if they have proved he did so, then they must have proved it was not self defence. It is not some separate and distinct thing, it is as fundamental to whether there was a murder as proving that the victim is actually dead.