Martin/Zimmerman: humble opinions and speculation thread

In My Humble Opinion
11103

He doesn’t know what Martin was up to. All he knows is that someone is standing on private property looking at houses. The same property that was believed to have been broken into and near property that police caught people with stolen items on them. Again, that theft was stopped because someone else noticed people standing around in a suspicious manner. Zimmerman is actively trying to prevent more crimes in the are and when he sees something suspicious he calls the police. It’s no different than what is expected of you if you see someone doing something suspicious at an airport or a marathon. As I’ve mentioned before, I stopped a theft in progress by observing a kid standing on the sidewalk. It was the observation of his behavior that tipped me off. And he was about as close to “Timmy on the way to Disney” as you could get.

There’s nothing wrong with that if that’s what happened but that is not what Zimmerman reported and this goes back to what I addressed. Martin took an inordinate amount of time returning home. That doesn’t mean he was looking for houses to break into but it does add to the background of him loitering about and that is what Zimmerman reports.

11104

How do you know “Clearly he was not”? What was he doing then if he wasn’t just walking home? (Before Zimmerman saw him!)

Where are you getting “he was walking slowly” from? (And no, the time it takes to get from point A to point B does not tell you speed, it only tells you time. You have to assume Martin was in constant motion for time to equal speed. And it certainly doesn’t tell us what speed "… It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about. … " is does it?)

More importantly, how does the speed at which one is walking become “Acting in a way that could be considered suspicious”?

Show me where Zimmerman reported, that’s the NEN call correct?, that Martin was “standing on private property looking at houses” or Martin was “loitering about”? Not your interpretation of what Zimmerman said, what Zimmerman told the NEN operator.

CMC fnord!

11105

It was a private gated community, so we know he was on private property. Someone just walking around aimlessly, looking at stuff, on private property is suspicious.

As it happens, he had a right to be there, but for reasons we don’t know, rather than going to where he was staying, explaining what was happening, or calling the police himself, he punched Zimmerman to the ground and continued to beat him. If anything, Zimmerman was insufficiently suspicious of him, else he would have gotten the fuck out of there.

11106

Zimmerman did say “looking at houses”, but not “standing”:

11107

Murder is a non-capital crime?

11108

Second-degree murder, in Florida, is not.

11109

Wow, is that typical of states?

11110

Can you walk me through the math please without the “U NO UNERSTAND STATISTICKS!?!”. If you have a pool of jurors from a county that’s 49% men and 50% women, explain to me why I should not expect the selected jurors to reflect that pool.

Using the mathematics, let’s try this again and break out our Excel Spreadsheet. We have six jurors and our expected distribution would about 50% male and 50% female. Let’s call “1 = female” and “0 =male”; let Column 1 be our expected distribution and Column 2 be the observed distribution:

Column 1: 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1 (50% male/female)
Column 2: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 (100% female)

Have you input that data into the Excel spreadsheet? Are you sure? Good! Now, an unpaired two-tailed test (ttest) between those columns. You’ll find expected distribution and the observed distribution are statistically significant (p=0.04) or, if you prefer looking at it another way, 96% chance current jury selection did not occur by random chance. You can also do this another way: If you have a pool of 40 jurors consisting of 50% male and female, what is the probability of arriving at six female jurors in that selection? The answer is <2%.

You might want to check out the Cartoon Guide to Statistics, here. Here’s a claim straight the book itself:

[QUOTE=Cartoon Guide to Statistics]

• Claim
– Jurors were selected from the population
– 50% of eligible citizens were African American
– P = .5

• Evidence
– On an 80 person panel of potential jurors only 4 were African-American.

• Question: Was this pure chance?
– P( 4 or less ) = 1.4x10^18 = 1 in quintillion
– Probability is less than drawing 3 consecutive royal flushes

[/QUOTE]

Not my claim, but the authors, please explain how the author is wrong in going about finding the probability of jurors. Moreover, explain how statistics in this manner do not apply to jury selection and the quantitative reasons thereof. Thank you.

  • Honesty
11111

Being a selective process, I’d say random chance has very little to do with jury selection.

If you flip a coin 6 times are you shocked if you don’t get an even distribution of ‘heads’ and ‘tails’?

11112

Honesty - why are you applying statistics in such a fashion to a one-off event? You can only do so to a sample of a significant size. Secondly, even if we had such a sample, your methodology is flawed. You are assuming, without basis, that the pool of eligible jurors is equally male and female.

I’ll ask you this again - how many trials are there a day in Florida? If it’s more than 66, the the fact that one of them has an all-female jury is to be expected, so your claim that it’s problematic is meaningless without further information - that, as expected, you decline to provide.

ETA - Also, bear in mind that jury selection is, intentionally not random.

11113

“such little evidence” - you mean, besides the dead body and all?

11114

Yes, unless you can explain to me how the dead body by itself is evidence of Zimmerman’s depraved mind, evidence that the killing was the result of an intentional act, and evidence that he did not kill in self defence.

The body, by itself, would not even give probable cause to arrest him. We know Zimmerman shot and killed Martin. Shooting and killing someone is not, by itself, illegal.

11115

Who said anything about evidence of guilt? You said that there wasn’t even enough evidence for a trial. I’m saying that a) a dead body with a bullet hole in it, b) medical evidence that the bullet that caused the bullet hole was the cause of death, and c) the owner of the gun saying that he pulled the trigger that caused said bullet hole, is at the very least sufficient evidence for a trial. Or do you think that the second someone says ‘prove it wasn’t self defense!’ we should just let him/her go?

11116

I’m saying that the three things you list don’t provide enough evidence for a trial - but they do provide enough evidence for further investigation which, presumably, would turn up all sorts of other evidence. That’s why trials don’t happen immediately - in this case, there was almost 18 months of investigation before it started.

As I said, simply shooting and killing someone isn’t a crime. To reach the standard of proof where there should be a trial, evidence is required for each element of the crime. The things you list don’t prove criminal intent, depraved mind, or lack of self defence.

Also, even if there is enough evidence that the state could take the case to trial doesn’t mean they should - ethically, they should only do so if there is a decent chance of winning, so as not to waste money, waste their one chance to try the accused for this crime (or others resulting from the same incident), and fuck up the life of someone who is presumed innocent, and can’t be proved otherwise.

The second one of those was an important factor in the Casey Anthony trial, where they failed to prove murder when they could (perhaps) have proved a different charge, but double jeopardy prevents them from doing so. That case should be instructive as to why a body isn’t sufficient evidence for murder.

11117

Amongst ones that use degrees of murder, it seems to be.

If first and second-degree murder had the same penalty, there’d be no reason to ever charge someone with first-degree murder, since it’s harder to prove (In Flordia, you must prove either premeditation or that it was committed during the perpetration of another felony).

11118

A “capital crime” is a crime where a guilty verdict can result in the state taking the life of the accused, provided they are found guilty, of course.

In Florida, 1st degree murder is considered a death penalty case which would require 12 jurors. 2nd degree, manslaughter, etc are not “death penalty” cases and Florida says 6 jurors are sufficient.

11119

The trial has begin and there’s already bad n\ews for the prosecution. At the beginning of the altercation, George Zimmerman had pressed pound and star on his cellphone, which was recorded. He had claimed he was reaching for his cellphone when the altercation begin.

11120

Cite pls?

Anyone interested to learn that Zimmerman had been taking martial arts fighting classes for 18 months prior to the shooting?

11121

I don’t get your line of logic at all. You don’t have to assume anything. Dee Dee’s testimony has Martin traveling from the 7-eleven to his house. There is no other activity mentioned. If it takes 10 minutes to walk it and he takes 40 then his time is unaccounted for.

My interpretation of what Zimmerman said is based on what Dee Dee said (or didn’t say). It does not appear that Martin was in any particular hurry to go home. Zimmerman described someone who was loitering and the delay in transit time supports that. You can argue the point if you like but it doesn’t change the lawful and proper actions of Zimmerman which was to call the police.

11122

Can you be more specific please? I have my statistics book open right in front me: each selection from the jury pool is a random event. I’m not sure why you keep focusing on 66 trials in Florida, you have forty dependent events (i.e. conditional probability) right in front of us (jury selection). My assumption is true, the amount of eligible jurors in the county is 50/50; indeed, cursory examination of the demographics of that county show 49% male and 51% female, or about ~50% each. Additionally, the original pool of jurors was 50/50.I’m harping on the statistics to showcase just how improbable the current jury selection is. This was not randomly selected jury nor is it a representative slice of Zimmerman’s peers in Seminole county.

I’m still waiting for you to address the quote in my post as well. I’ll re-post here for your convenience, and keep re-posting it until you address it.

[QUOTE=Cartoon Guide to Statistics]

• Claim
– Jurors were selected from the population
– 50% of eligible citizens were African American
– P = .5

• Evidence
– On an 80 person panel of potential jurors only 4 were African-American.

• Question: Was this pure chance?
– P( 4 or less ) = 1.4x10^18 = 1 in quintillion
– Probability is less than drawing 3 consecutive royal flushes

[/QUOTE]

Can you explain where the authors of this example are wrong. Can you specifically explain why statistics cannot be used in this way. Why is this not a valid example? Why doesn’t this alarm you? Thank you again and look forward to hearing your response.

  • Honesty