I believe it is legal in Florida. Which is all that matters. What you, or I, or anyone thinks is moral or ethical doesn’t fucking matter at this point - Zimmerman must be judged solely on the laws in place when he acted. If you disagree with them, and live in Florida, you can get them changed.
I will point out that it wasn’t just a punch in the nose, it was a broken nose followed by a sustained attack. A broken nose is by any standards serious injury, and someone prepared to do that and continue attacking is a serious threat.
Says Mr. Zimmerman. On both counts - seems to me if it was a “sustained attack” the nose could have been broken at any time.
The injuries and Zimmerman’s post-killing response to them prove conclusively to me, at least (and I’m pretty sure lots of others) that whatever Martin did, or why he did it, it wasn’t even close to severe enough to be met with a bullet in the chest. If you are being hurt serverly enough to make a bullet to the chest your ONLY option, then you’d better be pretty damned fucked up when it’s over. Yet Mr. Zimmerman had no dizziness, concussion, no desire to receive a more in-depth examination to prove to him that his brains hadn’t been damaged in the “sustained attack”.
He’s a liar. His story is a lie. He was being a pushy asshole and created the altercation, then eagerly went for his gun.
Like I said earlier, I don’t doubt for a second that he regretted it the minute he did it, I’m certain he did. I HOPE he did. BUt that doesn’t change what he did, which was create a dangerous situation and behave with reckless disregard on little to no provocation, and certainly none that he did not himself create. A 17 year old will never become 18 as a result. And no, that’s not OK with me at all.
What is legal in florida, killing someone for a punch in the nose? And to whom is it “all that matters”? Is it your contention that we should not each consider what those laws are and whether we agree and wish to continue to support people who create such laws?
I also note you have declined to come up with any Zimmerman-claimless explanation for why the idea of Zimmerman starting things is “nonsense”, which makes me think you realize it’s not.
the chasm of moral and ethical viewpoints has nothing to do with the case. Despite the fact that in Florida it’s legal to shoot someone in self defense Zimmerman went for his phone and not his gun. It wasn’t until well into the beating that Martin was shot.
Yes, it could have. Do you have evidence that it wasn’t the start of the fight?
Great. When someone’s on your chest beating the crap out of you then send us a postcard before you black out and tell us you’re not in danger.
That’s faulty logic. If you’re being attacked and it will lead to severe injuries then that is when you are in fear and that is when you do something about it. Not AFTER it happens. But this is not what Zimmerman claimed as the reason for the use of the gun. He claimed he was in fear for his life PRIOR to using the gun. At this point he was legally entitled to use the gun PRIOR to its use whether you think it was moral or not. He did not shoot Martin at this point. Per his testimony there was a struggle for the gun and that is when he shot Martin. There is no indication that he was eagerly went for his gun.
This is a complete fabrication on your part. There is no evidence even from Martin himself that Zimmerman was pushy. Nothing in the verbal exchange suggests this. Nothing in the location of where it took place suggests this. What the evidence suggests is the exact opposite and that MARTIN went out of his way to confront Zimmerman.
Based on the evidence he has no reason to regret shooting Martin. At best he should regret seeing a troubled young man go out of his way to do something violent and unnecessary. Martin lived up to his girlfriend’s prediction that he would get shot in the chest. What does she know that you don’t know? It’s absolutely amazing that you ignore the level of evidence available that shows Martin deliberately and with forethought went back to where Zimmerman was and assaulted him.
Of course there is! “The evidence” is the evidence, the question is what does the evidence show? You believe it shows what zimmerman has said is true. I don’t think Zimmermans explanation for the evidence is believable, and it does not logically account for everything. Therefore the evidence says something different to me. But the evidence is the evidence.
The fact that you are a devotee of Zimmermans story, and have not subjected it to any scrutiny at all, or independently considered the actual evidence yourself is readily proven by the fact that you believe that Martin’s body was found with his arms outstretched!
I have no clue what youre saying here.
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It means your opinion on the right to defend oneself has no legal standing in Florida.
You have yet to cite one single piece of evidence to support your case. Not one. You just say you don’t believe him.
Actually it was just the opposite. You can go back to my earliest posts and see how I judged Zimmerman. I’ve gone through all the evidence and there is literally nothing that conflicts with his account of what happened. That doesn’t mean it all directly supports it but it either supports it or is neutral and implied.
Do you even begin to know how hard it is to lie to someone for 5 straight hours not knowing what evidence exists that would counter those lies? We have 2 running accounts of what transpired. One from Zimmerman that we can HEAR on the dispatch call and what Dee Dee tells us Martin told her. He was clearly beaten by Martin and you can’t even begin to justify why Martin started the confrontation or any indication from what Dee Dee hears as to why Martin beat Zimmerman for such a sustained amount of time. We already know the 911 call caught 38 seconds of it. That’s a long fucking time to be on the receiving end of someone sitting on your chest beating you.
Oh yes, it’s very hard indeed. Which is probably a key reason why Zimmerman has been caught on numerous inconsistencies & outright lies.
How interesting it is that Team Zimmerman stresses how Zimmerman’s testimony is the most important evidence in the case, but when the multiple inconsistencies and fabrications are pointed out, the response changes to ‘well, he can’t remember every detail’, or ‘he was in a state of shock, having just been attacked within an inch of his life, of course he gets some things wrong’ etc.
All the evidence supports my theory. You are the one suffering from the strange belief that your interpretation of any particular fact as supporting the story you believe precludes any different conclusion, requiring some different set of facts to be produced.
“Literally nothing”? Strange thing for you to say in response to my pointing directly at Zimmermans lie regarding the position of Martin’s body, which you put forward only a few days ago! I guess you’re right that nothing conflicts with his account of what happened, if you simply accept that his account of what happened is reality itself and anything that conflicts with that simply doesn’t exist in your mind.
Exactly! That’s how we know what a liar he is.
You appear to have left out some sentences in the above, citing the NEN and DeeDee, neither of which tells us anything about your next sentence “he was clearly beaten by Martin”. Clear to whom, based on what? Certainly nothing in the two “running accounts” you cite.
Then you jump to “and you can’t even begin to justify why Martin started the confrontation”. If we take “confrontation” to include the verbal, then yes, Martin spoke first. He was justified in doing so by the fact that this unknown man was following him, he had a right to ask why the man was following him. Is it honestly your contention that Martin had no right or reason to ask this man why he was following him?
Your next leap: “or any indication from what Dee Dee hears as to why Martin beat Zimmerman for such a sustained amount of time.” This assumes that Martin did “beat” Zimmerman for a “sustained amount of time”, a contention by Zimmerman for which we do not have evidence. Nobody directly observed the two men for a sustained amount of time, no one has reported observing Martin “beating on” Zimmerman at all, much less for “A sustained amount of time”. There have been various accounts by witnesses of seeing the two men struggling on the ground, of some physical altercation. Apart from Zimmermans own claim, there is no evidence I am aware of that Martin was “beating on” Zimmerman or otherwise clearly getting the best of him for any extended period of time, if at all.
What we know about the 38 seconds you referred to in the 911 call is not proof that Zimmerman was being “beaten on” by Martin, what we know from that call is that someone was screaming for help. That’s all we know from that call, it tells us nothing about the details of who was doing what to whom.
So, again, you have either left out a whole lot of stuff from your post, or you have inserted a whole lot of stuff into a few facts. Or both. Either way your conclusions that this a equals That b simply do not add up the way you imagine they do.
Hey, someone help me out here, there’s something I’m confused about…
Why the fuck is this still a topic of discussion?! Seriously, why do you people care? It’s a straightforward murder allegation trial between two nobodies, and the only reason it got publicized in the first place was because we all thought there wasn’t going to be such a trial to begin with! How is this still getting attention?!
He could be entitled to use self defence even if he was entirely uninjured. That’s not the standard that’s required.
Simply repeating this unsupported speculation won’t make it any more true.
And here we have the big problem. It doesn’t matter whether it’s ok with you or not, that’s not the standard by which he should be judged. Wanting someone to be convicted despite the fact that their actions were legal because you dislike those actions is fucking disgusting.
Not when the question is whether or not someone has broken those laws, no. Until such point as they are changed, you should judge his actions by those laws.
There is no evidence that Zimmerman started the fight, and there is hard evidence that he stopped following Martin. There is evidence that Martin chose to return to Zimmerman rather than go home, and we know that only Zimmerman was injured.
Now, it’s possible that Martin felt insulted or threatened by Zimmerman following him, and it’s also possible that Zimmerman said something to insult him (although we have no evidence of that). That wouldn’t give Martin reason to attack him, though.
It is nonsense because you keep asserting as fact something you have, quite literally, no evidence for.
I, and others, have consistently said Zimmerman should be believed only as far as his story is supported by the evidence. Fortunately for him, that’s far enough to show that he may have killed Martin in self defence.
It’s certainly an extremely important piece of evidence, as it’s the only complete witness account of the killing. It is, as you say, reasonable to doubt his account on the face of it, but it stops being so when it matches so precisely with the evidence, including stuff he didn’t know at the time.
His relief when he though the incident had been videoed is probably the clearest indicator that he wasn’t lying.
No, it isn’t, and only the ridiculously naive or hopelessly biased would think otherwise. People will lie and continue to lie even when confronted with clear evidence that they’re caught dead to rights - Don’t believe me? Go watch any random episode of Cheaters.
I mean, what do you expect Zimmerman to say? “Oh man, I hope it wasn’t video taped”? You’ve been watching too many episodes of Law & Order if you think the mention of ‘possible video cameras’ has him breaking down into a sobbing confession; of -course- he’s going to say he hopes it was video taped. Besides, he knew it was a dark, rainy night (little chance anything was captured), and he may well have known given his activity as head of the neighborhood watch on where any such cameras were and if they were working.
That he expressed hope that the incident was video taped is not evidence that he lied. But it’s most certainly not evidence that he isn’t lying.
There is no “Team Zimmerman”. I and other posters have said repeatedly that any evidence that alters the case would be taken into consideration. Nobody in this thread has stressed how important his testimony is. What is important is the other evidence and how it compares to his testimony which (whether you like it or not) is evidence itself. His testimony has to be proven wrong. I don’t understand how you could possibly not understand this as you review the case. It’s disturbing that as the evidence has come out independent of Zimmerman’s testimony you and others simply ignore it.
A great deal of Zimmerman’s narrative is supported independent of it. He could be in a coma never have said a word and it still points to Martin going BACK to where Zimmerman was and brutally assaulting him.
Yes there are. They have been noted numerous times in this thread. The State brought several of them up in Opening. Shall we go over them yet again since you seem to be suffering from short-term memory loss?
There is not a single piece of evidence showing Martin ‘going back’ to where ZImmerman was.
You are correct, in a very technical way. It’s a necessary inference drawn from two pieces of evidence, namely Deedee’s statement that Martin claimed he was by his house, and witness statements that saw the fight in a place between where Zimmerman made his call and the house.
One could also infer it from the evidence from both Deedee’s statement and the NEN call that both parties lost sight of each other, and Zimmerman stopped following Martin.
Martin could have gone home if he chose. He chose not to, and to return to Zimmerman.
The state has implied things without evidence. Implying something like “profiling” is just that. Evidence of that would be a witness who heard or received information from Zimmerman stating such.
You know that’s not true. Dee Dee states that Martin tells her he is at his house AND has lost sight of Zimmerman. Unless you have evidence that Zimmerman grabbed him and dragged him back to the location of the fight without making any noise mind you then Martin HAS to go back to where Zimmerman is.