The citation says that, if Martin had been put on trial in Indiana for aggravated battery for causing Zimmerman to get a bloodied nose and a scrape on the back of his head, and if the prosecution in Indiana could prove that Martin indeed was the cause of those things, he could be convicted. Neither I nor anyone else disputes the truth of that assertion, only the relevance of “aggravated battery, in Indiana, by someone who we are assuming for purposes of a legal point was responsible for the injuries” to “self-defense, in Florida, against someone who we only think caused or was legally responsible for the injuries if we accept the story of a known liar who is on trial for shooting that person to death.”
Just to repeat it again for the benefit of any readers who don’t want to jump in with “facts about how the human body works are just emotional appeals”: the purpose of analyzing the severity of the injuries is to show that Zimmerman is not credible, because the injuries show that he could not have been punched in the face 25 to 30 times or had his head repeatedly slammed into the concrete, as he claims. The severity of the injuries in and of themselves do not invalidate self-defense and no one is claiming that they do, though I will continue to contradict those who assert that any injury whatsoever justifies lethal force, as that is not true either.
Exactly. I’d like to know why he thinks the jury should ignore the testimony of the medical professionals who actually saw the injuries, though.
First – the Indiana and Illinois rulings were quoted with approval by Florida’s courts. Owens v. State, citation previously provided.
So Florida, in Owens, is saying, “While we in Florida haven’t ever decided this precise issue until now, other courts have, in Illinois and Indiana, and we adopt their reasoning.”
The relevance of aggravated battery is that it, too, requires “serious bodily injury” – the same standard required in self-defense cases. (More accurately: fear of serious bodily injury is what self-defense requires.)
So those statements should connect all the dots for you, explicitly: Florida courts accept that serious bodily injury can occur if the record shows a broken nose. And FEAR of serious bodily injury is required for self-defense. Who can doubt Zimmerman if he says, “I feared a broken nose,” (since the record will show he in fact had a broken nose).
The prosecution can’t just put that claim in some doubt. That have to rebut it beyond a reasonable doubt.
His injuries do not, and cannot, show the maximum amount of times he was punched. They are consistent with any number of punches above one. You are not providing facts about how the human body works, you are repeating falsehoods, that are based on nothing but your imagination, and your desperate emotional need to find a reason that Zimmerman’s guilty. Also, you are consistently ignoring the fact (and this is a fact) that someone who’s been through a traumatic experience, especially one involving head injury, is not expected to have perfect recall. Even if Zimmerman was mistaken about the amount of times he was punched - and, don’t forget, he didn’t claim he was punched a specific amount of times - it doesn’t follow that he was lying. That’s a jump you have, again, made solely for emotional reasons.
Oh, and any injury whatsoever isn’t a justification for lethal force, as the justification has nothing whatsoever to do with the amount of injuries received. One person could be uninjured, and entitled to kill in self defence, and another could have bean beaten almost to death, and not entitled to. The determining factor is reasonable fear, not amount of injury.
The claim is that someone who has a) already suffered serious injury and b) is still being attacked has reason to fear death or serious injury. In this case, we have evidence for both a) and b).
Further to that, we have the claim that Martin was attempting to grab Zimmerman’s gun in the course of attacking him. That, with or without prior serious injury, would entitle him to kill in self defence.
Anyone who listens to Zimmerman should doubt him because he has lied over and over again about just how and why he got that broken nose. That, again, is the entire point of examining the injuries.
If Zimmerman had in fact been punched in the face 25 to 30 times (by even a moderately strong twelve year old, let alone by the crazed time-travelling drug addict MMA thug 17-year-old Martin that Team Zimmerman has constructed), he wouldn’t have a broken nose so much as a completely caved-in, barely recognizable face. The fact that we’re even looking at whether a broken nose (discovered the next day) in and of itself means anything for self-defense is just another glaring reminder of why we can’t trust anything Zimmerman says.
Go listen to the trial. They found a slim jim at the crime scene. Something that hadn’t been revealed before.
Why do you constantly claim Zimmerman has lied, without showing any proof of that?
The broken nose was not discovered the next day, it was photographed on the day and reported on whilst Zimmerman was travelling to the police station. Zimmerman did not claim he was punched 25-30 times. He said it might have been that many. If you don’t think someone who’s been through a traumatic experience, and received head injuries, might be confused about the amount of times he’d been struck, then you need to look at the psychology of such self-reporting a bit more. Then, you need to realise that evidence of mistakes is not evidence of lying.
As for thinking we think Martin was a “crazed time-travelling drug addict MMA thug”, well, again you have no evidence for that, and of course can’t have any, as it’s utterly false. That it’s not your most ridiculous theory simply points to the silliness of you position in general, and not anything that anyone thinks about Martin.
The problem I see with that is that Zimmerman can say, “The cube root of 8 is 2.”
Even if I believe Zimmerman to be a liar, i still accept that statement as true.
Why? Because I have independent evidence that it is. So, too, with Zimmerman’s nose. If I were relying solely on Zimmerman to diagnose his broken nose, perhaps I could dismiss it, but I’m not. So I believe Zimmerman’s broken nose no matter how much of a liar he is.
That should read alleged crime scene. A slim jim is a lock pick. Now, what was Trayvon doing with a lock pick?
You’re doing that tendentious missing the point thing again. No one is disputing that Zimmerman had a broken nose when he was examined by the physician’s assistant the next day.
Did he get it when he pointed the gun at Martin and Martin tried to defend himself?
Did he enhance his bloody nose overnight to bolster self-defense?
Was he in an inconsequential street fight that did not justify lethal self-defense, and that a jury probably would not have found justifying, even if a broken nose is grounds for a jury to be ABLE to do so?
Did he get the broken nose, push Martin off of him, and then shoot him after the threat had passed?
When you only have the word of someone who has repeatedly lied about the fight to go on to assert that the broken nose was from an unprovoked, escalating attack that he could only escape by lethal force, his credibility matters, the alternate explanations need to be examined, and the mere fact of the broken nose proves nothing.
Sure, all those are possible.
How do you go about proving one beyond a reasonable doubt?
This is the most serious problem the prosecution faces. It cannot simply plant seeds of doubt in the mind of the fact-finders. That’s a tactic for the defense – to offer up might-have-happened, reasonable alternative explanations. The prosecution must PROVE that what it says happened, happened. The defense doesn’t need to do that.
It’s an unequal contest. The deck is stacked in favor of the defense.
It’s a longer piece of metal that can be used to break into cars. Interesting handwaves on your part:
*conflating breaking into cars with picking locks to try to make this relevant to the “looking into houses” nonsense
*asserting that Martin had any possession or association with the object at all
Of course, another thing you can do with a long piece of metal is beat someone with it pretty severely, so if Martin was indeed the crazed assailant you wish him to be, why would he throw it away, and why wouldn’t Zimmerman mention seeing him with it if he had one? Martin being armed would certainly bolster Zimmerman’s case.
The most likely explanation is that the police found a piece of metal in the bushes that has nothing to do with the case at all and neither Martin nor Zimmerman has ever seen before, with “Zimmerman had the slim jim as the backup weapon” as a distant, remote possibility. That Martin had it and then threw it away before engaging in some sort of assault, and Zimmerman chose to omit this even though it would immensely help his case, makes less than zero sense.
Just curious – if testimony were to emerge that the metal had Martin’s fingerprints or DNA on it, and not Zimmerman’s, what, if anything, would you then conclude?
That the first actual piece of evidence of Martin being interested in committing some sort of property crime that night had actually been found, after a year and a half of huffing and puffing about his character from Team Zimmerman. It would still puzzle me greatly as to why he would choose to discard a weapon before assaulting someone. But I’ll wager a few bucks that no DNA is going to be found on it and it doesn’t have anything to do with either personage in the case.
What evidence do you have that he pointed the gun at Martin, and Martin tried to defend himself?
Quite possibly, although it’s hard to know why he would do so, as he was examined in the police car, and observed to have a probable broken nose.
Having a broken nose is not grounds for self defence, the level and reasonableness of the fear Zimmerman was in is the grounds. A street fight that causes a broken nose is, by definition, not inconsequential. The jury must decide whether the fact that the fight had consequences, and was ongoing, could nevertheless not possibly have put Zimmerman in reasonable fear of death or serious injury.
Simply pushing him off would not end the threat. For the threat to end, Martin would have to retreat, and make it clear that he was no longer a threat. So, if Zimmerman pushed Martin off, then shot him, he was justified (assuming Zimmerman was not the original aggressor).
You have no reason to believe Zimmerman repeatedly lied, and simply repeating that claim without providing a shred of evidence to back it up makes you look like an idiot. Why don’t you try explaining what your reason for thinking Zimmerman is a liar is - and, specifically, your reason for thinking that rather than he was mistaken, or confused?
FWIW, the lead investigator testified that he did not think Zimmerman was lying, and that the inconsistencies in the questioning were not material.
That must mean the lead investigator is a racist.
Well, this trained and experienced detective certainly lacks the deductive reasoning many in this thread have, who can infer details without the benefit of evidence. 
As you may recall, the initial failure of the cops to properly investigate or charge the case was the reason this became a news story and brought to light racial disparities in Sanford so yeah, maybe he is. In any case, I prefer to rely on the objective facts that show Zimmerman is lying, namely the medical impossibilities in his story, rather than polling people on what their mood rings say.