Not based upon your definition of murder. Based on the Florida definition of murder, which isn’t “shooting someone who isn’t trying to kill you makes you a murderer.”
Corey will most assuredly not argue “Zimmerman was being injured but not being killed, making him a murderer.” Because to do so would make her factually incorrect about the law and bring great professional shame and a loss in court.
How do we know the totality of the situation when one side of the encounter can’t tell their story. You know, being dead and all.
Kinda impossible to know the totality of the situation then right?
Whatever strikes your fancy, no skin off my back.
In a thread about a legal case the only definition of murder I care about is the legal one. Murder as a concept only exists in societies with laws.
When someone is sitting on top of you, beating you up (having broken your nose) and slamming your head on the ground - how exactly do you determine whether the intent is to kill you or not?
You have to collect all available evidence, evaluate it, and come to a decision. We use juries for that. It’s not easy, clear cut, or simple. But they have to hear it and make a decision. Depending on the evidence available, in some like situations a prosecutor might decide before it gets to a jury, too. Court cases don’t only involve situations in which both sides get to tell their story. But it’s not the case that you just get to assume someone is guilty because they admit they pulled the trigger, they are entitled to raise a defense of self defense and the jury is bound to evaluate it and make a decision based on the rule of law (which includes a presumption of innocence and a starting point of believing the defendant is innocent and only through strong evidence beyond a reasonable doubt is the defendant to be judged guilty.)
I don’t consider myself bound to discuss things in legal definitions. In water cooler parlance, he committed murder. If I gave a rat’s ass about legal terms I would have gone to law school.
This is an OPINION thread about a current event.
This is not Great Debates. Opinions are welcome and encouraged in a forum called IMHO.
I can’t see how you can argue this. If you don’t want to hear anyone’s opinion, then start a GD thread.
If Martin was trying to kill him, he wouldn’t have gotten the shot off. If Martin was truly in a superior position of strength, he could have easily prevented Zimmerman from aiming his gun.
I’ve never said you were bound. I just said random opinions based on personal definitions are irrelevant to a discussion about a legal case.
I could define “guilty” to mean “I think he did something wrong” and “judge” to mean “pineapple vendor.” The great thing about the law is things actually have definitions unto themselves and aren’t just based on random opinion. (Although obviously opinions of judges over time influences their interpretation–however that is not at all akin to someone just freelancing opinions randomly with no legal training.)
That’s a ludicrous Catch-22 scenario you’ve started. Look, everyone knows you have no real valid opinion on this case when you basically say you could never be convinced Zimmerman is legally not guilty and then create scenarios in which you say the only way it could be self defense is if it was impossible for Zimmerman to have acted in self defense.
That’s the kind of logic they use to convict people in Kangaroo courts in the Soviet Union or condemn people to death for witchcraft.
I really wish certain people would understand that, for a lot of us, law and morality often have nothing to do with each other. Murder means an unjustified intentional killing. What Zimmerman becomes when convicted is a “convicted murderer.” If acquitted, then “acquited murderer.”
To me, this case is about whether Florida law aligns with my morality in how guilty Zimmerman is. Did he make a mistake, or is he a racist?. Either way he’s a murderer, but I can more easily forgive an idiot.
Claiming shit that didn’t happen will definitely make me disinclined to believe he was just stupid, though. I do not condone lawyers lying.
Note: options above not exhaustive.
If the nose was broken and Martin got up and walked away then it doesn’t justify murder. If it’s broken during a beat-down then it’s evidence of a beating just as the other injuries are. The state has to prove Zimmerman wasn’t in fear of his life so unless there is some indication that Martin intended to stop then Zimmerman had no way of knowing if it wasn’t deadly. Getting your head smashed against a solid object doesn’t require too many repetitions to trigger fear of death.
So what you’re basically saying is regardless of what may have actually happened and what a jury decides, your personal opinion is paramount? That’s why it’s good we have a rule of law I guess.
Your opinion. I think you’re wrong.
As the injuries record shows, it is only Zimmerman that is injured. Thus, the version of events that says it was Martin beating Zimmerman up seems to be holding up. So, once again, can you tell me, when someone is sitting on you beating you up, resulting in injuries, how do you determine, during that beating, that his intent is not to kill?
GZ’s injuries do not rise to that standard, and he will denied the SYG defense.
I kinda agree. Under the BobLibDem approach, is there ever a scenario where a person meritoriously engages in lethal self-defense against an unarmed assailant?
That is why this medical report also supports self defense on the part of Travon Martin.
Right, his assumption is you can’t. But it’s easy to construct a scenario that makes his approach seem moronic.
What if you’re a 5’1" 105 lb woman and a 6’5" 250 lb man is coming after you? How many punches do you think that woman is able to take before she is in danger of dying? How long do you think it would take that man to inflict a mortal wound on her with nothing other than his natural weapons? What if he only wants to drag her to his place and rape her a few dozen times, with no desire to kill her. I guess that would be an unjustified shooting, eh? I’ve known a few people who think you shouldn’t kill someone to stop them from raping you, and that’s fine as a personal opinion. But I’m damn happy that’s not the way the law is written.
Possible.
If someone was on top of me beating me up, I would not be able to draw my gun so it wouldn’t make any difference what the hell I was afraid of. I think it’s far from established that Martin had Zimmerman in such a poor position.