cite? According to thissite the only way to ascertain intoxication levels is to give a physical test. The reason for this is that unlike alcohol, marijuana has more than one intoxicant chemical.
as far as the intoxication levels given by states: (same cite)
"While be it controversial, some states have instituted legal limits for THC blood levels. This is not due to intoxication or impairment, but a zero tolerance policy because in those states marijuana is a not legal, and thus no one should have it in their system. "
I have heard that M may not have died instantly.
Z may not have been ready to check to see if M was dead.
Z may not have been ready to count on M being dead.
So even if Z was trying to restrain M after M had been shot through the heart, it wasn’t necessarily a nonsensical notion depending on what Z pov was.
Istm, that Z may have had a “legitimate” reason to initiate the encounter with Martin.
Has Z actually explained what his “legitimate” reason to initiate the encounter with Martin was?
I don’t think so.
Z may have been justified in suspecting M was up to no good or on drugs or something [Z wasn’t particularly precise in his description imho] based on w/e demeanor M was exhibiting.
[“Articulable” is an important word in some cases for a reason.]
But that’s different from that demeanor justifying a “legitimate” reason to “initiate the encounter”
Further, I think that Z’s version would hold that Z had no legitimate purpose for initiating the encounter as the encounter did not happen by Z’s design.
What would it mean to have a reason for an action done w/o intent.
Iow, Z did not initiate the encounter, so he doesn’t have a “reason” to initiate the encounter.
imho
To fuel the imagination on this count, iirc, they took Z out to the spot the next day and made a video recording of Z re-enacting the event.
That could be as relatively specific as the use of words in some ways to see Z actually show us the wheres and hows in the actual place of their occurrence.
That’s kind of my point.
It’s the same to bring up the NHW as justification for Z to keep M in sight as it is to bring up the NHW to say that Z shouldn’t’ve followed M.
It’s the same thing, imho.
It doesn’t make sense to deny the importance of NHW in one case and point to its importance in the other. It doesn’t to me anyway.
So if we’re going to consider NHW as the reasoning for Z following M, then we have to consider NHW as the reason that Z shouldn’t’ve followed M.
What Z did shouldn’t be associated with NHW at all afaict.
His decision to follow M was not in accord with the NHW duties he’d assumed.
It was Z’s decision on his own.
There was no obligation from being involved w/ NHW to follow M. What NHW asked of Z was something different than what Z did.
My apologies, but are you talking about legal authority or some other kind of authority? Also, what exactly have I said that you disagree with?
Perhaps to avoid what appears to be a semantic issue, I will restate things:
If Martin was high, it would support Zimmerman’s implicit claim that he did not initiate contact with Martin as a result of racism or the desire to provoke a fight.
Actually the word kill is not used. You always shoot to stop. Your purpose is not to kill your assailant, but to stop him. It may be quite likely that stopping your assailant may result in their death, but that is not your intent.
I was surprised that Zimmerman fired only once, but then I watched a video review of the firearm Zimmerman used. It is what is called a Double Action Only pistol. It has a fairly long trigger pull and it doesn’t rearm until the trigger is almost fully released. I suspect Zimmerman panicked and didn’t release the trigger enough to rearm the pistol and he had time to realize that Martin wasn’t attacking any longer.
The normal reaction of a novice in this situation is to fire until the magazine is empty.
BTW on an unrelated topic, there is a nice picture of the scene at Twin Lakes in the NY Times. Pretty cool to get from Google.
The problem is Zimmerman could re-enact it but get it slightly off what actually happened, and that’s relatively easy to convince a jury of because more or less that’s the truth. (Although this is why if I ever shoot someone I will say nothing other than “It was self defense, I was in fear for my life, and any other questions I’ll need counsel to answer.”)
Factually speaking it’s virtually impossible for Zimmerman to re-enact the event exactly as it happened, the positioning will be off a little bit, his physical motions will be off a little bit. Basically, I just don’t see you able to convict someone because their narrative doesn’t match 100% with how you might expect the body to be found by police. If for no other reason than even a very explicit narrative probably isn’t going to get the exact description of how Trayvon went down to the micrometer, it will probably be a little more general than that, which will give all kinds of room for plausible explanations.
The key is disproving that Zimmerman was being beat on and in fear for his life, and I don’t think you do that by finding “weirdness” in how his body was laying. Primarily because his physical injuries, the fact that Martin’s blood was found on the front of Zimmerman’s jacket (indicating it fell downwards onto Zimmerman) and etc are a lot stronger evidence that Zimmerman was prone getting beat on and will have a much larger affect on a verdict than all this frankly weird obsessing over the positioning of Martin’s body.
I’ve not even seen unambiguous news reports on the minutiae of Martin’s exact body positioning. Further, we know the police at least tried CPR, I don’t know for sure if the stuff we’ve seen about body positioning are before or after he was moved for CPR to be performed on him or etc. We don’t know how much Zimmerman might have had to move him to get out from under him.
OK, I missed the comparison to another case. Not sure what the other case was about.
I’ve been on both sides of this event. I’ve had people ask me what I was doing and I’ve called the police on suspicious people and watched them and directed police in the right direction. There was no justification for a fight in this situation. Both parties could have diffused it with words but this was not the case. If Martin started the fight then he died because of the stupid things kids do. What kid hasn’t done something dangerously stupid. If Zimmerman started the fight he should burn in hell.
I personally think this was a tragic misunderstanding between both people that instantly spun out of control. As I’ve said, I’ve been on both sides of this issue. When questioned about my reason for being 2 houses away from my own house I understood that people were looking out for my best interests and a conversation ensued. When calling the police I assumed the person may be innocent and tried to ensure the police didn’t over-react. but make no mistake, I tried to keep the person in sight.
My gut feeling is that Martin took offense when Zimmerman answered his question with a question about his reason for being there and a fight ensued. If Martin had stopped beating Zimmerman and gone home he’d be alive today. he chose otherwise. Teenagers regularly do stupid things and live to tell the tale but sometimes it catches up with them.
Yes, this is part of the established timeline; Martin was on the phone while Zimmerman was talking to police dispatch, and the termination of the call was coincident with start of their confrontation.
Given that the DUI threshold for some jurisdictions is well below intoxicating levels, I don’t have any problem agreeing to that. His THC levels were significantly below where they would be expected to be if he had smoked within the past three hours. The effects of smoking marijuana last about two hours, and the time in which someone might be expected to be visibly in an altered state - especially at night, across the street - is of a much shorter duration than that.
The ability to a video re-enactment to be specific doesn’t need to be compared to an ideal. It only need to be compared to the abilities of speech to be specific.
Speech also falls short getting things exactly right or to communicate “the event exactly as it happened.”
The effects of alcohol are not at all similiar to those of marijuana. Do you really not know this? Yes, you could discern the signs of alcohol intoxication while observing someone walking at night. Stumbling and weaving, most commonly. What do you imagine happens to someone who had a few hits on a joint? That they would be floating down the street?
My gut feeling is that Martin took offense when Zimmerman answered his question with a question about his reason for being there and a fight ensued. If Martin had stopped beating Zimmerman and gone home he’d be alive today. he chose otherwise. Teenagers regularly do stupid things and live to tell the tale but sometimes it catches up with them.
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Martin is not on trial for wrongdoing, Zimmerman is. You frame the issue as though Martin was under some kind of special obligation not to defend himself against a threatening figure or that he broke some kind of social or legal rule by being outside rather that at home. Neither one is true.
There is no indication that Martin was threatened in any way. He had the opportunity to go straight home and he had the opportunity to stop beating Zimmerman. Nowhere has there been any evidence that he needed to defend himself.
And Martin would have been held to account for his actions in the fight. The evidence as it stands now show that he beat Zimmerman. That is born out of his hand injuries and the injuries sustained by Zimmerman.
Some would see the fact that he ended up shot and killed by Zimmerman as sufficient evidence that the kid had good reason to fear Zimmerman.
How many times does it need to be explained that just because Martin didn’t lay down and let Zimmerman have his way with him, doesn’t mean Martin did anything wrong by popping Zimmerman in the face. If only he was alive, he’d be able to tell us his side of the story. As it is, we have no reason to believe Zimmerman when he said Martin attacked him first.
You may have no reason, but you can’t convict someone only because you have no reason to believe him. You have to have specific evidence to rely on to DISbelieve him. To convict him, you have to point to things that prove he’s lying. And not just hint at it. PROVE IT. Beyond a reasonable doubt.
For this reason, I wish you’d stop framing it the other way.