I will give this to the defense, they have proven that Zimmerman was courteous to officers involved in the case, but so was Dr. Kevorkian. Having superficial social skills doesn’t correlate with a likelihood or murdering someone.
The defense, on the other hand, have not addressed the inconsistencies in his statements. It’s also fascinating, although I’m sure the prosecution would not be allowed to highlight it, that Zimmerman exclaimed In the testimony, at 32:25 Zimmerman claims that he doesn’t know what occured after his allegedly covered by Trayvon. Then, he circles back at then 32:39 with a “Oh!” (probably the most emotion he’s expressed ever) followed by the accusation that Trayvon reached for his gun. You can literally hear the neural circuits of his left brain firing to come up with some story about how to fill in that gap.
Manalo said that when he arrived, Zimmerman looked like he had been in a fight and that Trayvon was lying face down, arms tucked in. Zimmerman, on the other hand, says that when Manalo arrived, he was holding Trayvon and asked Manalo to him for help in subduing Trayvon Martin. Someone’s lying there I’m going to trust the guy who spends his time working and enriching the life of his offspring, rather than Inspector Gadget and his wife, Penny.
George Zimmerman is lucky. During his interview, according to the witness, George Zimmerman was bleeding from the ear. This can be a sign of damage to the brain. He definitely should have gone straight to the hospital.
Has it been established why Zimmerman did not get medical attention? It seems from the witnesses that nearly everyone was encouraging him to seek help for his “life-threatening” injuries.
Some courts have shot it down (as did SCOTUS in the Scheffer case) but it is a gross overstatement to say that polygraph tests have never been “admissible as evidence ever anywhere at all under any circumstances of any kind since the dawn of lie detector tests.” SCOTUS ruled that courts MAY exclude polygraph evidence, not that they SHALL exclude such evidence.
He only had that reasonable fear while the gun was not in his hand Once it was, I think a “Dude, I’m pointing a loaded gun at your heart, wanna get the fuck off?” would have been more than sufficient.
As an aside to this:
Speaking of inferences… INFERENCES BY THE JURY
I thought I’d throw in the following bits and pieces to chew upon when considering what a jury may or may not infer, especially in combination with questions of witness credibility. Juries are the finders of fact, after all, it is they who decide what is credible, whether it is justified to infer from the evidence a given fact.
In the same way the jury is charged with searching their own minds for reasonable doubt, they are charged with determining reasonable inferences:
From juury instructions
Juries deliberate privately, they don’t describe what their thought processes are. If the six women in this jury consider the evidence, the credibility of witnesses, and draw conclusions which they find logical, in light of their life experience, and that conclusion is that GZ actions met the elements necessary to find him guilty of murder in the second degree, then they have done their job properly.
And since lots of people have clearly done exactly that, it’s ridiculous to keep insisting that there is only one possible way the evidence could be received.
No one’s claiming he had life threatening injuries, except you. I’m just saying that bleeding from the ear can possibly be from a ruptured blood vessel inside the brain. Luckily it wasn’t. He should have gotten medical help.
That’s over two hours of testimony. What are we supposed to look at? What, in that, was expositive of your point? What, in fact, was your point? Do you have one?
No clue, because I have not been listening to the trial. I’ve only seen snippets and read analyses, which tend to come to wildly different conclusions about almost everything. And without knowing exactly what evidence the jury has seen and heard, along with all the arguments, I cannot possibly say.
Au contraire! I specifically called him out for sucking at it. Doesn’t seem to stop him, though. Kinda like the horrible singers trying out for American Idol.
Well, as someone who has been following the trial, is decidedly on Team Trayvon, and as recently as 4 days ago was yelling at Steophan for “calling it” too early, I can say this: be glad you’re not watching the trial. I don’t think the prosecution is even trying. I thought once they started examining Zimmerman’s statements they’d turn the heat up, but they’re doing absolutely nothing to counter the picture of events that the defense is presenting.
Serino’s testimony today exemplified this. Here’s a guy who has some serious problems with Zimmerman’s story (the lack of serious injuries and his failure to identify himself as a neighborhood watch representative) and who clearly doesn’t like the defense, and even he’s hand-waving away inconsistencies in Zimmerman’s interviews that the prosecution didn’t even bother to point out. It’s like the defense was prepared to address the inconsistencies, the prosecution didn’t bother to bring it up, and the defense addressed them anyway, just in case.
Excluding Frederick Leatherman, have you read any analyses from lawyers that suggest the prosecution is going well? And excluding Leatherman again, have you read any analyses from lawyers that characterize the prosecution’s case as strong?
I have just been reading randomly, so I don’t know who is saying what. I’m just noticing people saying different things. I haven’t read anything today at all.
I never thought there was evidence for murder 2, but I figured it was just a strategy to charge high, build a (more realistic) case for the lesser charge of manslaughter, and hope for a compromise verdict. But now it looks like it’s just a political dog and pony show, and they purposely overcharged to get an acquittal.
Is there typically less cooperation/coordination between the prosecution and the PD when it’s a special prosecutor trying the case? I don’t know how else to explain what happened with the witnesses today without going into CT territory. Is the prosecution just that incompetent?
Most of the analyses I’ve seen indicate it is going poorly for the prosecution, some indicating a sort of train-wreck level of bad. Not that I’ve done any sort of comprehensive look. Here’s one cite, if you’re interested in a poll. From that cite:
I have no idea how this site is viewed by legal eagles, but it looks legit to a piker like me.
I don’t think incompetence is the only plausible theory. Others include:
[ol]
[li]The prosecution was politically required, so they went with what they had.[/li]
[li]The prosecutor thought in good faith that there was room for reasonable debate on whether Zimmerman acted in self-defense, and viewed it as an uphill battle that a jury should decide.[/li]
[li]The special prosecutor’s relationship with the PD is not as strong as local prosecutors.[/li]
[li]They thought the case should plead out, they were wrong, and now they have to go to trial to maintain credibility in their future plea negotiations.[/li][/ol]
It’s probably a mix of all of the above. But I haven’t seen them do anything that strikes me as incompetent (though I haven’t been following as closely as some).
FWIW, that guy has been tweeting profusely during the trial. Based on his tweets, I can say that he’s incredibly biased, agenda-driven, and a giant dick.
No idea if his legal analysis is any good, though.