While I doubt that Zimmerman had the physical ability to chase down Martin, at least this version of events has some slight, if dubious, possibility. There’s no way a person can run down someone with a several minute head start, which is what the state is apparently claiming. Even Usian Bolt can’t do it.
This is a good opportunity to answer my follow up to you regarding what kind of evidence you consider adequate proof of a lie, generally.
You said that you would consider a video recording showing a person’s statement to be false to be proof they had lied.
Is there any other type of evidence that you would consider proof of a lie, or is a video recording of events being different than the lie the only type of evidence you accept as proof of the lie?
That isn’t proof of a lie. A lie is not simply a statement that happens to be factually untrue, it’s a statement that the stater knows to be untrue, yet presents as true with intent to deceive.
So, to show a statement is a lie, first of all you need to show that the person making the statement knew at the time they made it that it was false, and secondly you need to show they intended to deceive.
The second is important, as someone uttering an untrue statement with intent to amuse is not lying, and neither is someone offering a counterfactual as part of a rhetorical argument. Neither of those are valid in court, where one is expected to tell the truth under oath, so simply showing that someone knew their statement was false would suffice.
A video recording showing that events were different would not accomplish this, but a video showing the alleged liar watching events that were different to what he stated might, assuming one could reasonably expect him to recall what he saw.
Finding contradictions in statements may suggest a lie, but again one has to assume adequate recall, and you then still have the problem that, whilst you may have detected a lie, you still don’t know which, if any, of the statements is true.
Showing that something is a lie is hard, at least to the standards required in court. It’s also usually unnecessary, where showing someone is wrong will often do.
I’m not sure I’m following this. I just listened to Magiver’s link, and maybe that’s somehow out of context, but there’s the horrible, shrieking “help” shouts that each family is claiming as their own, immediately followed by the gunshot. What’s the speculation from the Martin camp? He was beating the shit out of Zimmerman, simultaneously shouting for help in terror, and Zimmerman put a stop to it by shooting him?
I don’t get what plausible story is there, I must be missing how this isn’t very, very strongly supportive of Zimmerman’s story. Any Trayvon guys care to offer some counter-story consistent with that tape (or maybe someone can explain how I’m misunderstanding, which is entirely possible)?
Worded differently, why isn’t the likeliest owner of the shrieks the guy who got his ass kicked, given how closely the gunshot follows the cries for help?
I think the argument is that, because the screams stopped the instant the gun was fired, the guy screaming must have been the one that was shot.
I don’t quite get it either, but that’s what people here have said.
Excellent! The maps and the witnesses saying south to north shadows, along with tracy martins girlfriend fill in the blanks perfectly. (Another prosecutorial fumble, however… Sigh)
Which makes more sense in the real world that normal human beings occupy:
A: GZ inexplicably lingering at the T for two minutes while TM goes all the way home, SITS on the porch, suddenly changes his mind and decides to go look for GZ, immediately finding him standing in a perfectly useless spot, then attacking him
Or
B: TM goes home, sits on the porch, and GZ appears, so TM goes over to him to ask him why he’s following him, which he obviously has been, since he followed TM all the way?
The verbal exchange, some kind of movement from GZ designed to detain TM, struggle and pursuit north, somewhere along the way GZ thinks he better pull his gun to protect himself, TM freaks and struggles to keep him from pointing it at him, screaming hysterically, gets shot, falls forward on his hands, GZ sits on his back, leans forward to (?), gets up and…scene.
By which you mean what?
Right, but that requires us to believe in a scenario where Trayvon (the “street fighter,” or so he fancied himself) is putting a beat-down on Zimmerman, while simultaneously shrieking in terror. I’m repeating myself, and I know that’s not your position, just wanted to see if I was missing something. It only makes sense to me that it was Zimmerman shouting, given the sequence and timing, and the fact that he’s the one who got pounded.
Careful there. Plain common sense is not allowed in the Trayvon Martin case.
Since the very beginning this case has been twisted and shaped to fit “facts” that just don’t exist. The poor scared, innocent child carrying Skittles shot by the racist wanna be cop has been carefully scripted for public consumption.
Honestly? I find either scenario equally plausible. That’s why I keep saying that I just have to discount their first encounter, because at some point it’s broken, at least according to the evidence from the trial.
Zimmerman, from my perspective, was the one who showed poor judgement in the first encounter by getting out of his truck. Had he just stayed in it, or gone on home, we wouldn’t be here. BUT he did get out, which, while dumb, wasn’t breaking the law.
It’s the second encounter that leads to TM’s death. And I think it’s in the 2nd encounter that TM has the lapse in judgment. Having been a dumbass 17-year-old boy, and having been in fights (sometimes taking an asswhipping myself) where I let my ego get the better of me and walked into it, I can certainly identify with TM’s line of thinking. The guy followed me to MY house? Sumbitch has the nerve to ask me what I’M doing here? Aw, hell naw.
But that’s my own bias and experience talking–which I’ve tried to acknowledge from the jump.
Anyway, my contention is that–having stipulated GZ’s dumbassery–TM’s fatal mistake was just not going into the house. And, since I stipulated above that GZ didn’t break the law by getting out of his truck, neither does TM break the law by not going inside. It just boils down to poor judgment (which is why we went off on that tangent about the prefrontal cortex–that, aside from my assertions of TM’s background or cultural leanings–gives reason enough for his making the poor decision.
But still, even though I was a dumbass at 17, I was still ‘adult’ enough to be held to account. For me, that meant not pressing charges on the guy who kicked my ass, since I was the one who left the safety of the school and went outside to meet him. I didn’t throw a punch in that fight (at all) and thus, in terms of the legal definition, I was illegally assaulted. But I put myself there. ETA: Of course, had I (or the other guy) ended up dead, then it’d be a different story.
I don’t think I can make that sentence any less complicated. I’ll try to explain, but it’ll probably make it more complex.
Proving something is a lie requires proving three things. Firstly, that the statement is false. Secondly, that the utterer knew the statement is false. Thirdly that they intended to deceive.
As the last two are things that, technically, can only be *known *by the individual, it is extremely hard to prove. Proving one thing, such as intent, in a criminal case is hard enough, but doubling that makes it harder still.
One may, through common sense and life experience, be able to judge when someone is likely to be lying, but that is not proof. Not that proving someone is a liar is particularly useful in court, excepting a perjury charge.
Bear in mind that Zimmerman’s keys and the attached flashlight, turned on, were at the T. So, your scenario B has to account for that. you with the face went with Zimmerman throwing his light and keys to the ground in his berserk fury before charging Martin, and carrying his non-working flashlight in his hands for some unknown reason. Do you endorse that theory?
You misunderstood me, I meant what do you mean by that it is hard to prove in court… What is the standard that you were talking about? You mean prove a lie to pursue a perjury charge? Do you mean prove a lie to the satisfaction of the jury? In what way do you mean it is hard to prove a lie to “the standards required in court” specifically?
No. But my recollection is that the distance is not all that great between the T and where Martin’s body was found. Seems entirely possible that they could have gone as far as the T and then back. And I do not believe Zimmerman went berserk anymore than I believe that Martin went berserk. I think that Zimmerman made some kind of movement or touched Martin in some manner, his intention being to prevent Martin from “getting away”, and Martin reacted harshly. Then Zimmerman reacted even more harshly. And the whole thing escalated horribly.
It’s a good 35-40 feet.
Again, you have it as:
So, the pursuit north reaches all the way to the T, at which point Zimmerman drops his keys, after holding them in his hand while he tries to restrain Martin. The fight then returns about 40 feet south, where the shooting occurs. And in this running chase and battle, the thinner, taller Martin is unable to or unwilling to simply flee Zimmerman, nor is Zimmerman able to inflict any injuries on Martin, or even tear his clothes. Yes?
If the keys and light were near the townhouse, you might have a stronger case: Zimmerman could have dropped them to free up his hands to grab Martin. But since they were at the T, that means Zimmerman tried to restrain Martin one-handed, and carried the keys in his hand all the way from the porch to the T?
BTW, the lie discussion I have been having with MacGyver has nothing to do with how a lie is proved in court, I am trying to discern MacGyver’s criteria / standards of proof that a person has lied.
Siri is the wacky speller, not me.
Beyond reasonable doubt, clearly. Of course, the jury don’t have to have someone’s statement proved false, let alone a lie, to any extent to disregard it, and proving it a lie would do relatively little, as they couldn’t infer anything else from that. But, whatever standard you wish to prove to, you still have to prove the three things I said - that the statement is false, that the stater knew that it was false, and that he intended to deceive. The latter two are hard to prove to any standard.
My whole point with this is to show that your claim that Zimmerman is a proven liar is firstly, at best, a dubious claim, as such proof is extremely difficult, and secondly that it doesn’t really matter whether he’s a liar or if he’s mistaken. I want to know why you (and others) keep claiming it, as though it somehow makes an important point.
Do I understand you correctly to be saying that if Zimmerman has actually lied about a number of things, that this has no bearing on his case? If that is in fact what you are saying can you please explain that to me?
No more bearing than if he was mistaken, ultimately. The prosecution do not have to prove he lied, they have to prove he murdered Martin. Proving he murdered Martin would almost certainly prove, in practice, that he lied, but the converse is not true.
All that proving he lied would do would make the jury extremely likely to disregard his testimony - something that showing he was mistaken would also do.
What bearing do you think the fact that he lied would have on this case? That fact would not prove murder.
To answer an earlier question, a prosecutor’s duty is somewhat nuanced. The defense attorney is to zealously represent Z’s interests in keeping him out of jail. If he is guilty, innocent, or in between, his job is to keep Z out of jail no matter what.
The prosecutor represents the State of Florida. It is not in the State of Florida’s interests to put an innocent man in jail, but to see that justice is done. But that doesn’t mean that every motion or document can’t be persuasive in that it accentuates the good and downplays the bad. But the PC affidavit in this case, at least IMHO, crosses the line. It is nothing but bald, conclusory accusations with no evidence to support it.
Is it the Martin supporter’s position that under no circumstances should a citizen approach a suspicious person and simply ask what he is doing? I see this all over the place: “He should have waited for the police to arrive.” Well to hell with that. Why should citizens have to hand over their neighborhoods to anyone? Criminals aren’t waiting for permission, why must we?