Not Zimmerman trial-related, but here’s a guy that conflates his sense of justice with legality; it’s from from a case with racial aspects a few years ago some may remember:
Not to rehash that case, and it didn’t involve a death, but that’s a guy who couldn’t care less about the facts of a case.
Are you in reasonable fear for your life or serious bodily injury? Sure you can. Yelling stupid stuff is not an aggressive or violent act and not illegal. They have no legal right to react to you violently and you have the right to defend yourself. And the right to a Darwin Award. Maybe stupidity should be illegal but it would clog up our prisons.
How about if you are stuck in a bad movie cliche and knock down their bikes accidentally. Do you think you have the right to defend yourself if they attack you and you fear for your life?
Do you mean in Florida or in general? In most States if you provoke a fight, then it can have two important legal impacts. It can mitigate the punishment for the person who actually throws the first blow, for example if he kills or seriously injures you then if he can demonstrate that he provoked the fight it can typically mitigate the seriousness of his crime. In some States with felony “class” systems it can “downgrade” the class of the felony which makes it a lesser punishment. Secondly, it can decrease the ability to which you can use a self defense assertion if you injure/kill the person you provoked to stop the assault.
Self defense law appears to be (like many areas of law) one that substantially varies from State to State but with a lot of similar concepts found throughout. For example in some States provocation would mean that you do not totally lose your ability to raise a self-defense claim, but that it might make you guilty of a “lesser crime” whereas if you can demonstrate you were attacked for no reason and couldn’t escape self-defense is a “complete” justification for your actions and would result in an acquittal.
In your scenario several things would have to be in play in Florida:
You do not have the right to mow down bystanders, so if anyone who was “mowed down” actually was just a bystander you’d be in serious trouble.
The Statute I posted actually says if you are the initial aggressor then you can only use lethal force if the force being used on you is so great you fear bodily harm or death. So it’s questionable if you could provoke a confrontation and then shoot people to death just because they start walking to you, I would guess even in Florida you could not do that.
Your description of the way events unfolded that night is highly misleading, it’s no wonder you angry.
This was a big problem back when the original massive thread on this started. People just refused to believe the law as it was, and got mad at the people trying to explain it. It included people like Bricker and other lawyers, and people like Loach who are in law enforcement and random internet personalities like myself and we were all pretty vilified just for explaining the legal reality the best we could present it. That’s why I hadn’t commented on the Zimmerman case on these boards in months until recently when the verdict came down.
What I find upsetting is despite the verdict legally vindicating the concept that what Zimmerman did either was not a crime or could not be proven as a crime, some people still feel that the law actually says something else. They present a bunch of nonsense scenarios and try to imprint it on the Zimmerman case. They also keep repeating a bunch of things that they cannot know.
A jury cannot make decisions based on bias or just random thoughts that come to them based on whether they like the defendant or not. I actually read through the jury instructions early (it’s up on Scribd) and it specifically says that you are not to make your decision based on feeling sorry for an individual or because you dislike the individual. You can’t make you decision based on how you feel about the lawyers or anything like that. It has to be based on your best judgment about what was argued and presented in court.
Let’s just establish for the purposes of this thread:
1. No evidence exists whatsoever as to who started the physical confrontation. Period. End of story.
2. No evidence exists whatsoever about the specifics of what happened during the physical confrontation, with the exception that we know Trayvon Martin was shot and killed at close range from an angle suggesting he was above Zimmerman and that Zimmerman had a broke nose, bruises and abrasions on his face and back of his head.
3. No evidence exists that when Zimmerman got out of his car and first started to follow Martin, that he continued to follow Martin until the confrontation began. Zimmerman’s claim is he lost sight of Martin and had returned to his car when Martin confronted him “by surprise” and immediately struck him after a brief exchange during which Zimmerman had no time to react or flee.
Anyone that asserts as fact, anything relating to those three points, is just arguing an opinion. An opinion unsupported by evidence or witness testimony. While Zimmerman gave his side of the story, I admit that is not “proof” of anything. But you also need to admit that when there is no proof either way, the presumption of innocence always lies with the defendant, and the burden of proof to show any element of a crime always lies with the prosecution. If you can’t admit that, you honestly should not discuss this case because you just lower the discourse.
How you define provoke is the big issue. Just saying “stupid things” is not enough to illicit a violent response in a reasonable person. Just because you yell “Harley Davidson sucks” doesn’t mean that they can beat you up. So provocation will not fly. If you verbally threaten someone that is different.
You know what would have helped? Video cameras! Everywhere!
I agree with your initial reasoning. However:
That is not a fact. Zimmerman could have decided he was going to kill Martin before the shooting, and his pursuit of him would have been a crime.
That is not a fact. The case did not hinge upon anything. The jury decided to acquit, we don’t know why.
If your fear is reasonable, and you can show that for each biker you “mow down” you had a specific fear of serious bodily injury or death from him, and the jury believes you, and your initial contact did not include a physical component so as to make you an aggressor - yes.
I believe you’d have some serious problems of proof, myself. Starting with how you mow them all down - how would you possibly show that each and every biker killed was threatening you?
Exactly! You said it better than I did, but I agree 100%. Regardless of what happened, the court case was by the numbers, and outrage over that is basically idiotic.
People should be outraged about the prosecution’s ineptitude, or the state’s bizarre laws, but the jury came to exactly the right decision based on the information in the case.
I should have said “as far as we know”… there’s no clear evidence that Zimmerman intended to kill him ahead of time.
Yes we do- because for whatever reason, there was reasonable doubt in the jury members’ minds that Zimmerman feared for his life and fired in self defense. The other choice would have been that Zimmerman did not fear for his life and shot him in cold blood, and we’d have had a different verdict.
It’s all about reasonable doubt, and the self-defense angle raises a lot of possible doubt.
Here’s what FindLaw says about 2nd Degree murder in Florida:
Here’s a little bit more:
Sure we do. They decided that the prosecution failed to prove at least one element of the alleged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt.
But you’re right: ultimately, we don’t know with any specificity what course of reasoning the jury followed. We could make some educated guesses – probably the jury did not acquit because they believed there was doubt the crime took place in Seminole County, for example.
So in the context of making some educated assumptions about what the jury decided, some progress can be made. But the leap from “the jury probably” to “the jury DID” is not possible.
It is not. In fact the article you’re quoting says that it’s not true.
One possible reason for the outrage:
On the one hand, we are told it was not reasonable for Martin, a minor, to lash out physically, even if he had felt an imminent threat from being followed, in the dark, by a strange adult man who refused to identify himself.
And yet it is considered as reasonable for two adult police officers to lash out physically because they felt threatened by the “dehumanizing stares” of a 14 year old boy:
Why is a child held to a higher standard of behavior than an adult?
What Zimmerman did may have been legal - I accept that, and would not have convicted with the case and evidence that was presented - but the moral outrage is entirely justified, and serves a practical purpose if it creates the will to make changes going forward.
We do not know if Zimmerman’s claim that he feared for his life had anything to do with the verdict. The jury may have decided to acquit simply because the prosecution did not prove their case.
What’s all this people are saying about “no evidence”? Is the defendant’s own statement now somehow considered not acceptable evidence for the prosecution? We know from the defendant’s own statements that he followed Martin against the recommendation of the police, that he got out of his car armed in Martin’s presence and confronted him, and that he did not offer any reason for his behavior even when asked by Martin.
Did he intend from the outset to kill Martin? I don’t know. Probably not; his fantasy probably involved Martin submitting to his “authority” right from the outset, instead of engaging in lawful self-defense. So that’s an argument for bumping it down to second-degree murder instead of first.
Did he act the way he did because of racism? Again, I don’t know. But that’s also not actually relevant: Regardless of the reason for his actions, we know what his actions were.
Oh, and if we insist on using the reasoning that led to Zimmerman’s acquittal, then it becomes impossible to ever prosecute any murder case, since any defendant can use the same argument that Zimmerman did. Surely, any interpretation of the law that leads to the impossibility of ever finding a murderer guilty must be a faulty interpretation.
I wear a Go Pro on a hard hat wherever I go.
There was no higher standard. Martin was not on trial.
You’re assuming that jurors, all six of them, are idiots. They are not. Florida defines manslaughter as:
committing an intentional act that was neither excusable, nor justified that resulted in the death of another person.
Since Zimmerman intentionally shot Martin (fact not in dispute by either defense or prosecution) and Martin died (fact not in dispute by either defense or prosecution) then manslaughter case was indisputably proved. UNLESS what Zimmerman did was either excusable or justified. Defense didn’t claim excusable. They claimed justified. QED.
He did get out of the car. Nothing else was proven as fact by anyone.
Found it interesting that the AP is still using the pic of Trayvon at 14 or so in their articles as recently as today.