I’m going to say that I think you haven’t read Zimmerman’s full account or watched his interview. I have enough faith in you that I think you’re just speaking from a misunderstanding. Please look it up and come back, because the way you just outlined Zimmerman’s statements is easily disproven by reading a transcript of them or watching them on video, and it’s best for you to do that on your own research so you aren’t concerned I’m giving you biased links.
You are on the right track, the only knowledge we have about how the confrontation began comes from Zimmerman, but you have fatally mis-remembered or misheard what Zimmerman’s statement indicated.
As a matter of fact if you look at an pre-trial thread about this case you will see that I do assume that all six jurors are idiots, and I have since before they were selected.
You do not know what reasoning was used by the jury to acquit. They may have felt Zimmerman was guilty and decided to nullify.
The red Hollister shirt picture that is most frequently shown is when Trayvon was 16, about seven months before he died. Now, it is undated and can’t be “authenticated” per se, but that is what the Martin family attorney says about the dating of the picture. There are I believe two photos more recent, one is Trayvon’s 11th grade school ID and another one shows him to the right in a crowd of people. In both of those yes, he looks a tad bit older than he does in the red Hollister picture. But to be honest both of those other pictures are “low quality” and that is probably the primary reason they have not been shown prominently, not out of any media conspiracy.
Trayvon does look a little younger in his red Hollister photo than he does in some other similarly dated pictures, but that’s all to do with mostly angle, lighting, facial expression etc. Someone can look a bit older or younger based on a lot of variables. Even in the pictures where Trayvon looks “at his oldest” it’s obvious you’re looking at a minor.
No, but we can plainly make the claim that the prosecution did not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. I have yet to see anyone seriously make even a half decent argument to the contrary.
I’m just curious, would you have changed your opinion on the jury if Zimmerman was convicted or do you also believe he should not have been?
I could be convicted of misusing the term “no evidence”. It’s commonly done when people actually mean “no credible evidence” or something similar. This happens because we don’t always use the word “evidence” in the legal sense where after a trial things can be definitively stated to be evidence because they were presented in court and not ruled inadmissable by a judge.
Of course people use it all the time when their argument hinges on some actual evidence being disregarded.
Do you disagree that a jury could have fully credited Zimmerman’s account of the objective events but rejected the proposition that, even finding the objective events to have as occurred as he alleged, that narrative did not describe a scenario in which a reasonable person in identical circumstances would have feared death or serious bodily harm?
The jury could have so found. The defendant bears the burden of production but not persuasion on self-defense. In finding as I described above the jury would (implicitly) have found that the burden of production has not been met. That is, accepting the facts as the defendant alleges, those facts still fail to make out a prima facie case for deadly self-defensive force.
Meeting the burden of production is the predicate for activating the prosecution’s burden of persuasion (to disprove the defendant’s allegations beyond reasonable doubt). If the defendant fails to meet the burden of production, that is, fails to articulate a defense wherein, if all the defense’s alleged objectives facts are accepted as true, those allegations are still found wanting in meeting the legal standard, then the prosecution’s burden of persuasion (disproof beyond reasonable doubt) is not activated.
So, the threshold question is: The defendant’s account of the events that occurred that evening is X. If you assume for the moment that this account of the facts X is completely true, do you have any reasonable doubt that an ordinary person in that situation would have had a reasonable fear of imminent serious bodily harm. If the fact-finder resolves that question as “No, I have no reasonable doubt that, given X, such a person would still not have a reasonable fear of serious bodily harm in that situation,” then self-defense is off the table.
The question of historical facts (the “What happened that night?” questions) are questions of facts for the jury. The question of reasonableness is functionally a finding of fact (the jury’s determination will not be revisited on appeal) but legal academics classify it as a “mixed question of law and fact.” So when I say "fully accepting Zimmerman’s account as true, I mean accepting his account on questions of fact, both as to straight questions of fact and the factual parts of mixed questions of law and fact, but not necessary accepting his contentions as to how the mixed questions should come out (because of the admixture of a legal part to those questions).
So, the people who object to the jury’s verdict object to the implicit finding that Zimmerman’s accepted-as-true account made out a case for finding the possibility of reasonable fear of serious bodily harm. That is, they believe the jury erred on the mixed question.
I am with the critics on this point. I do not believe, fully assuming as true Zimmerman’s account of the events of that evening, that those events were such as to cause a reasonable fear of serious bodily harm. On the spectrum of severity of bodily harm, I think that most street brawls land no further along it than, let’s say, “moderate.”
But obviously, the jury’s mileage varied, as they say on the internet. That’s not going to be revisited on review. Sooner or later, someone has to make these judgment calls (or more precisely, the mixed question calls).
If there is evidence at all, credible or not, that Zimmerman started the fight, please inform me of it. I’d be very happy to hear about it.
I just reviewed one of his audio interviews with Serino. It basically went like this:
Serino: You saw a suspicious person?
Z: Yes.
S: You followed him?
Z: Yes.
S: You lost visual on him?
Z: Yes.
[2-3 minutes later after interlude]
S: You say this person jumped you?
Z: Yes, he came out of nowhere and asked me what was my problem.
S: And then?
Z: I told him I didn’t have a problem, and decided to call 911 instead of the non-emergency line. He then punched me.
That is the only evidence I’m aware of, submitted at trial, that details the happenings of the beginning of the confrontation. It is a scenario in which Zimmerman had not seen Martin for a time, and then was “confronted by surprise” when Zimmerman came out of either the bushes or out of Zimmerman’s line of sight and confronted him.
I did not type the words exactly because, while I believe I found a text transcript of this on one of the Florida newspapers back when it was first released I was unable to just find it, so I am just paraphrasing from audio since I don’t want to have to write down by hand the exact words from the audio file and then type them here.
He wasn’t, and Zimmerman should not have been convicted so far as I can tell. However, I think what camille is getting at is
The police officers are going to be considered to be justified in their use of force, although the only threat described was the body language and stare of a 13 year old
The fact that Zimmerman was acquitted means that the jurors concluded that Martin would not have been justified in using force against Zimmerman if he felt threatened because an older,larger man was following him.
As it happens, I don’t agree with 2. I think it is entirely possible that if Martin had been the survivor , he too would have been acquitted after telling how fearful he was of the man who was following him and wouldn’t say why . I find it to be preposterous, that such an incident could occur and no matter who ends up dead, no one committed a crime but that’s a problem with the law and its interpretation, not with the jury. This is an interesting article
So then what is being pitted here? People who express outrage over Zimmerman aren’t - technically - putting him on trial either.
Why do you have a problem with that, but want to pretend it’s no biggie when a dead kid and his family are vilified by a different group of people expressing outrage in the same extrajudicial venues?
I’m not advocating “Somebody must pay!”. This is more about “Something must change!”. Can’t do that without moral outrage.
Some, maybe. I remember the likes of stoid and monstro way back in the original thread saying they didn’t think that having your face punched over and over while you’re on the ground is a situation that creates a reasonable fear of death or grievous bodily harm. But by and large the vast, overwhelming majority of the criticism I have seen on these forums and in society at large about the verdict actually posits that Zimmerman started the confrontation, and follows form there that if Zimmerman started the confrontation he should not be allowed to assert self defense when it didn’t go his way. In fact, I believe if you read this thread you will see evidence that is the majority opinion of those who have a problem with the jury’s verdict. Which renders most of your post irrelevant as to that point.
There is no reasonable person that can assert there was any evidence presented that Zimmerman started the fight. The prosecution actually presented the audio tapes, in which Zimmerman says Martin started the fight and obviously they would have you believe Zimmerman lied. But even if you lied, that just leaves the jury not knowing what happen, it’s not evidence of who started the fight.
I think that you have a very stupid, and bad view on what should constitute reasonable fear of death or grievous bodily injury. The idea that someone can beat me in the head while I’m pinned to the ground and I should not have any fear of serious injury is so ridiculous as to border on the absurd. I seriously doubt your opinion on this is reflected by anything other than a shockingly small minority of self defense claims (and I bet most of those had all kinds of other problems with the claim itself that undermined them.)
There is evidence that Martin started the fight. There is no evidence that Zimmerman did. Please explain how you are confused. Even if you do not believe the story Zimmerman told, that is not evidence of the converse.
For example I can present evidence that I am a gorilla dressed as a human man, who has learned to talk and live in human society. You can decide you do not believe in that evidence. Okay, so there is no credible evidence for my claim. But that lack of credible evidence is not in and of itself evidence that I am say, a fish or a wombat.
There was evidence submitted at trial that suggested Martin started the fight.
The jury either believed it, or they did not believe it. If they did not believe, it, that does not make it evidence that Zimmerman started the fight. Please point to a single piece of evidence that suggested Zimmerman started the fight, thanks.
An acquittal isn’t necessarily the same thing as saying no crime was committed. It’s just saying the specific crimes charged were not proven beyond a reasonable doubt and thus a conviction could not be sustained.
I do not know what you are talking about. In what way does this relate to the question of why people say “no evidence” when there actually is evidence?
It happens to be a fact that most (overwhelmingly most) people survive, with no more than minimal to moderate injuries, the street brawls in which they find themselves involved, no? This is part of the “background everyday understanding of the world” (BEUOTW) that juries are allowed, nay, called upon, to apply in their fact-finding.
Now, everybody’s BEUOTW is a little bit different, which is why jury panels have to include some minimal number of jurors. It’s basically a bit of a lottery. Enough people with my POV, and this case goes the other way. On this particular panel, apparently they had a much less roustabout BEUOTW than I have evidently. (It would be sexist to say an all-women jury was selected for that reason, but I do wonder if that entered into the calculus. Dudes, bubbas, and bros might have perceived this somewhat differently.) But I don’t think you can really call me naive for my belief that most people involved in unarmed street fights don’t end up dead or in the ICU.
It doesn’t. (Do not consider the rest of this post to be addressed to you personally.)
I’ll just repeat there is no evidence that Zimmerman started the fight.
What I’m more interested in is Chronos claim that there is evidence that Zimmerman started the fight. He suggested that Zimmerman himself explained in his police interview/statement that he confronted Martin first. That is not in fact what the police statement shows. So I would be interested in determining if there is other evidence Chronos believes shows Zimmerman confronted Martin, or if Chronos had simply misremembered or misunderstood what the police interview contained.
I reject the assertion that a reasonable person would view it as unreasonable to fear death or grievous bodily injury just because most beatings do not end with death. I’m not sure I’ll even stipulate that, statistically, serious beatings in which a mounted assailant beats in the face of a prone assailant does not result in “grievous” injury. The statute does not say you can only use self defense when you fear death, you can also use it if you fear grievous bodily injury.
You are of course aware most gun shot wounds do not result in death. Does that mean a reasonable person should not fear for their life if someone is trying to shoot them with a gun? What’s unreasonable is not your claim that most beatings do not result in death, it is that you believe a reasonable person should not fear death from a beating. Fear is not based on statistics, and the fact that you would think that way in the jury room confirms that your view on this is basically dumb, and I would not want you on a jury as I think you have a poor mind for the task.