Agreed. Some of our more fervent gun-guys here seemed to be decrying Zimmerman as not quite the best steward of the Second Amendment they’ve ever seen … and I agree with them.
No need to look at messageboards; call me crazy, but I suspect the guys selling T-shirts with Zimmerman’s picture and the words “Pussy-Ass Cracker,” offering a bounty for Zimmerman’s “capture,” or tweeting out an address they think is Zimmerman’s are not acting out of pure hearts and fairminded consideration for the good of all humanity.
OK. But I was responding to Lightnin’, who was basing his claim of a clean party divide on the posters at right- and left-wing message boards (see post #4). In response to that I pointed out that it wasn’t a very good indicator because a few prominent right-wing boards provide a nice anonymous source for racist ranting. Maybe there are left-wing boards that do the same, but I am not familiar with them.
I didn’t make a single remark about right-wingers as a whole being racists or left-wingers as a whole not being racist.
When someone is defending the supposed “checks and balances of the entire legal system” over and over again, even when evidence emerges that the legal system screwed up in this instance, it starts looking like a defense for Zimmerman’s actions.
So, the Grand Jury has already met? You don’t even seem to know how the legal system is supposed to work, yet you are claiming it screwed up. For what would be about the zillionth time- It’s a CAPITAL case. The DA MUST get a Indictment thru the Grand Jury. The DA has called said GJ. The GJ hasn’t even met yet.
“Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?”
You seem to have a hard time appreciating that without the outcry from the public, there’d be no grand jury, let alone a halfway decent investigation of Martin’s death.
This whole thing was headed for the scrapheap until Martin’s parents demanded answers. The cops provided some answers and that’s when the scandal started. One one side, we have people who found major shortcomings with the answers provided by the cops. On the other side, we have people who think the answers were perfectly fine and reasonable.
In Florida, a GJ is REQUIRED is all capital cases.
We don’t know if a GJ would have been called without outrage. It’s very common for these sorts of things to take time. If the suspect is not a flight risk- why hurry? Why not wait until all the evidence is in? if you move prematurely and can’t present the GJ with all the evidence, you run a risk of the GJ not returning a indictment.
We don’t know if a GJ would have been called without outrage. It’s very common for these sorts of things to take time. (You have never been on one, and from your earlier comments it appears you had no idea one was even required or what they did) If the suspect is not a flight risk- why hurry? Why not wait until all the evidence is in? if you move prematurely and can’t present the GJ with all the evidence, you run a risk of the GJ not returning a indictment.
There is NOTHING to show that the investigation wasn’t proceeding.
In fact, there’s now a very real risk that the Prosecution may have been pressured into moving too early. Why not take your time and gather all the evidence?
I couldn’t disagree more with you. It was the fact that this shooting was so very avoidable that outraged me the most. Zimmerman was clearly encouraged to avoid it, in fact.
In Florida, a GJ is REQUIRED is all capital cases.
The Police didn’t collect standard evidence and the State Attorney’s Office prosecutor never visited the scene.
Had it not been for outrage it would have never made it to the GJ.
I sort of appreciate this level of trust in the justice system, but I think it strains credulity- especially because the police are now saying they felt charges were warranted and prosecutors were not interested or didn’t think they could make charges stick. That doesn’t indicate a grand jury was going to be called. The shooting was a month ago, and since this case was about a single incident, I find it hard to believe they needed this kind of time before calling a grand jury. There’s no hint that anything was happening before the protests became big news.
Actually a month between the incident and the GJ hearing is way shorter than all the cases we heard. IMHO, it’s too short of a time. The DA will be going in there without enough time to for the police to gather all the evidence. This ‘stampede to justice” will likely means less chance of Zimmerman being ever brought to trial.
How do you know what evidence the police collected? Have you read the CSI report? The ballistics report?
There is no evidence at all that Zimmerman was under the effects of alcohol, and it would have taken a Search warrant to get a blood sample. The police had Zimmerman at the stations for many hours, no one has yet indcated there was any reason to suppose he had been drinking.