No kidding. The police completely dropped the ball and collected no forensic evidence, didn’t test Zimmerman for alcohol, or test his clothes for Martin’s blood. The absence of forensic evidence is an indictment of the police, not Trayvon Martin.
We have the phone call. You can hear when Zimmerman gets out of the truck, when he starts running, and when he stops. The fact that he never mentions seeing Martin after Martin ran is strong evidence that he lost him.
Except that was a controlled environment. This wasn’t. And by at least one account Zimmerman was restrained from above by Martin over him. I’m not excusing Zimmerman’s role in this, but lets not compare street fight between adults (near adult in Martin’s case) to 11 year olds sparing in the gym.
No it isn’t.
We don’t know that.
But he still could have been following him, right? Possibly at greater than “casual walking speed”?
“Bleeding from the back of their skull” makes it sound pretty nasty. But head wounds bleed profusely, even from minor impacts. You seem pretty confident that Zimmerman was getting his head smashed into the ground- I guess the implication is that it was repeatedly smashed into the ground. I am not confident of this- I haven’t even heard a statement that says this. The injuries that I’ve read about are minor injuries (except of course for Martin’s gunshot wound).
All I’m saying is that it’s not at all clear that Zimmerman had reason for legitimate fear for his life- certainly not based on those minor injuries.
I’m just saying that those injuries are minor, and not in line with “reasonable fear for one’s life” against an unarmed assailant.
You and others who make this and similar points are all mistaken. The point is that there is a lot we don’t know, and we’re guessing about that. And the character of the people involved can sway the odds.
How likely is it that TM would jump GZ and slam his head into the ground?
If he’s some angelic school kid, very unlikely. If he’s a guy with a history of burglary, vandalism, and drug use, then much more likely.
Focusing on legalisms is a distraction from logic here.
Almost certainly not. You can hear on the phone when he is running and when he stops running.
But the point is, according to Google Maps its <.2 miles from the clubhouse to Martin’s house. If Martin casually walks home, he is there by the time the phone call ends.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/26/MN0R1NQC9D.DTL#ixzz1qL0LRJm6
Ok, so getting my head slammed repeatedly into the ground isn’t enough for me to be in fear for my life. At what point would you draw that line?
IDK if I would totally classify a broken nose as “minor”, but you are correct, none of them can reasonably be considered life threatening. However, I doubt the threshold for “reasonable fear for one’s life” is as cut and dried as grievous bodily injury.
If Martin was on top and in control, it makes the case stronger that Zimmerman may have feared for his life. If Martin was not on top and in control of the fight then there is absolutely no defense for Zimmerman’s action.
Regardless, it is really awful that things escalated to the point that they did. And I think Zimmerman is the party most responsible for that.
Fine, but we have no evidence that Martin was casing the neighborhood, prying open windows, or otherwise getting caught in the act of a burglary, so if we’re going to stick to the evidence, self-serving or otherwise, maybe we can drop this burglary nonsense?
Here’s something that occurred to me. Zimmerman is represented by a lawyer, and he’s getting absolutely flayed by the media and a negative public image.
If his had had been slammed repeatedly into the ground, if his nose had been broken, if he was battered and bloodied and looked the part, someone would have taken pictures. His eyes would be black from the broken nose, his hair would be matted with blood. If his lawyer was worth a shit, those pictures would be everywhere by now. “Look what your sweet and innocent 17 year old did to my poor client!” It would be a total game changer.
Even if they didn’t think to take pictures that night, when your nose gets broken your face generally stays bruised for many days. Surely there’d be a picture by now?
All we know is that he was bleeding from his nose and scalp. They may have been scrapes. The lawyer claims there was a broken nose, but something tells me if he was actually getting smashed on the way he’s described, there’d be photographic evidence by now. The fact that there’s not suggests, but not proves, that his injuries were relatively minor.
The math of casual walking speed ~2-3 MPH for ~.2 miles does not come close to supporting this- not to mention that Zimmerman could still be walking while he’s on the phone.
Maybe it did happen that way. But it seems far from obvious, evident, or clear from the data in the public sphere that it did. That article doesn’t add anything except the police’s statement about the shooter’s statement- it doesn’t say which parts were corroborated by witnesses.
No evidence that he was casing the neighborhood, bu we have Zimmerman’s 911 call that states Martin was “walking around, looking about”.
The burglary stuff is worse than nonsense. It kind of poisons the pool so to speak. Suddenly it makes his actions appear much more suspicious.
Regardless I think it is more likely that he hadn’t been to the neighborhood much or at all and was “checking it out” because it was new. Or he was doing what a lot of bored teenagers do, wandering around talking on the phone, and looking at anything that catches their interest.
The call is a bit more than 4 minutes long, call it 5 to give Zimmerman some time to dial. Using the numbers you give, that’s .17 miles to .25 miles.
I’m sorry, where is it that you draw the line for your life being in danger?
And Zimmerman was running for part of it, and he could have been walking for the rest, and the kid may have been going a different route (or trying to lose his pursuer). I’m not saying that’s how it happened, but it’s not at all clear that the kid did not take reasonable action to avoid the confronation, as I believe you implied earlier.
If Zimmerman’s account is the truth, than perhaps he did have legitimate reason to fear for his life. But I wasn’t arguing that point- I was arguing that there’s not nearly enough data to say with confidence that Zimmerman’s account is how it happened- and that the injuries as reported by the media are not enough to make it “obvious” that Zimmerman had legitimate reason to fear for his life.
Me personally? In that situation, if I had an 80 lb weight advantage on the guy, I’d draw the line when I saw a knife or gun. I’m young and outweigh my opponent by a substantial amount, I’m not fearing for my life, even if he does crack my head against the sidewalk. I’ve fallen off my bike before, didn’t die.
The problem is piling inference upon inference.
Maybe – just maybe – if you could show Martin had a prior adjudicated conviction for burglary, or even possession of burglary tools, you could argue that this makes it more likely he’d attack – even though burglary is not a crime of violence.
But the allegation doesn’t even come close. Martin was never given an opportunity to test the accusations against him. The police were never called; no charges were filed, no putative owner of the jewelry ever identified. In short, its highly speculative to even say that Martin had committed a single crime as a result of this evidence. You want to conclude that he not only DID, absolutely, commit a crime then, but that this fact makes it more likely he committed an unrelated crime in this case.
“It is a foolish man that builds his house upon the sand.”
Don’t you mean, “this is why you don’t *win *fights”? Because it seems to me that regardless of who started the fight, whoever is getting his ass kicked might suddenly find himself overwhelmed and then fear for his life.
But this is almost just standard self-defense law. The more interesting question is the stand-your-ground statute. Why wouldn’t you require someone in a bar fight or a street fight to flee, if possible, before countering with deadly force? (Let’s leave aside the question of being at home when this happens.)
If Zimmerman is getting his head beat against the sidewalk how long before he is unconscious and can’t defend himself? Frankly I doubt that Zimmerman was in a condition to clearly think it though at this point.
I’m not saying that Zimmerman isn’t an idiot. He should have stayed in the car and waited for the police.