Well at least you are saying so.
How accurate do you suppose this is?
Trayvon Martin shooting: It’s not George Zimmerman crying for help on 911 recording, 2 experts say
Trayvon Martin’s family says unarmed teen begged for his life. Experts say it’s not George Zimmerman’s voice.
Well we have the [del]KKK[/del] NEW Black Panthers posting a $10,000 reward for Zimmerman’s capture. The police chief has been threatened. Spike Lee posted an erroneous address that leads to an elderly couple. The Rev Sharpton is calling for an escalation in peaceful civil disobedience and economic sanctions and the NAACP is busing people in for protest marches. A lot of gasoline is being poured on this community and no good will come of it.
Nobody is talking about going after Martin’s family.
I hate to say this, but I think they should speed the process up to avoid unnecessary racial tension in both the city and the nation at large. We’ve had people in my city protesting Martin’s death. We seriously don’t need this.
The law needs to treat every issue impartially, whether silly and trivial, or deadly serious. That’s what people like you don’t understand, and that lack of understanding, in extremis, would lead to all of us losing the protection of the law. If Zimmerman’s actions were within the law, he must not be punished. That you feel he was morally wrong is irrelevant. You have the right to petition for the law to be changed, but you do not have the right to hold Zimmerman to account for actions that are legal under the current law.
I know you think that he’s guilty. You may well be right, but you simply cannot know that at the moment. All the things you are calling for - early arrest, release of evidence into the public sphere, ignoring necessary procedure for some fucked-up idea of vengeance - will prevent you from ever knowing, as it will hamper the investigation, and reduce the chance of the matter coming to trial, or being a legitimate trial of it does get there. There are good reasons that investigations are usually secret, including but not limited to the ability to check whether witness statements are consistent with physical evidence, and other people’s statements, and to allow witnesses to come forward in safety.
As I’ve said before, it’s a tragedy that Trayvon Martin is dead. Whether he is an innocent boy, or a thug who launched an unprovoked attack on Zimmerman, it’s a tragedy. If the latter is the case, it’s also extremely unfortunate that Zimmerman is having his life ruined by it. It would be a much greater tragedy if this case cannot be resolved due to interference with the process of law, and greater still if that leads to the situation where a large enough outcry can take the place of an investigation and trial on a regular basis.
ETA Reading Magiver’s post, that tragedy is imminent, if it hasn’t already happened.
Words of wisdom from Iron Mike.
That I feel the law is morally wrong is not irrelevant to my humble opinion. Which IMHO, this law is fucked up. I do not have to defend myself for simply having a feeling. This thread is in IMHO for a reason.
Find where I have said I think the guy is guilty. I think his story is incredibly fishy. I think there are some serious holes that need 'splaining. I think there is enough reason to charge him with something. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I think he’s guilty. Multiple times I have said we don’t have enough evidence to convict him, while simultaneously saying we never have enough evidence to convict someone early in a crime investigation, and yet that doesn’t stop them from being arrested. I think the process here is flawed. We can go back and forth another hundred pages, and I will not be shaken from this position.
OK, what tragedy? The old people who have been harrassed? That’s sad, but I’m sure Spike Lee is making appropriate amends to them. I read his apology and it seemed genuine. And as far as I know, no one has been killed. There are no riots. Just protests and petitions and prayer vigils.
I don’t want bad things to happen either. But the desire to revel in fear-based fantasy is what has gotten us into this mess. If anything good can come from this, it’s that we need to question our assumptions about people and stop thinking the worst all the time. And this goes for BOTH sides.
You think the fact that there’s a bounty on Zimmerman’s head isn’t a tragedy? I’m actually inclined to doubt the story, just because I find it so incredible, but if it’s true it’s a disgrace.
The reason I assumed you think he’s guilty is that you keep calling for his arrest. I can’t think of any other reason you’d be doing that. He’s no threat to anyone else, and he’s no flight risk. Unless you consider him guilty, there’s no reason to want him arrested. If you genuinely wanted to wait and see, you would be advocating doing just that.
The local HS teenagers already ransacked a store over this. You keep talking about the gun law discussed in this thread and it will have nothing to do with the trial.
The entire trial revolves around 2 issues: who started the fight, and was Martin’s actions in this fight serious enough to believe a life was threatened.
If this goes to trial with nothing more than what has been posted than the prosecutor will have to prove that Zimmerman started the fight and that someone sitting on an opponent and pummeling his head is not life threatening. That’s going to be an uphill battle because we already know from Martin’s girlfriend that Martin appeared to engage Zimmerman first in conversation and he responded and then a scuffle broke out. In the absence of who threw the first punch it’s going to lean toward who started the conversation.
I buy everything except the 90% part. That sounds plausible for two 911 calls but for a scream outdoors? If we had a sample of Martin’s voice and it gets 90% that would be a big brick on the pile and ideally Zimmerman kills himself from guilt or confesses to everything before the grand jury meets on April 10th. Surely there is someone who hasn’t deleted one of his voice mails?
Is your doubt based on experience, specific knowledge, or just 'cause it seems so?
I would expect, with all the investigative power no being focused on this case, the authorities are looking pretty hard for examples of Trayvon’s voice. Even if his parents weren’t the type who videoed everything, they might find his voice on a recording of a football game, or someone’s party, or wedding, or who knows what else. Maybe even from his cell phone – if he recorded a greeting or a message people would hear if he didn’t answer.
For that to have been Zimmerman’s voice on the 911 tape, he would’ve had to have held a loud, clear, unwavering scream of “HAAAAALP!” while his head was being pounded on a sidewalk.
Is this impossible? Probably not. Few these are impossible. Improbable? Hell yes. I just tried to yell while bobbing my head up and down. Was very difficult to do without my voice fluctuating in intensity, quality, and pitch. If you doubt me, try it yourself. I can imagine yelling would be even more difficult to do if your nose was just broken.
In short, if someone doubts that that was Trayvone screaming for help after listening to the tape, they’re probably not going to be swayed by the opinions of a forensic expert. What should be a smoking gun, will not be.
And here again we’re getting into silly, junior CSI territory. It’s ridiculous to think “hey, I tried yelling at home while bobbing my head up and down” means a damned thing.
Thanks, I’ve been waiting for these results to start coming out.
They used Zimmerman’s 911 call as the sample here, so it’s not the ideal (the ideal being the subject using the same words), and afaik there is no sample of Trayvon at all to compare, but this initial result is very damning to Zimmerman’s version of events that night.
The special prosecutor’s office is also employing voice recognition analysis, so I imagine we’ll be hearing about more results as time goes on.
I don’t think you have anyway of knowing how closely your experiment modeled the actual conditions.
So you don’t have anyway of estimating how accurate/useful your experiment is.
If a 50-ish percent match means a very low probability of a match, and there are only two possible sources, that kind of necessarily means that the other source is far more likely the source. But I don’t think either of us knows whether a 50% match is the the equivalent to 50% confidence of identification. The story suggests that it isn’t.
Further, your position that you accept everything in the story but the conclusions is pretty far fetched. Two separate experts using two separate methodologies came to the same conclusion. And their conclusions are based in part on their confidence in the quality of the audio recording. They may have had access to MANY Zimmerman recordings, given how many 911 calls he’s made (and I really couldn’t say how many of those recordings have leaked into the public domain or been acquired by media FOIA requests).
They seem to have a very high confidence that it is not Zimmerman’s voice. No one, not even Zimmerman, has suggested it was a third party’s voice.
I’m wondering what the importance of the “coon” remark is to the special investigator. I mean, what if he had said “punk” or “goon”? If he said “coon”, that makes Zimmerman out to be a racist, but it doesn’t disprove his claim that he was justified in shooting Martin. Out of all the things in this case, “coon” seems the least important. IMHO.
I think You has a point you might be missing. Even the article mentions how this type of evidence, while admissible, might not sway a jury:
From the article I cited:
But is this voice analysis stuff very legit, a littlle legit, or what?