I don’t know why you think that’s silly. The guy said his head was being banged into a sidewalk at the moment the gun went off. That coincides with the yelling on the tape. I find it questionable that someone could sustain a yell like that while his head is being violently lobbed into the ground. Why is that so crazy?
And yeah, I don’t know exactly how Zimmerman’s head was supposedly dribbled on the ground. But if the man was on his back as claimed, any up and down movement on his head is going to narrow his trachea. Which will have a major effect on the quality of the sound emitted. We all know this. So gimme a break.
Also, I don’t understand why who is doing the screaming matters. Zimmerman could have still been deathly afraid and been perfectly silent. Just like he could have been deathly afraid and not have had his head literally bashed in. Is it just a matter of whether he lied or not? OK. Let’s say he lied about screaming. Is that suddenly enough reason to arrest him? If so, that seems crazy to me, given all the other questionable things that have popped up over the past two weeks. But I guess if that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back, I’ll take it.
It matters because Zimmerman claimed HE was screaming, and as far as we know (and we don’t know everything by far) he never said anything about Trayvon screaming. If that’s true, it would mean Zimmerman is lying, and casts doubt on the rest of his story.
To be fair, this is what his father said happened. And I think he might have mentioned that between the head bash on the concrete and the gunshot, the two moved over to the grass.
His father could have heard Zimmerman wrong, or Zimmerman could have lied to him (and to his brother as well).
I believe there are software libraries that can basically process a voice “enrollment” in which you give several different voice samples saying a few different things. It then creates a biometric “signature” file which is basically just an array of bytes.
When the sensor records input, it compares the input to the “signature” and performs some calculations to determine “goodness of fit.” Usually it will be spit out by some API as a floating point number and then most systems will represent it to an end user as a “percentage match.” Which it isn’t quite, but it’s the best way to express it to a layman.
Voice isn’t a “hard” identifier like fingerprint, iris scan, retina scan. But it is better than say, facial recognition, which despite the CSI representations is a technology that is very far away from where people believe it to be.
Best case scenario is that the prosecution’s expert gets findings similar to the independent expert mentioned in the news (best case for the prosecution) and the defense can’t demonstrate otherwise.
Worst case scenario is an equally respected expert is brought in by the defense, who uses an industry standard algorithm and is able to match with a high confidence that the voice on the tape is Zimmerman’s. At that point a jury is trying to basically decide between two totally contradictory pieces of scientific evidence and I doubt they will feel comfortable erring with the prosecution in such a scenario.
There are 4 other 911 recordings of Zimmerman that have been released besides the Feb. 26 call.
Martin Hyde raised the point that a voice under stress may produce inconclusive results. I don’t really hear anything intelligible in the call with the shot. It all sounds like wailing to me. But the wailing stops immediately(instantaneously?) after the shot. That leads me to believe whoever got shot was doing the screaming.
It matters because Zimmerman claimed HE was screaming, and as far as we know (and we don’t know everything by far) he never said anything about Trayvon screaming. If that’s true, it would mean Zimmerman is lying, and casts doubt on the rest of his story.
On edit… if Trayvon followed and attacked and was beating up Zimmerman, as claimed, then why would Treyvon be screaming for help?
I understand this. But I guess it’s just strange to me that a lie like this is what makes him suspect, but witness accounts contradicting his claim don’t.
If Martin was screaming for help like a panicked person being held at gunpoint, it makes it hard for Zimmerman to cast him as an aggressive thug who was out to kill a “homie”.
Remember, Zimmerman’s claim isn’t just that he was in fear of his life. His claim is that Martin violently attacked him without provocation and put him in a situation in which it was impossible to retreat. But the voice on that tape doesn’t sound like aggressive person who was escalating a conflict. It sounds like someone who was attacked without provocation and was in a situation in which it was impossible to retreat. If it was Martin screaming like that, it suggests he was the victim here. Not Zimmerman.
From what we know for sure it seems like at least some of the early (pre-media hype) witness statements did not materially contradict his claims. Witnesses are unreliable even when they witness an event–I’ve always thought it one of the worst features of our criminal justice system that an “eye witness” is considered the strongest piece of evidence when they are extremely unreliable. In any case, after-the-fact witnesses will be easy to portray as being unreliable by a defense attorney.
However a strong piece of scientific evidence that contradicts Zimmerman’s account, if it withstands a defense attempt to undermine the evidence with their own expert scientist witness, will be something I think a jury would interpret as a sign of guilt.
Because forensic evidence is almost always given more weight than eye- or ear-witness testimony, especially given how many people have been released in recent years due to DNA evidence in the face of contradictory witness evidence.
I brought this up a while back. I don’t understand why, if Zimmerman had been doing all that screaming, it would have ended so abruptly after the gunshot. I would think firing a gun while in the cold wash of panic would just heighten the adrenaline and make one scream even more.
Right. And a lot of people exonerated with DNA evidence were convicted based on eye witness testimony. I think that fact has started to undermine the traditional strength given to eye witness testimony.
more toward the second, but I have a lot of experiencing with pattern matching also with consultants tendencies to return whatever answer the customer wants. All I know is that I was fine until I got to the 90% part and my BS detector triggered. That is why I suggested testing it against a sample of Trayvon’s voice.
The skeptics would probably say the reason the scream ended exactly when the gun was fired is because there ceased the need to scream. The threat, at that point, had been neutralized.
But one of the witnesses–the witness who has come forward saying that the detective corrected her–says that she told him that it was Martin who was doing the screaming. She was on the news the other day saying the same thing.
Was her account ignored because “Jon” contradicted it? Or was it ignored because the detective didn’t believe her? (Not being argumentative. Just asking questions.) If Jon hadn’t come forward and there had been no 911 tape to provide forensics, could Zimmerman have been arrested based on her statement?
I believe the other testimony was given given days earlier than"Jon’s", and the police didn’t make an arrest, and since “Jon” at least partially corroborated Zimmerman, then the answer to your question seems to be “no”.
That is of course assuming the police and/or state attorney made the legally correct decision based on the evidence.