Yes, I hope so. If the family has some audio of Trayvone yelling on the field, even better. Have the jury just listen to that. It might do more convincing than likelihood percentages will.
Of course, but you are assuming that Zimmerman can run down Martin, when Martin has a head start. Even if they started even I wouldn’t bet on Zimmerman in the 100. You also have to assume that Zimmerman grabbed Martin gently enough to not to raise a bruise or that the Funeral Director is lying.
The kid’s name was Trayvon.
He’s a Funeral Director, not the Medical Examiner.
The trouble is that this isn’t blackjack. The Prosecution doesn’t win ties. They have to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. I’m afraid the special prosecutor doesn’t have enough evidence to meet that burden.
Well, a little more news to dribble in and chew over: Prosecutor denies interfering in Florida shooting case
According to this story, Norm Wolfinger, the first State Attorney on the case who has since stepped aside, is denying interfering with or meeting with the Sanford police on the night of the shooting. Media reports said he decided not to arrest Zimmerman in spite of the opinion of the lead police investigator that Zimmerman should be arrested.
The story also has a couple of comments by a spokesperson for Wolfinger’s office, who confirms that there was a conversation between an “on-call” prosecutor and the Sanford police that night. And also this quote:
This raises a question in my mind – how much weight does a recommendation NOT to arrest carry? I would suspect it carries a lot, though I’d love to hear some opinions from lawyer types if it carries so much weight it effectively crosses the line from ‘recommendation’ to ‘directive’ (presumably unless new evidence is gathered).
“Dadgum?” What is this, Dogpatch?
Hehe. At first I thought it was a fancy legal term, in the same family as “datum”.
All this inter-agency squabbling reminds me so much of work that it’s kind of funny.
Wow, that’s interesting. Haven’t posters implied or outright asserted in this thread that if the prosecutor says no, cops have to fall in line?
It seems that this feller is claiming the opposite is true. Cops are empowered to act on probable cause when they see it. Hmmmm.
So why didn’t the homicide detective press charges then? Was he lying when he said he was overruled by the prosecutors office? Or is the state attorney trying to cover his ass?
The plot thickens.
Then again, I can imagine Lil Abner gettin’ inta a rhubarb wit’ ol’ Bumpis-Hooper from down the holler, by golly.
Personally, I believe the screaming was Trayvon - that’s just what it sounds like to me.
That said, I think that the voice biometric guys’ assertions are so weak that they’re not really worth discussing. “Not a strong match” comparing terrified screaming coming from outdoors and recorded with a completely different mike and compression scheme to a 911 recording just isn’t very compelling. I wouldn’t give it much more or less weight than the average person’s gut feeling about whether the screams “sound like” a teenager, a white guy, or someone with a weedy mustache.
What I want to know is why the prosecutor even went to the crime scene/police station, if his word on the matter wasn’t that big of a deal? Someone obviously thought his opinion mattered. And he was involved at the embryonic moments of the case, before anyone knew anything. They didn’t even know who Martin was. If it’s not typical for the prosecutor to be called in so soon, why was he there?
The back-biting is entertaining, but it’s also making me more and more suspicious of foulness. Foulness isn’t funny.
Cops certainly don’t have to get permission from a prosecutor every time they make an arrest. But I imagine that if they have doubts or conflicting opinions about a case, they would talk to the prosecutor’s office.
And the story on Wolfinger acknowledged the police talked to an attorney in the office – just not Wolfinger personally. The story doesn’t also say what advice, if any, the attorney gave. And, if the attorney advised the chief not to arrest, it would likely have been the chief who ordered the detective not to arrest, not the attorney who issued an order (if there was one).
I don’t think it’s fair to equate “advised against an arrest” with “overruled an arrest”.
The prosecutor (Wolfinger) is explicitly denying this happened. But his statement doesn’t preclude the possibility that some other attorney from their office went to Sanford. The gist of the story might be true, but perhaps the initial media reports mis-identified the attorney as Wolfinger.
I agree, monstro. There isn’t a united front at all, and the leaks have been substantial. Someone is lying in that organization. It’s just a question of who and how many. And how high up in the food chain they sit.
I guess the ultimate question is why would someone be willing to risk their career for Zimmerman’s neck.
According to ABC, Serino was instructed not to press charges because the attorneys office didn’t think there was enough evidence. But if he felt he had probable cause, he had all the evidence that was necessary to press charges. That’s the impression that Wolfingers spokesperson is now giving. I understand that advice is not the same thing as instruction, but the fact that Serino was given an order from on high suggests this was being treated differently than a regular homicide. At least to me. The question is why?
If SYG tied the cops’ hands from charging Zimmerman, it would make sense for this to be the message that the prosecutor would be sending: “We couldnt arrest because the SYG law made him immune” or something to that effect. Instead of that, the message seems to be “The cops could have arrested Zimmerman from day 1; don’t blame me because that didn’t happen!”
Its not the response I would expect to see from the prosecutors office, in other words.
Given that the SPD has already publically blamed the prosecutor, it’s precisely the response I expected. Nobody wants to hold this hot potato.
Now that we’re dealing with PR fights between different agencies of State/local government the chance of getting through the BS is extremely slim.
It’s entirely possible an investigator at Sanford PD had enough to arrest, and certainly possible he had probable cause (again, without seeing the evidence anything is possible really) and then some prosecutor from Wolfinger’s office told him not to do it. If his reason was something like “well, these self defense cases are a huge bitch now with the Stand Your Ground statute, and are monumental losers, we don’t want it” then it makes sense that weeks after the fact the prosecutor’s office will circle the wagons and say “the police can arrest anytime they want.” That is technically true, but if the prosecutor working at that time basically said “eh, this case is a loser” then the obvious reason for the prosecutor circling the wagons is they don’t want to be publicly seen as having said “you have the legal grounds for an arrest but we don’t have the desire/balls to prosecute what will be an extremely difficult case that we will very likely lose and hurt our conviction percentage.”
And I just came across an interesting claim by Zimmerman’s attorney in that abc article.
I’m on my iPad and can’t copy and paste, otherwise I would. But he claims that Zimmerman had requested medical attention before the cops took him into custody to interview him. The cops allegedly, according to Zimmerman, denied him that opportunity.
Do I believe this? No, of course I don’t. I think this is Zimmerman’s attempt to explain away his delay in pursuing medical care. The cops forced him to wait, he’s claiming. His lawyer isn’t an idiot; Zimmerman very likely didn’t sign a medical waiver and so he has to come up with an explanation for this. Otherwise it suggests he wasnt severely injured. Just as the video suggests.
I really want to see the EMT report now.
Like I said, the prosecutor could have easily deflected the hot potato by pointing to the SYG law’s language about immunity from arrest. Why not go that route rather than finger pointing?