Yeah, we know. There are “witnesses” on both sides, none of which are worth crap until they are sworn in, etc. I am a equal opportunity cynic & doubter here.
I think Zimmerman would already be under arrest if she had decided to arrest him – assuming the cops know where to find him.
Since this thread is filled with wild guesses, let me throw in another. She’s delaying her announcement in order to call import a very heavy contingent of state police into Sanford out of concern there will be an outbreak of violence.
According to his former lawyers, he’s now no longer in Florida.
I think it is worth little more than crap. Lying to police investigators is a fairly serious offense and there is no obvious motive. Of course lying to reporters isn’t a crime at all, but how was ‘John’ to know the next day that this would be a huge story?
Of course the 911 operator is significant. It shows GZ’s tendency to initiate conflict instead of backing away. Following a guy at night isn’t the actions of a person who was cornered and frightened into shooting in self-defense. It is the actions of a person who likely thought of himself as some kind of justified vigilante carrying out street justice. Everything about the actions he took after the 911 operator told him to not follow Trayvon does not speak to an innocent man. Ask yourself this: if someone followed another person and shot him despite warnings not to, would you be more likely to believe the shooter’s version of the tale or not?
And if you read my post, you’d see that the very reason why he’s not in jail is because the Sanford PD fell behind the defense of the SYG law. And did you even see the news conference by GZ’s former attorneys? They don’t even know where he is!! You think that’s not a flight risk? The man could be in Mexico by now and nobody would know.
Did Brad Lippincott assert self-defense?
No.
I’m curious. If Zimmerman is dead now, would the Civil Immunity part of the the SYG law still apply to his estate?
Angela Corey said he did.
And from your link, apparently Angela Corey agrees with what I said about the law setting the bar higher:
In the Lippincott case, I don’t know what evidence she had. But I guarantee her prosecution will be more difficult than it would be without that law.
So I’ve just read that Zimmerman’s lawyers have resigned, stating they don’t know where he is but that he’s “far away,” “probably suffering from post-traumatic stress,” and it appears that Zimmerman spoke off the record to Fox’s Sean Hannity. And the special prosecutor will be making a statement before long.
W.T.F.
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The 911 call is certainly important and significant. But the instructions of the 911 operator have no legal force or standing.
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Yes,** Bricker** and I said something like that many pages ago, except that it wasn’t SYG, it’s self-defence. They are no longer his attorneys, they called the conf to announce they quit. Do note that one reason they quit is that Zimmerman met & talked to the Special Prosecutor on his own, without them (and it wasn’t in Mexico, either). Zimmerman has been in hiding.
I’d say the fact doesn’t sway my assessment of credibility one way or another.
The problem, Yog, is that we can’t import your sensibilities about carrying guns and following advice into the law retroactively.
You claim that the action Zimmerman took, following Martin after the dispatcher told him that wasn’t needed, suggest he isn’t innocent.
I disagree: those actions are perfectly legal. Just because you think they’re bad ideas does not transform them into illegal actions.
You’ve also mentioned, in earlier posts, the general history in Florida and the rest of the country of violence against blacks as a reason to infer Zimmerman’s guilt. This, too, is not an acceptable inference. We can’t convict Zimmerman because of acts taken by other people at other times in other states.
Flimsy strawman. Actions need not be illegal to be very revealing about intent and motive.
Zimmerman did not meet or talk to the special prosecutor. He attempt reach her by phone, and she refused to take the call because, at the time, Zimmerman was still represented by his lawyers.
True. But I don’t agree that Zimmerman can be inferred to have any illegal intent or motive by any of his actions.
A few questions for Bricker that have nothing to do with Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence or even really the events that happened that night. Just curious what he as a lawyer thinks about this:
How much was this guy hurting himself by not contacting his lawyers for 48 hours? Two days doesn’t really seem that long an amount of time, though I suppose in a high profile case like this, you’d want to stay in constant contact, especially if a prosecutor is just days away from making a decision on how to proceed.
Also, how much is he hurting himself by setting up a Web site, and reaching out to the special prosecutor (and apparently Sean Hannity), without his legal counsel present?
The trouble is more is not a quantifiable amount. The fact that she could arrest Lippincott the next day implies it is more like 10% more difficult and not 1000%. It isn’t clear to me that there is an optimal level of difficulty. Making prosecutor’s jobs easy was obviously not the top priority of the people who wrote the law.
I suspect a clever SA could avoid many problems by charging manslaughter as a standalone charge and proceeding on the other issues with a different indictment. Issues like illegal carry or illegal possession of a firearm could be a separate charge.
Back to my original point. Except for the civil immunity, it isn’t really obvious to me that this case would have been that different back in 2004.
It depends. Frankly, as a PD, my problem was seldom clients that didn’t stay in touch, but rather clients that called fifty times a week, not seeming to understand that (a) I had other clients and (b) things happen when they happen.
But of course I never had any high-visibility cases like this one.
So I suspect the issue isn’t the time lag itself, but rather not keeping an agreed-upon contact. If he said he was going to call Monday at 8:00 AM, and hasn’t called 48 hours after that, it’s a little serious. And of course it’s far easier to withdraw as as counsel now, when there is no pending case, than it would be after you’ve filed an appearance on behalf of someone that’s not going to follow your instructions.
I don’t think the web site is a big deal, assuming he makes no admissions on it. The independent attempt to talk to Corey is a huge deal. He has no idea what he should and shouldn’t say. In my view, he is making every effort to talk himself into a jail cell.
But without knowing the specifics of the evidence she had against Lippincott, how can you possibly say that?
No, as a general rule, when the offenses are based on the same act or transaction or on two or more connected acts or transactions, they have to be tried together.
This is required both by the prohibition against double jeopardy and a related principle known as collateral estoppel.
In Grady v. Corbin, 495 U.S. 508 (1990), the Supreme Court said:
Maybe not. But here’s a possibility: suppose the police had enough evidence to give rise to probable cause that a crime was committed by Zimmerman. They didn’t have enough evidence about the force he used, specifically, but could point to enough facts to support probable cause for the killing as a whole.
In 2003, he could have been arrested. Not today.