The difference there is that **serial killers usually aren’t found standing over their victims with the murder weapon in their hands. **
What I find fascinating here is that Zimmerman was found standing over the body with the smoking gun in his hand, and what I am being told, in this thread, is that all he has to do is say “It was self defense” and he can get away with it.
I am no longer particularly interested in Zimmerman’s case; what fascinates me is that the law could actually be written in such a manner as to allow any person to simply claim self defense in response to any killing without the trouble or bother of mounting an affirmative defense. It would effectively legalize a lot of murder. And yet that seems to be what people are saying, including the Sanford chief of police.
Why couldn’t a Florida resident simply walk in on their spouse and shoot them in the head? If the Sanford chief of police is correct, it would be impossible for such a person to be charged with a crime, unless they had left behind some sort of trail indicating they planned to do it.
We’ve all been working off a news reports, and plenty of them feature the chief of police making claims like this:
Ignore, for a minute, police concerns about scoring a conviction under Florida’s statutes. Just look at the part I’ve put in bold. According to Lee’s statment, the cops aren’t looking for probable cause for homicide. They are using Zimmerman’s self-defense as the basis by which they judge the physical and circumstantial evidence. His statement isn’t merely just one data point among many, as you and Loach keep insisting is how this analysis is and should be done. It’s the primary data point, according to the chief.
All I’m saying is that regardless of if this is legal or not (and I strongly suspect it’s not, but I’m not a lawyer), I am convinced that it’s impossible to have an objective investigation when you’re filtering all the evidence through the one person involved who has the biggest incentive to lie.
It would be like me accusing a guy of rape, and the cops making an arrest simply because: “We can’t find any evidence that she wasn’t raped, so we’re going to press charges.” How many people in this thread with be shrugging that off?
The accusation of rape creates probable cause. If the police can’t find evidence you weren’t raped, it is entirely appropriate to proceed with an arrest.
Are you seriously saying that all I have to do is say a guy raped me, and the cops can press charges against the guy without so much as single solitary piece of physical suggestive that sex took place? I know you don’t believe this, but I’ve read your post multiple times and it’s the same interpretation each time. You’re essentially says cops have to prove a negative.
I’m going to bookmark this thread so that I refer to this post the next time we have another rape trainwreck thread.
Now, I suppose I could have gone further and stated that once the defendant rose the issue and made out a prima facie case, the prosecution has to disprove it beyond reasonable doubt. (Of course, I said everything up to the bold italic part in my original post.) But I certainly did not mistate the law either explicitly or even by omission.
Your link is dead, and I don’t care if you’ve thrown around he word “expungement” multiple times in this thread. None of us are in the position to matter-of-factly state that his charges were expunged, especially when most information out there suggests that they are only dropped.
The accessibility of public records for his arrest belies the idea they expunged anyway.
Just as a PSA for rape victims everywhere: this absolutely is a sufficient basis to arrest someone and bring rape charges. Don’t ever think otherwise.
Of course, there are many reasons the cops might choose not to make an arrest in such a case, such as if the guy has a credible alibi, or the guy disputes the facts and comes across as more credible. But cops are getting better and better about leaving that question to the finder of fact.
What do you suppose the Jenkins court meant when it wrote “If a defendant establishes a prima facie case of self-defense” and “Mr. Jenkins presented evidence sufficient to establish a prima facie issue of self-defense”?
It seems to me that the first one, phrased as a conditional, suggests there will be times when a defendant will not establish a prima facie case. Since you appear to believe that all that requires is the defendant’s assertion of a defense (perhaps you have a direct citation for this proposition?), it seems that this would be an illusory worry. How hard, after all, would it be to make out a prima facie case if all an accused had to say was “It was self-defense. Disprove that, State’s Attorney.”
The second quote make it even more apparent that a prima facie case involves “sufficient” evidence.
It says something fucked up when a dead body and an identified shooter somehow is insufficient probable cause for homicide, but a claim of rape is enough by itself.
Good thing this knowledge doesn’t seem to commonly held by criminals. We’d have many more murders. I mean, episodes of self defense involving big hefty fellows carrying guns.
Kimmy: You’re misunderstanding the terms involved. Bringing a prima facie case is synonymous with the burden of production. A burden of production is different from a burden of persuasion. The latter is the burden to convince the fact-finder (in this case a jury) that a given element is true under a given evidentiary standard (i.e., beyond a reasonable doubt). The former is the burden to produce sufficient evidence,* that if believed*, established the defense.
You don’t quite have that right. I don’t think anyone is arguing that the police lack probable cause for homicide. At most, they are asserting that since we don’t know what evidence the police have, we cannot say for certain that they lack evidence that would be sufficient to rebut the inference of probable cause present from the facts we do know.
By analogy, they might say in the case where all we know is a woman claimed she was raped that we cannot know if the police have probable cause because we don’t know if, say, the police have confirmed the man’s alibi.
Sure enough, but pretty much these scenarios are all saying “if the police know a bunch of stuff we don’t, then they might have had reason to not arrest Mr. Zimmerman”. Which as far as idle speculation goes, is fine, but I don’t see how it really helps us arrive at the truth any better. My idle speculation is that the police have a (maybe unconscious) bias which is what made them give more weight to the shooter’s statement than to the facts in the case.
I personally am looking at it from a slightly different point of view: with the information I have now, I think that, even if the police chose not to arrest him immediately, Mr. Zimmerman should be charged with something (like manslaughter) eventually. Mostly I’m saying that I hope Mr. Zimmerman doesn’t get away with it.
Doesn’t this mean that Zimmerman has a duty to show some evidence that supports his claim? He can’t just assert that he was fearful of losing his life; he has to show proof that his life was in danger, the kid escalated things during the fight, and/or that he made every reasonable attempt to get away or subdue the kid using non-lethal force.
No. “Evidence” is not synonymous with physical proof. Testimony is the most common kind of evidence, and frequently the only evidence available.
As you suggest, it would be necessary for him to testify as to all the relevant elements. But that testimony would be enough (to meet the burden of production).
The longer that Zimmerman is allowed to walk as a free man, the more I think the State is jeopardizing its own case, should he ever be charged.
Prospective jurors* are going to start viewing the prosecutor with a distrustful eye (I know I would be), which means even if Zimmermandid act in self-defense, folks are going to be inclined to discount the evidence he provides.
I should add: importantly, that does not mean his testimony would be sufficient to acquit him. A reasonable jury could find that he is not credible, based on all the other circumstances and his demeanor while testifying, etc. Should the jury so find, the prosecution could prevail on its burden of persuasion that he did not act in self-defense.