Actually he reports that Martin ran after the dispatcher told him to stay put. Which is also after he confirmed that he’d already been following the boy. Which tells us that Zimmerman had intended to not just report the kid, but also he wanted to make absolute sure the cops would get him.
He makes mention of Martins hand being in his waistband as though he has a weapon. Doesn’t this suggest a paranoid state of mind at this point? In the span of a few seconds, the kid went from just strange and weird like a druggie to someone about to brandish a weapon and cause harm. With this imaginative assumption in his mind, Zimmerman probably thought he had a duty to protect his neighbors from the immediate danger posed by this drugged-out thug, and he was just the guy to do that since he had a gun.
Except Martin didn’t have a gun or anything else. And he was’t hopped up on drugs, he was hopped up on Skittles. Zimmerman jumped to unreasonable conclusions about the kid, which automatically puts into question how reasonable he acted during the fight and subsequent shooting. If he thought Martin had a weapon just because his hand was in his waistband, he could have also imagined Martin was capable of endangering his life in a fight just because the kid drew blood. Neither idea was reasonable based on the physical evidence.
"The case also brings into sharp focus Florida’s self-defense laws, which give people who feel threatened greater latitude in defending themselves than most states.
The police in of Sanford, where the shooting took place, are not revealing details of the investigation. Late Friday night, after weeks of pressure, the police played the 911 calls in the case for the family and gave copies to the news media. On the recordings, one shot, an apparent warning or miss, is heard, followed by a voice begging or pleading, and a cry. A second shot is then heard, and the pleading stops."
"According to Crump, the father was told that one of the reasons Zimmerman wasn’t arrested was because he had a “squeaky clean” record. It wasn’t. According to the local news station WFTV, Zimmerman was arrested in 2005 for “battery on a law enforcement officer.”
Furthermore, ABC News reported on Tuesday that one of the responding officers “corrected a witness after she told him that she heard the teen cry for help.” And The Miami Herald published an article on Thursday that said three witnesses had heard the “desperate wail of a child, a gunshot, and then silence.”
WFTV also reported this week that the officer in charge of the scene when Trayvon was shot was also in charge of another controversial case. In 2010, a lieutenant’s son was videotaped attacking a black homeless man. The officer’s son also was not initially arrested in that case. He was later arrested when the television station broke the news."
But yet again, this presupposes that Zimmerman is prima facie guilty of manslaughter, excused only by an unsubstantiated claim that he was the victim and Martin the criminal. Again, you’re starting from the position that if Zimmerman can’t prove his claims that the default is that he committed manslaughter, which just isn’t so under Florida law. Again, even supposing that we somehow had no testimony from Zimmerman at all, the circumstantial evidence is not slam-dunk conclusive. Starting from a null hypothesis (is there evidence that Martin attacked Zimmerman?) the answer is yes, there’s Zimmerman’s bloody face.
It doesn’t have to be slam drunk conclusive. To say that conflates the burden for conviction with the burden needed for probable cause. The 911 call alone suggests that if anyone was breaking the law, it was Zimmerman when he unnecessarily, unreasonably, and recklessly went chasing after a boy found groundless reasons. Was Martin an interloper who had no business in the neighborhood? No. Was he on drugs? No. Was he trespassing on anyone’s property? No. Was he carrying a weapon in his waistband. No.
If we already have this big clue that Zimmerman had poor judgement when assessing and reacting to Martin’s presence while he was on the phone with 911, it becomes unreasonable to give his judgement the benefit of the doubt when he decided to shoot the boy. He was wrong about all the things that made him suspicious about the kid in the first place, which is evidence that he was probably wrong about shooting him too. I don’t see how this presumes anything. It’s simply following the evidence to its logical conclusion.
That’s a biased null hypothesis because it essentially puts Martin on trial. Zimmerman’s wounds aren’t evidence that Martin attacked him. They are evidence that the two fought. Wounds don’t bear a time stamp so you don’t know who did what first.
The null hypothesis should be made without respect to a particular actor. Is there evidence a crime took place? You shouldn’t start at the shooting and work your way backwards, either. Start at the very beginning of the story.
But Martin is being followed and has reason to fear Zimmerman. In that situation, a woman might use mace to defend herself… A man would use his fists. Trayvon ran as stated from Zimmerman 's 911 call. This means Zimmerman had to catch up to him. Martin has the same right to stand his ground that Zimmerman is trying to claim. Would a reasonable person fear being followed at night by a complete stranger? I think so. Bloody nose explained.
I’ve got this scenario in my head that I can’t shake. Perhaps someone familiar with the law can help me.
Let’s say I’m in a gang. Being in a gang is not a crime, as far as I know. So I’m in this gang, but I have to visit my grandma in another neighborhood. This neighborhood is the turf ground of a rival gang. Absent mindedly, I’m wearing my gang colors like I always do.
As I climb my grandmother’s porch, the door of the adjacent house opens and out comes a rival gang member. I don’t know anything about him except that he’s in this gang. He sees me in my colors and starts coming at me aggressively, gesturing to his waistband like he’s got a gun. I’ve got a gun too (registered and licensed as required by law). I know the deal. In our crazy subculture, I’m fair game for a bullet. Just the other day a guy from his gang came on to my turf and was killed. So I know what’s about to happen to me if I don’t defend myself.
Just as the guy comes closer, I pull out my gun and shoot him.
When the cops show, I tell them the exact same story I just told ya’ll. And when the cops look at my record, they won’t find anything on me. I might be in a gang, but I’ve managed to keep my name out of the system.
I was wondering the same thing. If Zimmerman had remained silent at the scene or flat out denied shooting him, would the cops still be puzzled over what to charge him with?
That we’re even asking these questions tells me the problem isn’t the SYG law. The problem is that when members of a certain demographic kill people they’ve branded as unsavory, apparently cops have to move heaven and earth to prove they acted illegally. At least in Sanford.
I don’t know that probable cause is currently relevant, if Investigator Serino is speaking truthfully when he says the reason the SPD have not made an arrest is because prosecutors have told them they lack the evidence for a conviction. That essentially means they aren’t making a probable cause argument.
Do you not think at all the fact that the prosecutors in Florida have said (to the police) that they lack evidence for a conviction, and in the CSM article I linked to a current law professor and former Federal prosecutor said that even in a non-SYG State this would be a very difficult to prosecute case makes it likely that your understanding of the legal situation may not be entirely accurate?
Does anyone have audio for the tape that has two gunshots? Of the four tapes I could listen to on the Sentinel website I was only able to hear one gunshot. Additionally, in the news article I read where one witness reported two gunshots I have read that the tape which supposedly has this recorded only has one clear gunshot on the tape.
This shows the problem I have with people jumping to conclusions. We have no idea, and can’t possibly have an idea, as to whether there was one gunshot or two. Yet someone has already taken the word of one witness that there were two gunshots (even though it appears only one out of many people to hear the gunshot heard two) and now said that Zimmerman fired a second shot to “finish Martin off.” At least based on the forensic evidence that has been released there is no justification for that claim, “finish off” suggests Zimmerman shoots him once then shoots him again to kill him. We’ve never heard anything other than Martin suffering one, mortal, gunshot wound.
There may have been two gunshots (by the way, that’s something that we will probably know for certain relatively soon), but you guys just take every news bulletin and run with it like mad…that’s a mentality I have never understood.
So now we’re shifting the argument from the police shouldn’t exercise discretion to a prosecutor shouldn’t exercise discretion?
I am honestly speechless. In your world, a prosecutor, in their expert legal opinion thinks they cannot win a conviction, and you want them to prosecute the case?
What is your reason for that? Because your uninformed observer opinion, not expert on Florida law, not fully informed on the case, thinks that they need to? I don’t think prosecutors need to be in the business of pursuing a case they believe, in their expert legal opinion, to be unwinnable, just because it will make people feel better.
There are a lot of opinions out there. Since not even lawyers can seem to agree on what the Fl statutes allow, I’m not convinced that conviction would be so difficult. Funny how cops are allowed discretion, prosecutors are allowed discretion, but juries aren’t allowed to weigh in on this and excercise their discretion because the others’ discretion have gotten in the way.
One of the 911 witnesses said that a guy in a white tee shirt was on top of the other guy during the fight. That contradicts the idea that Martin, who was wearing a dark hoodie, was wailing on a supine Zimmerman as was claimed. Funny how this apparently isn’t enough to disprove self defense, and neither is Zimmermans 911 call. Neither did Martins screams for help and mercy. So what exactly would disprove it if this is insufficient? That’s all the people want to know right now.
I’m not claiming to be 100% right about the legal situation. But I do know fuckedupness when I see it.
While it’s obvious that a prosecutor shouldn’t be expected to pursue a case s/he doesn’t deem winnable, you’re still ignoring the point I made above that prosecutors’ offices are political operations just as any other government office is. Their actions aren’t governed solely by some kind of abstract, mechanical “expert legal opinion,” that is immune from the reality of political context or influence. Which is not to say that that is the case here–just that you should realize that that’s part of this discussion. The implication is that perhaps the prosecutor would in fact consider the case winnable “in theory,” but decides not to pursue it for other reasons.