It’s not a matter of trust, it’s a matter of not seeing an alternative.
If the prosecutors shouldn’t have a say in who should be charged with a crime, and what charges the state will pursue in court, who should?
I’ve said I will be open to consider the government officials to have acted improperly, they very well may have. But I won’t get on a bandwagon for something like that until an actual investigation into that has occurred, so like I said–for me that’d be a long time from now. People in this thread (and on this forum) are happy being the first in line to accuse someone of things with no regard to anything but their first impressions.
I’ve been thinking again about this scenario, turned slightly to the side.
Let’s say I’m not in a gang at all. I’m visiting my grandmother and I’m dressed in a red sweater, because she made it for me and I’d like her to see me wearing it before she dies. In the back of my mind, I know the color red marks me as a member of a certain gang. But since I’m not in a gang, I’m not worried about it.
Alas, when I knock on her door, a neighbor flings open his door and comes out, screaming at me. I can tell based on his dress and tattoos that he’s in a gang, and then I realize he’s mistakenly identified me as a rival gang member. But before I can explain myself, he’s reaching for his waistband.
I realize what’s about to happen, so I pull out my own gun and shoot him.
Am I going to jail?
What if I had a criminal background, despite not being in a gang?
To get away from the gun thing, if Martin had landed a major punch to Zimmerman’s head and had killed him before he had had a chance to pull the trigger, would Martin now be in jail? Or would the punch be used as evidence that Zimmerman was right to be suspicious and therefore right to try to take him down.
I’m wondering how many times people have been immediately cleared of a crime like Zimmerman has, citing self-defense. It sure seems like it would be easy enough to pull off.
FWIW, I don’t hear two gunshots either. But those screams sound much more like a teenager’s who has been ambushed. That the screams were silenced so quickly after the gunshot strongly suggests that Martin was the source. If Zimmerman was yelling for help, surely he would have continued to do so after he shot Martin.
This is a straw man because no one is saying they have no say. But there becomes a point that we should be able to say WTF when their actions defy public expectations. We passed that point 3 weeks ago.
I actually don’t know why you’re so interested in this thread. It seems like your response to any new information that comes out is always going to be “I won’t second guess the authorities. They have a right to call it as they see”. Obviously they have the power to do that but that doesn’t mean we can’t criticize them or discuss what we think the available evidence suggests.
If your standard response to any opinion I offer in this thread is essentially going to be “the State feels otherwise, so there’s nothing to see here, nothing to see,” we’ll thanks for that, but I don’t care what the State ‘feels’. We’d still have Jim Crow if we’d blindly listened to the State’s ‘feelings’. Cops and prosecutors are not infallible, and we can criticize them when their decisions seem wrong and too heavy on ‘feelings’.
An alternative, more cynical reason why the state has not moved from its position:
The police are on record saying that the guy’s story was persuasive enough for them. According to the victim’s family, early on they were told by the police that they thought Zimmerman was innocent, since his background is clean.
Wouldn’t it be an embarrassment for them to back peddle and say, “Oops. Guess we were wrong about all that. Let’s go get him now”?
We also have to remember that these folks are not immune to politics. If there’s a large contingent of vigilante-lovers there, they may not take it too kindly that the likes of Al Sharpton can come down there and pressure the prosecution to take a case that should have been forgotten about as soon as it happened.
I did some time in Florida. I know that mentality exists even in a cosmopolitan place like Miami, so I know it definitely exists in a place like Sanford .
Alright, and what should happen when the prosecutors do something that defy expectations? Who gets to decide when something has sufficiently defied expectations to warrant whatever you think “should happen” from kicking in? If your answer is “nothing should happen” then you agree with me: the prosecutors get to decide whom they will bring charges against. I’ve already said I have no interest in recreational outrage, if that’s all you’re interested in then have fun with it.
Because I sought to explain potential reasons for not making an arrest. You’re only interested in why their should be an arrest. I’ve never said there should or shouldn’t be an arrest. They are wholly separate issues.
This hyperbole makes you look foolish. There is a big difference between saying:
“The State has access to evidence and a knowledge of the law that we lack, so I’ll hold off on deciding how I feel about this case until everything is resolved and all the evidence is shown the light of day. If the evidence is never shown the light of day, then that’s of public interest and should be pursued, but that’s for after, not during, the investigation.”
And:
“The State must be believed no matter what, forever and always.”
Your argument is basically this:
“When my personal view on what is ‘common sense’ combined with public outcry reaches X, we need to condemn the officials investigating this and/or be allowed to arrest Zimmerman and prosecute him ourselves.”
That opens up cans of worms just as ugly as Jim Crow and any other violation of civil liberties you care to mention.
Zimmerman wasn’t immediately cleared, he has not yet been cleared. He was taken to the police station for questioning, and then released with no charges being filed.
The Johns Hopkins student I mentioned the other day who killed a burglar with a sword, he was taken in for questioning but was never charged and was back home later that day. It took many weeks for him to be cleared, though.
Sometimes people are charged right away, but that’s almost irrelevant to what actually happens.
I’ve read in the local news many stories over the years of people acting in self defense who are never charged, but those aren’t very prominent. The headline goes away almost immediately when there is no charge. It’s always a much bigger story when it actually goes to trial and the person gets acquitted.
How long is reasonable to you? Are you aware of any instances in which the state has left an investigation like this “on going” forever, and never made a determination public?
Good for you for having such a detached attitude. I sympathize, however, with the parents of the victim whose child was gunned down by their neighbor, who have to endure the crazy fear that they won’t get justice on an account of some do-nothing cops and a state’s attorney more concerned about not pissing off the gun nuts than doing his job. And on top of that, they have to endure speculation about how their son might have been a threat, might have done something to deserve his fate, when none of us have any reason he was any of those things. It’s only because of Zimmermans imagination that these speculations even exists.
Please don’t tell me what my argument is. You get it wrong every time.
Lets stop it here. In this scenario, the guy screaming at you is Zimmerman and you’re Martin. I say this because by his behavior, you can tell he’s prejudged you as a threat and is going after you because of it, regardless if he has good cause or not. Just like Big Z did Lil M.
And so if we are to learn anything from the Sanford situation, the gang member can shoot and kill you and claim self-defense, and go unarrested for weeks. Even if grandma can vouch for the harmlessness of your sweater and even if your absence of gang affiliation is verified by the police. Even if you arent carrying anything except candy.
you, surprisingly I didn’t even think of the scenario in that way.
That’s why I’m not understanding why judgment isn’t being factored in here. A paranoid person is going to think that every person is out to kill him. In their mind, it is wise to carry a gun, shoot first, and then ask questions. But is this not reckless behavior? I would think so. I would think it would be reckless to go chasing after a random stranger in the darkness of night and then engage in violence with him, when you know for a fact that you are carrying a loaded gun. Even if Zimmerman hadn’t pulled the trigger, the gun could have gone off by accident. Or he could have dropped the weapon, Martin could have picked it up, and then shot Zimmerman. Bullets don’t have a name. An errant bullet could have killed anyone in the vicinity, including officers rolling up on the scene.
And this takes me back to the question I had asked before. If Martin had picked up the gun and shot Zimmerman, would the police have accepted his word that he had only been defending his life? I understand this requires us to speculate about a hypothetical and it’s impossible for us to know what would have happened. But I know it’s not just me and a couple of other cynical people who suspect that things would be playing out a lot differently if the roles had been reversed.
In my opinion, if it had been Opie with red hair and freckles and not Treyvon in a hoodie, we’d never know George Zimmerman’s name, because he probably would have pulled up and offered him a ride home instead of shooting him in the chest.
Ha! For some reason, I figured you didn’t. But it’s eireely analogous to Martin’shooting, isn’t it? That’s why all this handwringing over the lack of evidence is galling to me.
In the 14 months preceding the murder, Zimmerman called the police 46 times, usually regarding suspicious persons. I think it would be interesting to hear the contents of these calls and find out the results of the police responses. Hopefully they’ll be released.
In the New York Timea article linked above, it is stated as fact that there were two shots fired. Have the Sanford police confirmed or contradicted that contention?
So, you don’t sympathise with the guy who was attacked whilst going about his legitimate business, and forced to shoot and kill his attacker? An action that may well traumatise him for years.
Maybe that’s not what actually happened, but given the evidence that’s actually been made public, it’s as likely as your scenario. It’s entirely possible that Zimmerman is the victim here. That’s certainly his claim, and one that the police agree with, and one that no evidence has yet been shown to disprove.
What I think is happening here is that you don’t think he should have the right to observe people’s behaviour in public, and question them on it if he considers it suspicious, that he shouldn’t have the right to shoot in self defence rather than run away, and you probably think he shouldn’t have a gun in the first place, all of which would mean that, even if it went down as he described, he’d still be guilty.
I’d probably agree with that, but then I live in a country where at least the last two of those things are illegal. You live in the country where they are allowed, and if that’s what your problem really is, then that should be what you are complaining about, not about the police and prosecutors applying the law in a fashion that appears correct, at least so far.
It’s possible, but to be honest, it doesn’t strike me as being equally **as likely **as Zimmerman starting and ending the confrontation.
Given what we know of the case, of human nature, and of Zimmerman’s history, what seems likelier to me is that Zimmerman started a fight with Martin, got hit in the process, and then shot Martin. I can’t prove that’s what happened, but it sure seems likelier.
Likely won’t get you a conviction. But then, in this case, it seems to me the law is fundamentally screwed up where a person can bring a gun to a wholly unnecessary and unreasonable altercation he started himself, use the gun to kill an unarmed person, and get off by simply stating “It was self defense.” As long as nobody sees you do it, murder is unprosecutable. Anyone in Florida who wants to kill their spouse is probably following this story really closely because they have an amazingly easy out.
The very first google result I came across is a six year old case case with suspects and no arrests. The cops say it is an on going investigation.
Gee there is a woman with the dead woman’s credit card, who was at the house the day before the fire. She showed up at the fire to watch it burn. But no arrests.
If I were to make a guess as to how it happened it would be along these lines. Zimmerman follows Martin, and asks him what he’s doing walking round that area. Martin tells him, not very politely, that it’s none of his business, and to leave him alone. Zimmerman doesn’t, and informs him that the police are on the way. Martin is pretty pissed off, and lashes out at Zimmerman, who then produces the gun. Martin panics, starts screaming, and continues hitting Zimmerman, who shoots him.
I’m making some assumptions here, the largest one being that the reports of Zimmerman having injuries from the fight, and Martin’s only injury being the shot. I’m also speculating about the behaviour of both parties, but basing that on human nature, as you did, and specifically how I’d expect a neighbourhood busybody and a teenager to behave. I’m also assuming that the gunshot wound was consistent with a close range shot in a fight, but I think we’d have heard by now if it wasn’t.
I agree that the law is pretty screwed up here, but proving crimes where there are few witnesses is always hard. That’s not a bug in the system though, it’s a feature. Convicted someone should always be hard, as if it’s done successfully the state will then be depriving someone of what would otherwise be some of their fundamental rights - property, liberty, or even in some cases life.