Why hasn't the Neighborhood Watch shooter been arrested?

In My Humble Opinion
541

Okay, with the “four houses down” thing I was genuinely curious what you thought it implied. I knew you thought it was something bad for Zimmerman, but wasn’t sure what specifically.

The thing is, you’re making assumptions. You’re assuming the evidence from witnesses that the shooting happened four houses down from where the fight started is conclusive. We do not have access to the witness statements. I wont’ speculate on if they are conclusive or not.

What would your opinion be if the statements for whatever reason were iffy? What if other witnesses said something different?

I suspect you’ll think you should only conclude whatever is necessary to make Zimmerman look guilty of a crime, but in a court, any ambiguity is going to hurt the prosecution, and will be exploited by the defense.

What if there is evidence to suggest the shooting happened roughly where the fighting began and the descriptions in the newspaper aren’t accurate? I don’t inherently trust the ability of reports to get things correct, as they are often wrong.

Additionally you seem to think that even if Zimmerman chased someone that in itself is conclusive proof of guilt or culpability. I’m not entirely sure that is the legal scenario.

I see a bunch of evidence that we only know about through the newspaper, and some inconclusive audio recordings. I think in court that evidence could break either way, you think it is 100% breaking against Zimmerman. That’s fine as a personal opinion. My thoughts are more along the lines of trying to put myself in the shoes of the prosecutor, and if I have a lot of evidence that could “go either way” I have to really consider the strength of my case as a whole. I have to consider if even I have any confidence about what happened, and should I be prosecuting someone for manslaughter if I don’t even necessarily think that I have good evidence they committed the crime.

542

Look, you asked me what the 4 houses down thing meant to me if true, and I answered your question.

Now you respond that none of us know if that is true, so blah blah blah. You should have just said that first, and saved me the time of answering what I though was honest a question. Since I have no reason to believe that witnesses would just make that shit up, I’m not to discard it from my analysis of the situation. The cops haven’t denied these claims either.

If you don’t believe the witnesses, okay. But then I don’t want to hear you talk about giving weight to anything Zimmerman claimed.

543

The whole self-defense premise is bullshit in the first place. The cops really believed that Zimmerman feared severe injury or death coming out of a tussle with this beanpole kid? Zimmerman shot him out of anger and rage, probably after getting punched in the nose.

It cracks me up that the Zimmerman apologists here have concocted a scenario wherein Martin is the aggressor. It is completely unlikely, however, that after telling the dispatcher “these assholes always get away”, Zimmerman followed Martin and tried to restrain him for the police.

Just becaude Zimmerman can get away with it under a misguided statute conceived by retarded rednecks and signed by a governor who comes from a family of killers, doesn’t mean he isn’t a murderer.

544

Granted, but RickJay seems to believe that this law makes getting away with murder, especially spousal murder, a simple task. If that is true, then one would expect that criminals (or their lawyers) would have noticed this before, and the conviction rate for Florida murders should be significantly different from that of the other 49 states, and this discrepancy would be due to murderers simply claiming self-defense. Is that the case?

It seems that you with the face and others are proposing that anyone who commits a homicide and claims self-defense should be arrested no matter what the circumstances. That’s an arguable position, I suppose, but it doesn’t seem like a good position. If the argument is that anyone who commits a homicide and claims self-defense under *these *circumstances should be arrested, that’s agreement that the police should be allowed to use some kind of discretion.

The trouble is, we don’t know all the circumstances, and a good deal of the argument in favor of arresting Zimmerman seems to be based on information that is either partial, or very far from conclusive. Or indeed, outright wrong. The argument that two shots were fired, and this proves murder, seems to me to be rather far-fetched. Because as far as can be determined, the kid was only shot once. Thus the idea that Zimmerman stalked him, shot him, and then hunted him down and finished him off doesn’t fly.

Were two shots fired? It would seem a pretty easy thing to determine - how many bullets were fired from Zimmerman’s weapon? If only one, that would appear to demonstrate that the witnesses who originally claimed to hear one shot, and then amended their account to say there were two shots, were wrong, and are therefore less reliable than an account from someone who said from the outset that only one shot was fired and stuck to the story.

Is that what Zimmerman claimed? We have no idea, because we have never heard his side of the story in anything like a complete form. The police, however, have. Zimmerman even re-enacted the shooting, according to one news account I read. And the standard police procedures of getting the suspect to tell his story several times and look for inconsistencies does not, at least so far, seem to have come up with inconsistencies that have caused the police to conclude that he was making anything up.

Will that come out later? I have no idea. Maybe the district attorneys will still charge him. But a good defense lawyer will have a good deal to work with to impeach and/or call into question many of the witnesses who appear to have changed their accounts sometime after the fact, possibly based on the publicity surrounding the case.

I would expect that not to be the case with Zimmerman. He has told a convincing account so far, at least to the degree necessary to convince the police. If he keeps his mouth shut until after the DAs have definitely decided not to charge him, that will work to his advantage.

It is unfortunate that people seem to feel it is so cut-and-dried based on incomplete information.

And I still don’t see why he should be arrested when there is not enough evidence to convict. To punish him for something he cannot legally be shown to have done?

Regards,
Shodan

545

Florida is one messed up state.

546

It wasn’t a dishonest question. I wasn’t sure if you were saying the distance implied Zimmerman shot Martin from a distance or he chased him and then shot him. I only mention it because it’s an important distinction. If Zimmerman had shot from a distance there would have been conclusive forensic evidence of that, so if that was what people were thinking I’d say we could rule that out.

547

Black Militia group vows to perform citizens’ arrest of Zimmerman

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: Oh that’s going to help.

548

The problem is, he did start the alteracation. He followed Martin, accosted him and in Zimmerman’s mind, Martin was a criminal.

So to claim that Zimmerman didn’t start it is a bit rich. Adding to this, the 911 operator had specifically told him not to approach Martin.

So when you say “no evidence” one would have to wonder what you exactly expect? There is plenty of evidence that Zimmerman was the aggressor. Rermember, he quite actively pursued the kid, this is not somebody that he happend to bump into on his daily walk.

549

In the absence of an eye witness we have a community activist going out of his way to confront someone he thinks is suspicious. Despite being told his actions were not necessary (which presumes the police are on their way) he engages what is presumed to be an innocent person going about his business. A fight ensues based on the unwarranted confrontation leading to the death of an innocent person.

I think the court can make a case that the fight was the result of an unwarranted confrontation and therefore the death was related to the actions of the shooter. If the shooter is claiming self defense it’s because he instigated the reason for the fight it in the first place.

550

Zimmerman created the situation but unless he actually started the physical confrontation (which we have no evidence to prove), I don’t believe it is legally relevant that he started the situation itself. His confronting Martin is not in itself a crime, nor do I think it would meet the “provocation” definition in most jurisdictions.

Yeah, if Zimmerman started screaming profanities and racial slurs at him, that would meet the definition of provocation. However given the only evidence on how things started comes from the 911 tape, which stops before Zimmerman actually confronts Martin, and Zimmerman’s testimony, I doubt we have any clear evidence of direct provocation.

Technically even if Zimmerman started the fight, Martin doesn’t have a right to beat him to death unless he could somehow show that he killed Zimmerman in the fight as an act of self defense.

Meaning that if Martin had the upper hand on Zimmerman and continued beating Zimmerman while Zimmerman was prone, Zimmerman would have a right to use self-defense to stop the assault on his person at that point, because with Zimmerman down Trayvon is arguably no longer acting in self-defense.

As a quick side story when I was 22 I was in Philadelphia while on leave with another friend in service. A guy grabbed a gold necklace from my friend’s neck and ripped it off, and bolted down the street. My friend (who was a running back in school and much faster than me) caught the guy while I was trying to catch up. The friend knocked the guy over with one punch, and then basically proceeded to stomp the living shit out of him. When the police arrived, they threw the guy into the car and took a brief statement and left.

I’ve always thought of that incident to illustrate two points. One is that technically my friend should have been arrested for assault. He was within his rights I believe to try and recover his property, and even initially probably to have knocked the guy down. However when he continually stomped the guy who was at that point absolutely no threat to him and in no position to defend himself I think he committing a very serious, felony type assault under the laws of most jurisdictions.

Point two is the guy who got his ass stomped in was a street person who I think was familiar to police and generally part of the criminal element. Myself and my friend were both active duty military, so I think there was just a certain inherent societal preference by the responding police to see the guy who just got his ass kicked thrown in jail and us sent on our way.

Relevant to our discussion I think would be a scenario in which the guy who got his ass kicked pulls a gun and shot my friend. I think he would be acting in legal self defense. He created the situation, but that did not entitle my friend to beat him that savagely when he was on the ground.

However, I also think that under many state manslaughter statutes they might still convict the guy. Yes, I think his self-defense claim would be valid. However, I think from a different angle it could be argued that the criminal “created the situation” through some form of negligence or illegal act, and that situation lead to someone being killed. So in a strange sense I could see it being a case where someone would be convicted of manslaughter not because of the actual fact they pulled the trigger (because it was justifiable self-defense) but instead because they created the situation through some act of gross negligence.

However, the evidence against Zimmerman is only that he approached Martin to confront him. I don’t know if that in itself would qualify as some sort of negligent action.

551

They might want to bring bulletproof vests. George gets a little trigger happy when the black folks are around.

552

No, that would not be enough to raise a red flag.

Hard to say, since the flag might have already gone up in this conversational path. In Florida, you don’t have a general duty to retreat, so I have no idea why the police would ask him this question, especially since its predicate seems to be that Martin struck Zimmerman unprovoked. But if the overall sense communicated here was that Zimmerman did not fear Martin would injure him seriously with his fists, even though he had already been struck and bloodied, but he still shot him out of fear that Martin was also armed, and he fails to then further explain why he thought Martin was armed… then, yes, red flag, and probable cause for arrest.

Again the predicate facts are unclear. Again, though, if the overall sense communicated here was that Zimmerman did not fear Martin would injure him seriously with his fists, even though he had already been struck and bloodied, but he still shot him out of fear that Martin was also armed, and he fails to then further explain why he thought Martin was armed… then, yes, red flag, and probable cause for arrest.

A fear has to generally be both objectively reasonable and subjectively true. The finder of fact at trial is entitled to listen to the testimony about the fear and weigh it, relying on their common sense, wisdom, and experience to decide how much to credit it.

For this discussion, deciding whether or not probable cause exists, if the claim of fear seems credible to the police, they generally will accept it as credible.

553

I don’t know why anyone would be surprised that militia groups are getting involved in this. It’s a natural consequence of people losing faith in government protection. Duh. If you want to talk dispassionately about cop and prosecutorial discretion, okay. But don’t roll your eyes when people exercise their descretion, for petes sake. Letting gun and racial politics get in the way of law enforcement has these kind of tradeoffs. People get agitated.

I am glad that folks are riled up about this. It means we have a pulse. If it makes SYG gun-nuts shit their drawers, oh well. The kid should have been left alone.

554

I disagree with your viewpoint on a number of counts. First, he doesn’t have to fling racial slurs to be considered provocative. His mere interaction with the kid was provocation in it’s own right. If you follow someone around asking them what they’re doing the average person would consider this an invasion of privacy at the very least, and intimidation and frightening at the very worst.

There wasn’t a situation nor should there have been in a situation. The shooter created the interaction out of whole cloth. That is the evidence of direct provocation. The man was literally looking for trouble where none existed and proceeded to act as if there was. He made an assumption and then acted on that assumption to the point where a fight broke out. The fight is his fault.

We consider human life sacred on some level. for the sake of argument, we treat ourselves like an endangered species. This guy poked a bear with a stick and then wants to claim self defense when the bear turns on him.

555

As far as the kid beating the shooter to death, the shooter had a 100 lbs on him. Not buying it. If he got a bloody nose that’s not getting beat to death. Not by a long shot.

556

If Zimmerman truly thought Martin was armed then confronting him was just stupid squared and an indication that he went into it with the idea that there would be a gun fight. He’s watched one too many Wyatt Earp movies.

557

I don’t think your views on provocation are in line with legal precedent. It’s not “provocative” but rather “provocative enough to excuse you physically attacking someone who has not laid a finger on you such that the law will excuse what would otherwise be an assault.” I don’t think just asking someone their business is going to meet the definition. I imagine all Zimmerman will cop to is that he wanted to ask Trayvon Martin what he was up to, even if he really did fling racial insults and et cetera to bait Martin, he’d be brain dead to admit that.

So legally I do not know that it is really very important that Zimmerman approached Martin. All Zimmerman has to demonstrate is that Martin started the actual physical confrontation, and it got to a point where he felt at danger of serious injury or death. It’s obvious whatever he said convinced police, we don’t know if it would convince a jury, and maybe it only convinced the police because of some inherent bias. (Although I think if that is the case, their bias is probably reflected in the community of Sanford at large, so I think it would be difficult to find a Sanford jury that would be totally lacking in whatever biases the Sanford police might have.)

558

I’m going to keep going back to my reasonable fear argument. In a situation where a woman would pull out mace or a taser, why can’t Trayvon swing on this guy?

559

It’s difficult because in a scenario with a woman who uses a mace or TASER ostensibly she will be around to explain her side of the story. It’s possible a woman could mace a guy who was only meaning to stop her to question her, but had no intention of physical harm or even laying hands on her.

I could imagine such a scenario being resolved with no charges filed against either person.

If Trayvon wasn’t shot I imagine this situation could have been resolved with no charge, also. It seems that is precisely the problem some prosecutors and other advocates have with the SYG in Florida–it essentially means if you’re the one who carries a gun to a fist fight and ends up using it, you are not likely to be prosecuted. It makes it beneficial to always be carrying a gun and and be always willing to use it.

560

Hey I dunno what the crime situation is like in Florida.

But if I was walking on a public street alone and a guy that could probably pick me up and throw me starts following me and acting suspicious…I’m going to grab either my can of mace or ice pick I have concealed on my person and get ready to use them based on what follows as kidnappings and robbery are common where I am.

How did Zimmerman not expect such a response?