Looks like they’re using mob justice to railroad this guy into jail.
Bring in Brother Al Sharpton. Make a huge fuss. There’s even a black vigilante group threatening to hunt him down. The press is stirring everything into a frenzy.
With all this publicity and politics of course the Grand Jury will indict him. Then the Feds will crucify him on a hate crime charge.
Mob justice is appalling and an embarrassment.
We don’t know the whole story but you can’t say we no nothing about it.
-we presume Martin was on his way back from buying candy at a 7-11
-we know Zimmerman spent a fair amount of time on neighborhood watches based on the number of calls to the police.
-we know Zimmerman was aware of recent burglaries and was unhappy about the crimes going unresolved.
-we know Zimmerman thought Martin was “messed up” and possibly armed.
-we know Zimmerman carried a gun while on a neighborhood watch which is both legal and dangerous.
-we know the police were enroute
-we know Zimmerman pursued Martin on foot against the advise of the police and under his professed opinion that Martin is messed up and possibly armed.
Now, worst case scenario, Martin liked to eat skittles after a meth induced burglary rampage. He went crazy and attacked when Zimmerman asked him if he needed a lift because it was raining. It’s possible but I wouldn’t say we only know 1% of what transpired and conclusions made now are baseless.
We have the horror of potentially charging an innocent man for a crime, based on a case founded upon weak, cirumstantial evidence that reasonable people will reject as soon as it is presented to them.
We have another horror of a kid killed for no reason other than the shooter’s perceptions of danger, uncorroborated by anyone else. Furthermore, the case is covered in a mist of incompetency and fuck-uppery, making it damn near impossible to figure out what happened with certainty since witnesses (allegedly) were tampered with and critical evidence was apparently not collected (the shooter’s blood for testing…which strangely was not neglected in the case of the victim’s).
There are two horrors here. One is leagues more heart-wrenching than the other. If what Martin Hyde and Bricker say are true, Zimmerman will probably continue to walk free, he will move to some far away place and change his name, and then strive to be a better person for the rest of his life, preferably without a gun in his hand. But there is no happy ending for Martin or his family. There is nothing but more horror on top of horror for them.
Forgive me for having more sympathy with them than for Zimmerman.
No we don’t, unless you know of some evidence that hasn’t been revealed that the police arrived before the shooting occurred. We know he was advised not to follow by a 911 operator, not a police officer. Stop making “evidence” up.
If I accidentally ran over Al Sharpton I’d back up to see if he was OK. I’m no fan of him because he makes a living fanning the flames of racial issues. He’s a race pimp. With that said you need to look at the larger picture.
Cases like this frustrate the public at large because in the absence of an immediate arrest there is the perception that justice isn’t operating properly. Combine that with a serious history of lynching (just in the last century) then you have to make allowances for public outrage. It was nothing for mobs to go into black communities and kill a dozen people over an event like this. Try reading a year’s worth of newspapers in the first quarter century to see these events unfolding. It’s very disturbing. This does not excuse death threats but those would happen regardless of demographics. Hillbilly Bob or (pick a racial demographic) would be flinging spittle over the same situation.
um, what? I never said or implied the police arrived before the shooting. I said they were enroute.
And 911 operators are trained on how to properly respond to situations based on department policy. It’s evidence that he was asked not to do this. Unless you wish to imply that the request was against department policy than your point makes no sense. He was advised not to pursue Martin because it’s an unwise thing to do.
Reasonable people already have rejected the evidence. Reasonable people may very well, in the light of new evidence, decide that arresting and charging Zimmerman is now the reasonable option, when there is a reasonable chance of conviction, followed by a reasonable punishment for whatever crime he may have committed.
Unreasonable people are screaming for an unwarranted (in every sense) arrest, a trial and conviction based on the “fact” that he “must be” guilty, and an abandonment of both law and justice.
The police have certainly been incompetent as far as PR goes, but there’s nothing else that looks particularly bad. I still have no idea why you think they had a right to take his blood, given they were of the opinion that they couldn’t arrest him. I asked that earlier, but you ignored it. As for tampering with a witness statement, that will presumably become clear at the Grand Jury if that witness is called. I doubt it actually happened though.
I suppose you must consider one person’s death to be worse than ignoring legal rights, due process, and the presumption of innocence. I’d yet again disagree with you, as despite the flaws in these things, they are what protect us from unjust killings being a regular occurrence. If you abandon these principles, you will have vastly more people in the position of the Martin family.
Oh, I understand the sympathy. I also understand that it’s irrelevant. The legal system is not there to obtain vengeance for the loss of their son, fortunately.
A Grand Jury rejected this?
It was clearly unwise, absolutely in hindsight and it should have been so in advance.
That’s not the point, though. The point is that unwise is not the same as illegal, and a telephone operator’s advice has no legal standing.
The reason emergency call operators advise against confrontation is to protect the people who are calling. It has no bearing on the legality of him following, approaching, stalking, chasing or whatever he did to Martin.
I don’t think wanting a guy to face a court of law and explain himself in front of a jury of his peers is a travesty. It’s fairness. He played judge and jury towards Martin. Now is his turn to account for himself…and in a much more proper way this time.
If his story is as compelling as you believe it is, he has absolutely nothing to fear.
No, the police rejected it when they made the decision not to arrest him. But you knew that was what I meant.
Or are you claiming that the police are not reasonable people?
As has been the case from the very first page, some people believe a news article’s interpretation of things, or random quotes from a police officer reprinted in a news article are the same as actually having the statement Zimmerman made to police in his interview.
A point that I made hundreds of posts ago and that has been reiterated recently is that an early arrest can actually hinder the efforts of the prosecution. For strategic reasons it is often more sensible to hold off on an arrest until you have a stronger case, because a suspect free on the streets is more likely to generate new evidence against themselves than one in a jailhouse.
I don’t think that’s really the point here, but there are lots of cases where you don’t arrest the moment you can in an investigation.
I’m glad that you acknowledge there’s a possible version in which Zimmerman is not guilty and it squares withnthe facts e know.
I don’t agree that the police would or should release that statement while the investigation is ongoing. Zimmerman may have lied, and may not now recall the details of his lies. If he is brought in for subsequent questioning (“Just a few things we’d like to clear up…”) it would be fatal if he had a chance to read his own prior statement and conform his future statement to it.
In other words, you want the police to respond to community pressure at the expense of conducting a proper investigation. Despite the fact that you have no particular experience in law enforcement or criminal procedure, you want the police to harken to your ideas about how to manage the investigation, like an airline passenger upset with turbulence who demands the pilot follow her advice on altitude and trim.
Well, you’re in good company. I doubt Zimmerman too. But I want him arrested only if and when there is probable cause as a matter of law and at least a decent shot at conviction.
By the way, under what legal authority could the police have administered a sobriety check?
Really? I mean, really? It has already been established that Martin was unarmed and coming back from a convenience store, i.e. doing nothing wrong prior to Zimmerman’s engagement with him. Why would his (AFAWK nonexistent) juvie record be relevant?
What’s really sad are the people who think doing this puts them on the same plane as guys like MLK, Medgar Evers etc. They don’t see that leaders of the civil rights movement from the 1940s-1970s were fighting for an improvement in the rights of themselves and their fellow citizens. People here are demanding someone be arrested, regardless of any other concerns, because the dead person is black.
(Bolding mine)
You are still assuming and speculating. By stating the bolded part as fact, you are the one not being fair.
Also, you are still missing the point that you have to presume him innocent. I’m not sure how I can make that point any clearer - do you not accept the truth of it, or do you somehow fail to understand it? Unless there’s good reason to think that we can prove he’s not innocent, no, he doesn’t have to explain anything to the judge and jury. Technically, he doesn’t anyway, the prosecution does, but that’s not quite how it works in practice.
He owes nobody an explanation of any actions he took that were legal. He has claimed that he legally shot and killed Martin, and he is not required to justify that, the prosecution is required to prove it false.
I would hope that if his story is true he has nothing to fear. Your attitude doesn’t give me a great deal of confidence that that is the case.
If you put a gun to my head and made me guess I’d say O.J. Simpson brutally murdered two people, with absolute premeditation and malice in his heart. I’d also bet Casey Anthony killed her daughter.
I wouldn’t say either should have been convicted though, I’ve always said there were serious problems with the LAPD’s investigation and it had a cop exposed as a racist that perjured himself on the stand–that creates real doubt. With the Casey Anthony case the evidence against her was strong but not, in my opinion (which on both of these famous cases is vastly inferior to the information the jury had) so strong to meet the high burden for conviction in our legal system.
I wasn’t “happy” about the fact that either person walked away from those charges, but at the same time I was happy that our legal system erred on the right side.
It wouldn’t have the context of a lawful order to stand down but I prefaced my statement accurately. He was asked not to pursue. He chose to ignore that request and instead acted of his own accord and thus bypassing the very police whom he called. I’ve been where Zimmerman was except I’ve actually witnessed crimes in progress. At no time did I confront the criminal. Some got caught, some got away. All of them lived. Everybody has a Walter Mitty side to them. Zimmerman acted it out.
No, it’s not just to protect the people who are calling. It’s to protect everybody within shooting distance. That includes the person calling, the person they’re involved with, innocent by-standers, and the police who are responding.
The case against Zimmerman is negligence through poor judgement.
Grand juries generally get to look at a huge amount of evidence not admissible in a proper trial and they get to decide if it is relevant or not.