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Zimmerman Not Guilty


Lawful Metal

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I agree.  If you are not willing to put yourself into a situation if you're unarmed then you shouldn't put yourself into that situation because you are armed.  That's what I think is fucked up about Zimmerman from the start of the situation.  The rest of it is something we can't really begin to know but I think most people will agree that Zimmerman was in the wrong for his role in starting the altercation.  The question I raised about if you can be in danger even when you have a weapon shows how dumb they were for going after murder versus manslaughter from the start.  

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Guest The Magnificent 7

Some good discussion, glad to see it.

One thing I want to mention, and it is important despite some saying that it is splitting hairs, is that the police did not instruct or order Zimmerman to not do anything.  The transcript of the 911 call is freely available, as is the 911 operator's testimony. 

 

What the operator said verbatim is, "You don't have to do that." 

 

That is not an order, nor even if it was does it have any legal weight at all as Cristobal said.

 

Now you may say that the verbiage is not important.  But the testimony says that the operator chose those words carefully.

 

He said it is policy to not give specific instructions for people calling 911 because of the fear of liability reasons.  Basically, he wasn't more forceful in his request because they don't want to get sued. 

 

 

“How come you didn’t … say ‘don’t follow'?” the prosecutor asked him.

Noffke explained that for legal reasons, 911 operators may not give such orders. “We’re directly liable if we give a direct order,” he said. “We always try to give general basic … not commands, just suggestions.”

 

No matter your position on this trial, people need to stop using reductivist language like "stalk" (do you generally call 911 when you stalk someone with the intent to kill?  Stalking conjures up images of Jason Voorhees) or police "ordered" him to cease.  They just aren't true.

 

Again, I think he fucked up and should have stayed in the vehicle, but these legal issues matter.  Until a punch was thrown there was no crime by anyone.

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Those things seem to get lost in all of this. People paint this picture of Zimmerman stalking Martin because he was black, calling 911 and ignoring direct orders from the police to stay away, and then murdering Martin in cold blood. It's incredibly oversimplifying the scenario, embellishing, and ignoring the few facts that we have.

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Those things seem to get lost in all of this. People paint this picture of Zimmerman stalking Martin because he was black, calling 911 and ignoring direct orders from the police to stay away, and then murdering Martin in cold blood. It's incredibly oversimplifying the scenario, embellishing, and ignoring the few facts that we have.

 

Mind you, I'm pretty comfortable believing that what actually happened was that Zimmerman stalked Martin because he was black, called 911, ignored suggestions from the people he called to stay away, provoked a confrontation, then murdered Martin when that confrontation didn't go well for him.

 

You can quibble with the word "murder" if you want, but this version doesn't contradict or ignore any facts, and fits the scenario, and the people involved, far better than the defense team's story.

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It is astonishing that the defense apparently proved that Zimmerman felt threatened by a "suspicious character" but somehow the prosecution failed to prove that Martin also felt threatened by this mysterious person who had been shadowing him the entire walk back to his father's house.

 

Eh, I felt they did prove it. the prosecution had some curious moments but they proved at least enough to secure a manslaughter. I'm not one of these people who can sit back and say "Don't blame the jury!"

 

The jury totally screwed this up. You do not have to be a professor of law to come back with a manslaughter conviction in this case. I would go into great detail again but I am kind of burnt out. In my view there was more than enough evidence presented...

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Eh, I felt they did prove it. the prosecution had some curious moments but they proved at least enough to secure a manslaughter. I'm not one of these people who can sit back and say "Don't blame the jury!"

 

The jury totally screwed this up. You do not have to be a professor of law to come back with a manslaughter conviction in this case. I would go into great detail again but I am kind of burnt out. In my view there was more than enough evidence presented...

 

Actually, it sounded a lot like a professor of law would have come back with a not guilty verdict, not a manslaughter conviction since an acquittal was predicted by legal experts such as ABC law guy Dan Abrams and actual Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, based on the evidence.

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Actually, it sounded a lot like a professor of law would have come back with a not guilty verdict, not a manslaughter conviction since an acquittal was predicted by legal experts such as ABC law guy Dan Abrams and actual Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, based on the evidence.

 

I predicted it as well but more because juries do not understand what "reasonable doubt" is especially in high profile cases where experts from both sides will be called in with differing opinions and the like. A lot of resources are used in these high profile cases that you just do not see in the typical murder case. Reasonable doubt is not the 1/1,000,000 chance.

 

I saw many experts predict a manslaughter conviction as a "compromise" from the jury. I'd say manslaughter was maybe 50/50 but definitely leaning towards not.

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A few people I know are outraged that Zimmerman is now going to have to essentially live out his life in hiding. I swear these people live on a different planet than me that they are surprised by that. A Cubs fan had to go into hiding over a fucking foul ball. 

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I predicted it as well but more because juries do not understand what "reasonable doubt" is especially in high profile cases where experts from both sides will be called in with differing opinions and the like. A lot of resources are used in these high profile cases that you just do not see in the typical murder case. Reasonable doubt is not the 1/1,000,000 chance.

 

I saw many experts predict a manslaughter conviction as a "compromise" from the jury. I'd say manslaughter was maybe 50/50 but definitely leaning towards not.

 

Based on what I know of the evidence, a manslaughter conviction would basically be the jury saying that they felt they had to convict him of something because his deed should not go unpunished.  I can understand why a jury would reach a "compromise" like that, but the juror who was interviewed (the one who sounded like she wishes she could be as smart as Sarah Palin) seemed like she would have never gone along with that.

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A few people I know are outraged that Zimmerman is now going to have to essentially live out his life in hiding. I swear these people live on a different planet than me that they are surprised by that. A Cubs fan had to go into hiding over a fucking foul ball. 

 

I bet they are outraged at a lot of things.

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SYG had no bearing in the case. Defense declined the SYG pre-trial hearing which if found that it fell under it the case wouldn't have gone to trial. They went with standard self defense. It's a nice picture with some words, the words are just incorrect.

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Whether or not the SYG law had anything to do with the case kind of misses the point of the picture, I think. The point is that it appears people are being treated differently under the same legal system on the basis of race/class. I don't know enough to say if that applies in these particular cases, or if the facts in the image are totally accurate (I agree it's incorrect about Zimmerman invoking the SYG law, but changing that to "Zimmerman claimed self-defense" doesn't really change the point), but I do think that's a real problem with the system.

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I thought that the issue with the McDonald case was that the person who ended up dying wasn't the individual who actually initiated the confrontation?  McDonald did not kill the person who injured her with the bottle; she killed one of the other group members who was not deemed to be a threat.

 

And Alexander's case did not pass the Duty To Retreat litmus test for self-defense.  She fired a weapon even when she had the opportunity to retreat and she was facing charges of Aggravated Assault which were substantially easier to prove than Murder 2 or Manslaughter.  The fact that she fired a warning shot instead of a killing shot is prima facea evidence that deadly force was not necessarily required to fend off her attacker.

 

She also didn't call the cops following the incident.  Prima facea evidence that she was not in fear for her life after the confrontation, unlike Zimmerman who maitained that he feared for his life during the struggle.  I'm not saying that her abusive spouse didn't deserve to get what was coming to him for threatening his then-pregnant wife, but that's the difference between justice and revenge, I guess.  I suppose it is a good thing that I am not a judge.

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Guest The Magnificent 7

http://rochester.ynn.com/content/top_stories/490926/jury-finds-roderick-scott-not-guilty/

 

I'm only posting this because folks are posting somewhat "comparable" cases in an effort to show (some have outright said it) that if Zimmerman were black and Martin were white, Zimmerman would be doing a life sentence, etc.  In case you can't tell by the story, Roderick Scott is black and Chris Cervini was white. 

 

This shouldn't be a point scoring exercise to hang racism on someone because in another case something else happened.  Each case should be decided on its own merits. 

 

Facts in each individual case are important.

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