The facts behind the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida continue to slowly emerge. I have previously stated that I view critical facts as murky for a prosecution — even though I believe that there was sufficient evidence to arrest George Zimmerman at the scene. While we have still not seen some of the forensic evidence, a new report indicates that police may have based their initial decisions in part on the statement of a witness. We have been discussing the maddening gap in witness testimony at the critical moment of the confrontation. Now a new report suggests that there may have been a witness to the struggle and that witness reportedly told police that it was Martin who was on top of Zimmerman before the fatal shot was fired.
FOX 35 in Orlando says that it has spoken to the witness. The witness reportedly said that
“The guy on the bottom who had a red sweater on was yelling to me: ‘help, help…and I told him to stop and I was calling 911.” Martin was wearing a hoodie that night and Zimmerman was wearing a red shirt or sweater. A friend of Zimmerman has also come forward to say that Zimmerman looked like a mess after the fight and that he recognized Zimmerman as the voice on the 911 call asking people to help him.
An obvious defense case is emerging for a classic self-defense claim. Zimmerman on the 911 tape admits to have shadowed Martin but says it was Martin who was checking him out and moving toward him a threatening fashion. Zimmerman claims that he was attacked when he was returning to his SUV. Police and counsel reported that Zimmerman had cuts on his face and head and appeared to have been in a struggle. Zimmerman was lawfully carrying a handgun was allowed to use the weapon if he was in reasonable fear of serious bodily injury or death. This includes the possible use of the gun in a struggle of control of the weapon.
While the case has been treated as racially motivated, the Zimmerman family has strongly denied such a motivation — noting that he is a hispanic with many African-American friends. Frankly, Zimmerman does closely resemble an alternative profile — that of a defendant in “Castle Doctrine” or “Stand Your Ground” cases. In these controversies, we often see people who are obsessed with crime and in some cases inclined to use lethal force. That does not mean that race did not play a role here. However, it is possible that Zimmerman was motivated by his well-documented obsession with crime as opposed to race. While I understand the sensitivity to the race issue and have my own suspicions concerning the role of race, I believe it is premature to label this a racially motivated crime without more evidence of such a motive. None of this means that Zimmerman should not be charged, but rather than there remain murky elements to the case. We simply need to know more about such motivations. In terms of the state law, we also need more information (particularly forensic evidence) to better gauge the chances of a conviction in the case. I still find the fact that Zimmerman was armed and outweighed Martin to be the most significant. However, this case is still in its earliest stage in terms of development of the evidence and witnesses. Among other things, if a charge is brought, such evidence could push prosecutors toward a manslaughter claim with a lower likely sentence than second or first degree murder. Even with manslaughter, the prosecutors would have to establish the element beyond a reasonable doubt, including the claim of self-defense. Of course, the mere fact that Martin may have gotten the better of Zimmerman in dominating fight at one point does not mean that Zimmerman was not the original aggressor. It will depend on the full range of witness testimony and, again, the missing forensic evidence.
I was asked last week to sign an online petition demanding the prosecution of Zimmerman. As I have noted, I believe that there is sufficient evidence for an indictment. However, I have never support such public campaigns for indictments. I do not believe in prosecution by plebiscite. Whether there are 100 or 100,000 people demanding an indictment, a prosecutor should not be influenced by such popular outcries. We saw how distortive and corrupting such campaigns can be on prosecutors like Michael Nifong. Prosecutors must based their decisions on the weight of the evidence not the weight of public opinion. Regardless of my views about a possible indictment, I would not want a prosecutor influenced by any petition supporting those views. There is a line between the visceral and the legal and such petitions fall on the wrong side of that line.
Source: Daily Mail
shano,
Zimmerman had all the authority he needed to “police” his neighborhood. He was doing what good neighbors do when they have been the subject of numerous burglaries. He watched for and reported suspicious activity.
According to the police report, Martin engaged Zimmerman, not the other way around. However, even if Zimmerman engaged Martin to ask why he was in the neighborhood, he would have done nothing wrong.
PJ,
As shano said, Zimmerman “had no authority to police this neighborhood.” He had no business pursuing Martin. His self-appointed job was “to watch”, but he chose to do more than simply “watch” and someone is dead. Zimmerman was a cop “wanna-be” and overstepped. We’ll see how it all turns out in the end.
PJ, and Zimmerman had no authority to police this neighborhood.
None at all.
idealist: Prescott. The reddest county in this red state, it used to be the territorial capitol. McCain/Palin made their concession speech here to a huge crowd in 2008. The Goldwater family had a department store here…
I would love to live in “liberal” Tucson
“The only thing that matters on Feb. 26 is George Zimmerman disobeyed the police and got out of his car and pursued and stalked Trayvon Martin to cause this fatal encounter,” said the Martin family lawyer.
It’s too bad that the “crux” of the case isn’t based on facts.
Martin did not disobey the police. The person he was on the phone with was not a police officer. In fact, it wasn’t even a 911 operator. Further, the call taker did not tell Zimmerman not to follow the suspicious person. The call taker asked Zimmerman if he was following, When Zimmerman said that he was, the call taker said “We don’t need you to do that”. When combined with the fact that the call taker had no authority to control Zimmerman’s actions, it’s kind of ludicrous to claim that Zimmerman disobeyed anybody.
The crux of it, IMHO:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0327/Does-police-incident-report-upend-Trayvon-Martin-case
Crump added that the most important evidence in the case is the 911 tape, which reveals that Zimmerman did not listen when an operator told him he did not need to get out of his car and pursue a hooded teen he deemed suspicious.
“The only thing that matters on Feb. 26 is George Zimmerman disobeyed the police and got out of his car and pursued and stalked Trayvon Martin to cause this fatal encounter,” said the Martin family lawyer.
Shano,
I got a penpal in Tucson who is on the same wavelength. Where are you suffering at?
The “Trayvon Martin had it coming” narrative
Black men are treated as menaces every day. At 17, Trayvon may have done what most of us know we can’t: Confront it
By Kai Wright, Colorlines.com
Tuesday, Mar 27, 2012
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/27/the_trayvon_martin_had_it_coming_narrative/
Excerpt:
If Zimmerman and the cops are to be believed, Martin did what so many of us know we can’t. Like when someone asks if it’s safe in your neighborhood, and you want to reply, sure, expect for the white women we keep as sex slaves. Or when the school counselor says your kid has an anger problem and special needs. Or when the cop tells you to quit loitering on your own damn block. You got a problem? Well, now you do.
That was Trayvon Martin’s approach. Hey, he was just a kid. He hadn’t learned the subtle art of disarming the racism that can come flying at you when you’re walking home from the store. The fact that the racism in this instance came flying from a Latino man isn’t relevant. Martin’s killer could’ve been black and it wouldn’t change the circumstances. All of us live in a country in which black men are defined as pariahs. All of us consume that message in ways both overt and implicit and, on some level, far too many of us use it to excuse the brutality we can see all around us.
Like I said, Trayvon Martin was marked for death already, statistically at least. As a black infant, he was more than twice as likely to die as his white peers. In his teens, he was at least one and a half times as likely to meet an early death as his white peers. Homicide is the leading cause of death for black men his age, and comes at a rate many times every other racial or ethnic group. If he had reached his 20s, he had a 1 in 8 chance of going to prison, because that empty bag of marijuana he had at school would have meant something very different for him than it does for the middle class white kids who use drugs at higher rates. He’d have gone on to live in a country in which nearly 4 in 10 black children live in poverty, in which 1 in 4 black households lack food security.
The fact is the U.S. often seems like it’s built to kill black people. This is not to say racism is equally lethal today as it was even a single generation ago. But it is to say that the same set of deeply ingrained ideas about what black people have coming to us justified the brutality of yesterday and today alike. And one particular manifestation of those ideas routinely leads to the early death of men like Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell and Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin.
Of course, this violent manifestation of white supremacy is not visited upon black male bodies alone. Indeed, as Tea Party candidates like Nevada’s Sharron Angle reminded us in the past election cycle, we must very much begin to see Latinos in the same way—lurking, dangerous, illegal. Fear and loathe them. If you encounter them on a dark street be ready to go to arms. And so Latino men have a lengthening gruesome roll call, too.
Surely all these people have done something to bring the murder, the poverty, the brutality down upon themselves! That’s America’s unique twist on systemic oppression. We cage people, then call them animals. We starve people, then jibe them for being malnourished. We write laws that allow people to gun down unarmed children and then make the child the aggressor. And so now Trayvon Martin will be all manner of sinner—a pothead, a dropout, a ne’er-do-well with a temper problem who had it coming. But what he will indisputably be is dead, like too many before him and surely many after him. He had it coming, as a black man in America.
Want to know why the state of Arizona is so wacky, unjust and depressing?
ALEC rules all our politicians here.
Oro Lee,
“Has it been argued that Martin was simply standing his ground?”
Don’t know. But it doesn’t work too well in Florida if you don’t get your gun out first—–as displayed here and previously.
But it seems a very good point. What gave Z. the right to take the law’s expanded powers in his hands? Just because he was armed and drew first.
Screwed up logic.
Good stuff OL
Trayvon Martin’s Family Vows To Keep Fighting Amid ‘Character Assaults,’ Official Leaks
By Trymaine Lee
Posted: 03/27/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/27/trayvon-martin-family_n_1381564.html
Excerpt:
Benjamin Crump, a family lawyer, would ask why the police ran a background check and a drug and alcohol test on Martin but not Zimmerman.
He’d ask why Zimmerman was allowed to go home with the same clothing he wore when he killed Martin, essentially allowing possible evidence to walk away with him. He’d ask why it took three days for authorities to release Martin’s body to his family.
“This family wants to have faith in the system,” Crump would say, faith that the family is slowly losing.
“This includes the possible use of the gun in a struggle of control of the weapon.”
So lemme get this straight…
I spot a Random Guy acting “suspiciously”.
I walk up to RG and demand that he explain his behaviour.
RG presumably tells me to mind my own effing business.
I pull out a gun and wave it in his face.
RG pegs me as a dangerous nutcase and tries to grab my gun.
At this point…SYG law allows me to kill RG because I’m afraid he might shoot me with MY gun as a result of MY provocation??
SERIOUSLY?!?
Fact Sheet: ALEC, the NRA, the Castle Doctrine and Trayvon Martin
Connecting the Dots Between ALEC, Wal-Mart, the NRA, and the Florida Law Cited By Some to Immunize Trayvon Martin’s Killer
Nick Surgey
3/23/12
http://www.commonblog.com/2012/03/23/fact-sheet-alec-the-nra-the-castle-doctrine-and-trayvon-martin/
(Prepared by Lisa Graves, Center for Media and Democracy, and Nick Surgey, Common Cause)
Excerpt:
* Early on the evening of February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, 17, an African-American, in a gated community in Sanford, Fla. Trayvon, whose body was not identified until days later, was walking home after buying Skittles and tea. Zimmerman claimed the shooting was in self-defense. Citing a recent Florida statute known as the “shoot first” law or “Castle Doctrine,” police did not charge Zimmerman and did not seize the gun used to kill Trayvon.
* That Florida law became the template for “model” legislation endorsed and promoted nationally by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a non-profit entity funded by major corporations and interest groups including Koch Industries and the National Rifle Association (NRA). The bill expanded the long-standing right of self-defense by extending criminal and civil immunity to shooters who feel threatened by another, creating a statutory “right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force. . .”
* ALEC has an annual budget of approximately $7 million and claims that hundreds of its model bills become law each year. It hides its inner workings, including the fact that its model bills often are drafted and always are pre-approved by corporations and lobbyists. ALEC calls itself the nation’s largest group of state legislators, but 98% of its funding comes from corporations and sources other than dues from elected officials.
* In August 2005, in Grapevine, Tex., NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer asked legislators and lobbyists at a closed-door meeting of ALEC’s “Criminal Justice Task Force” to adopt the Florida “Castle Doctrine” bill as an ALEC model bill. The NRA said her pitch “was well received,” and the bill was approved “unanimously.”(1)
* At that time, ALEC’s public-private Criminal Justice Task Force was co-chaired by Wal-Mart(2)–the nation’s largest seller of guns and ammunition.(3) ALEC’s staffer for the task force was Chris Oswald a former “State Liaison” for the NRA.
* Corporate representatives and state legislators on ALEC Task Forces have equal votes on proposed model legislation,(4) so the Florida law was ratified by Wal-Mart and its 2005 public sector co-chair, Texas Rep. Ray Allen, along with other state legislators and corporate lobbyists. It was endorsed by a representative of the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation, according to minutes of the meeting issued by ALEC.(5)
* In September 2005, that bill was adopted by ALEC’s National Board of Directors, which has a procedure to allow model bills to be approved if there is no objection. The public sector portion of the board was chaired by Georgia state Rep. Earl Ehrhart; the corporate board included Koch Industries, Altria (parent of Philip Morris), Coors, Bell South, and Verizon. (ALEC says its corporate board does not vote. Corporations and elected officials have an equal vote in the task forces, where model bills are adopted, however.)
* At the next ALEC Criminal Justice Task Force meeting, in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, in 2006, the NRA’s representative to ALEC, Tara Mica, reported on the “continued success” in securing passage of ALEC’s “Castle Doctrine” bill in other states.(6)
* In 2007, an ALEC “Legislative Report Card,” boasted that the ALEC/NRA Castle Doctrine bill had been introduced or passed in numerous states.(7) ALEC also highlighted ALEC legislators who had introduced versions of the model bill, including Texas state Sen. Jeff Wentworth and Rep. Joe Driver.(8)
* To date, more than two dozen states have adopted Castle Doctrine bills with ALEC/ NRA DNA.(9) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, an ALEC alum, signed into law an NRA-backed bill with some provisions similar to the ALEC bill in 2011. Similar bills are pending in other states.
* The Florida bill that became the ALEC model was signed on April 26, 2005 by Gov. Jeb Bush, with the NRA’s lobbyist, Marion Hammer, standing alongside.(10)
* NRA President Wayne LaPierre said NRA lobbyist and former president Hammer “conceived” of the Florida bill and lobbied it into law. (11) She ridiculed opponents of the bill, calling them hysterical, and helped the bill’s co-sponsors, Florida state Sen. Durell Peaden (R-Crestview) and Rep. Dennis Baxley (R-Ocala), get it passed.
I’ve been extremely occupied and am woefully behind the curve on may items, so if this thought is redundant, please forgive me.
Has it been argued that Martin was simply standing his ground?
Yesterday I was listening to Zimmermans attorney speak…. Apparently he is either deficient in skills, misspoke or lacks understanding in the law of “self defense ” apparently at this time he is not going to rely upon the “stand your ground” but the doctrine of self defense….. OK… Really now….. There ain’t no difference……they are one and the same….. The statue just expands the ability…..
Mike Spindell1, March 27, 2012 at 12:33 am
GWLawGrad99,
You may be as you claim a lawyer, but you know nothing about criminal law it seems, except the sleazy kind.
————————————————
Naw, naw. Lawyer, practicing??? Naw.
He’s just a jerk-off staffer for some bigot senator. There’s lots of them, and with the right family name, the right religion, the right connections you can get a nice place inside the Beltway.
Or you can be a wannabe, who’s still a shit out in the nowhere, wanting a little adventure in his dull dreary life..
Having had my morning constitutional, I bid goodbye to Mr. Gräddfil, Esq.
Gräddfil, it the creamed lane exclusively reserved for folks with connnections. Matches perhaps the sleazy slinker here.
PS I mean no disrespect to religions, they can’t help being invented.
I just dislike those people who pretend to be guided by them, and only use them as social makeup and a treasure trove of sayings useful in besmirching others.
ANON
Could you offer a bit of proof in your mud-slinging, or were you just jerking off yourself.
Wikipedia says. —–A bigot is a prejudiced person who is intolerant of any opinions differing from their own or intolerant of people of different political views, ethnicity, race, class, …
So give us an example. If not, go shove your head back up your ass, where it usually resides. It smells terriible when you pull it out.
PS Guess you liked my little nomination of you in my list of power people.
Some have powers they don’t suspect, like you.
DEDICATED TO AN ADMIRER, CHER ANON
Newly awakened I check the mail to see what the busy USAers have done whilst I slept.
Voilá, I have been favored by the attentions of one of my favo assholes, if one can have favorites in that category.
No matter what he says, if he had approved I would be worried. All is shit, he says.
Then all is OK in my heart.
GWlawgrad. glad youre proud of your pedigree but pedigree doesn’t mean that you are a good, bad, smar tor dumb just as Mr. Martin;s alleged background does not mean he should have been shot.
Mr. Martin is not here to speak for himself, the dirt on him is being spread to make it look like Mr. Zimmerman had cause to suspect Martin of spurious reasons for his being in a hoodie and eating skittles.
Funny you leeched onto my comment but none of the others whose sentiments I have echoed.
The background on neither is relevant unless Zimmerman had a history of calling the police on a lot of people just being in the neighborhood, or that he was not a member of a recognized watch group, if he was intoxicated that night (since police never took tests), used a racial slur in reference to Martin, had a preconseption, obsession, history of findine blackmen, or men in hoodies “suspicious” merely because of their color or clothing.http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/25/10854229-witness-zimmerman-never-tried-to-help-trayvon-martin
(also used http://abcnews.go.com/US/trayvon-martin-shooter-teenager-gun/story?id=16000239&page=2
@leejcaroll
“Let’s say Mr. Martin did get suspended, he did write graffiti, smoked weed, and heck, stole jewelry. Was he doing it that day? How would Zimmerman know of this ‘alleged history”? No excuse for Zimmerman not charged. Murder is murder whether the victim is a good white kid with no issues whatsoever in his background, a white punk who smokes, etc or an african american, asian, (pick your ethnicity).”
It means that, contrary to the image previously being built by the media, Martin might not have been such a perfect angel. That doesn’t mean he was doing anything wrong that night, but it at least lends some credibility to the possibility that he threw the first punch in accordance with Zimmerman’s story.
Strange how you didn’t comment on all the background information that was being dug up on Zimmerman to prove his guilt, but you latched on to this like a leech.
GWLawGrad99,
You may be as you claim a lawyer, but you know nothing about criminal law it seems, except the sleazy kind. Zimmerman’s background was relevant because he had just shot a teen for being suspiciously Black. The police, despite credible evidence to the contrary did not question Zimmerman at headquarters and in fact just blandly accepted his statement as true. If all the evidence were the same except a switch in races the “Black Zimmerman” would have been placed in custody, photographed and put through intensive interrogation. If you can’t see this then your legal education has gone for naught where ethics are concerned. The rush to demonize Martin is because people like you eat it up, so that you don’t have to see the truth of the matter.