ABC News has been given a photograph that might make the difference between life in prison and a walk. For weeks, we have been discussing the case and the application of the Stand Your Ground law. As discussed earlier, I think the case was over-charged and I remain doubtful of a conviction. This picture will likely be the single most important piece of evidence in the case. It shows Zimmerman with significant blood on the back of his head — an image that supports accounts from the scene and will be used to corroborate Zimmerman’s account of a struggle with Trayvon Martin where he feared serious bodily injury. [UPDATE: Zimmerman granted bond].
Unlike the photos of Zimmerman at the police station, this photo was taken a few minutes after the fight. Zimmerman’s shaved head could prove Godsend for Zimmerman. Had he had longer hair, the injury would have not appeared so stark.
The photo shows both cuts and a contusion — injuries that would normally be defined as serious bodily injury by many courts in torts cases where head injuries are treated as inherently potentially serious. The original police report said that he was bleeding from the nose and head and that his clothes looked like he had been in a fight. Zimmerman claims that it was Martin who jumped him, punched him, and pounded his head on to the concrete sidewalk.
The prosecutors can still argue that they do not contest the fight but that Zimmerman started it. However, with this photo, the charge of second-degree murder appears even more excessive and undermines Special Prosecutor Angela Corey’s claim that she was not affected by the political pressure to charge Zimmerman. I can understand a manslaughter charge, even with the photo, but no reasonable prosecutor would consider the second-degree murder charge as based on this evidence. Corey clearly must have seen this photo and the reports before her charging of Zimmerman.
The photo should also assist Zimmerman in his efforts to get bail.
Zimmerman, 28, is still being held on charges of second-degree murder of Martin, 17. In my view, a denial of bail would be an abuse and unwarranted given the fact that Zimmerman cooperated at the scene and voluntarily turned himself in.
Source: ABC
Something telling to me ( and this may be from an emotional standpoint) is Zimmerman’s comment to the dispatcher ‘they always get away’.
Who is ‘they’?
It REALLY sounds to me as though Zimmerman already had it in his head that Trayvon was a bad guy.
And we keep speaking in circles about ‘benefit of doubt’ and ‘innocent until proven guilty’ when it comes to Zimmerman.. But where was this for Trayvon?
From the get go, Zimmerman had him pegged as a suspicious looking person who appears to be on drugs.. And what was he doing? Just walking home looking at houses on his way while on the phone to his girlfriend.
I’m sorry, but I smell a rat! A huge rat!
Oh Anon you porculating rogue you, how you express affection and intimacy, I just can’t STAND IT, ouch ouch!! (No, I mean help help — but nobody will help me!)
“That was directed to threadjacker, blowhard, and pixel spiller Malisha” — and to think that I was busy threadjacking, blowharding and pixelspilling when you called me a “silly bunt” so that I didn’t respond on time — I mean, what can I say?
OK, I’ll answer that. Here’s what I can say:
Listen here, you Thurmombulated rivonuclear-deposed petumbrate, if you don’t stop picking on me I’m going to take you off my Christmas card list!
And you better watch OUT: Mike Spindell and Rafflaw and Mespo and Idealist and some other guys are always ready to stand up and protect me and I can jack all the threads I want, so there!
(And I bought me a new hoodie just this morning, nah nah nah nah nah nah; and I’m gonna come to your neighborhood some evening at 7 pm and walk all around looking suspicious and you won’t even be allowed to stand your ground at me!)
Hey Elaine M, can you put up “I FEEL GOOD” by James Brown? Or maybe “Pappa don’t ‘low no trash”?
That’s really all I’m saying too, Mike.
This would have to go through the ringer before it could ever hold up. I suspect that it will, and may not be used as evidence at all. The potential for a civilian to tamper with it is far, far too great.
And again, it does not say that Zimmerman did not sustain any injuries, it just seems rather dubious to put a great deal of weight into some random bystander’s point and shoot.
And like I said, I can’t imagine Zimmerman lying about sustaining any injuries, it would be FAR too easy to prove otherwise. So I’m going to assume that he had some sort of abrasions.. Unless police and paramedics are lying, which is highly unlikely.
What he can do is fabricate the extent of his injuries.. And this photo doesn’t help much because it’s hard to say whether his injuries are minor/ superficial or quite serious.
What I don’t understand is why would a paramedic be declined if he was beaten to near death ( or as he says ‘almost unconscious’)?
I would imagine that those types of injuries would be taken very seriously and he’d be whisked off in an ambulance.
But hey, who knows how a person acts after they have just shot a person to death?
Anon, I agreed with you that the prosecutor did not earn any gold stars at the bail hearing; I do not agree with you about the rest of your conclusions, especially about the disdain you expressed for the commentators on this blog. In my opinion, from just the evidence that has already BEEN revealed such as the initial call from Zimmerman to the cops and the police report filed by Ayala, and the videotaped interview of the school-teacher who was looking out her window, from that ALONE, it appeared pretty obvious to me that (a) Zimmerman should have been charged with at least manslaughter and probably second-degree murder the night of the incident; and even more importantly, (b) evidence should have been gathered starting at about 7 pm and gathered as if Monk and Columbo and the Mentalist and the leader of the pack in Criminal Minds were ALL ON THE SCENE RIGHT THERE. I believe that if the prosecution were to try hard even at this late stage with all the possibilities of mess up because of poor police work, they would nail Zimmerman, and probably for Second Degree. What I am saying in my post responding to your description (whether it was yours or came from the news media you read) of the prosecution’s less than stellar performance at the bail hearing was this: MAYBE they are trying to throw the case to protect their own department. MAYBE NOT. At this point, who knows. But it is a distinct possibility.
Well, for my own dignity, I hope that law enforcement clears people from the scene before my bloodied head or dead body is photographed by strangers.
Why on earth would Zimmerman bother to follow a suspicious person who ‘looks as though he’s on drugs’. Call me an idiot, but suspicious people on drugs are pretty much to be avoided… That is, unless I know I have a gun.
It’s nice to know that a gun wielding person can follow me, approach me, and if I’m scared out of my wits and make a move, POW.. I’m dead.
What a scary world we live in.
@Rebecca: Assume he is sitting on something. Like a stool, bench, or chair. The photographer is standing. The camera is either magically hovering on its own, or perhaps it is being held by the photographer.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find this photo to be really strange?
It’s not that I doubt that he sustained injuries.. I can’t imagine him lying about that considering that there was a paramedic and police on the scene…
I just find the angle strange. It’s as if the photographer was standing right above the back of Zimmerman’s head, just hovering.
Then there’s the question of how he obtained them. I mean, I’m no CSI and what little I know can be fit into a thimble, but do they really allow random civilians to just hang about a crime scene and take snapshots?
The flash on the camera is rather brilliant.. And the zoom is pretty damn good. I guess I don’t understand why a civilian has a pretty clear shot of Zimmerman’s head when the authorities apparently do not.
Did the police on the scene take pics of his head? Surely they did, right?
We aren’t relying on photos taken by bystanders to be classed as ‘evidence’, are we? I always thought these types of things are dismissed in a court of law. I could be wrong.. Someone help me out.
I also fail to understand how these pictures exonerate Zimmerman? At the very least, they show that a scuffle broke out.. But they certainly do not portray him as a ‘victim’. It’s still not clear who initiated the altercation, and these pictures don’t make that aspect any clearer.
Rebecca,
I think your impressions of the photo are about right.
When I expanded the photo, it pixelated rapidly, so there is not a lot more detail in the image sent over the internet.
But there is textured green around the head. It appears that the injured person is bent over with the photographer holding the camera over the back of the head, and pointing down toward grass covered ground.
To me, it does not appear that this is a photo made by a person from a distance that caught the head of a person standing or walking. To me it appears that the person with the injury bent over to give the photographer a clear shot of the scalp and injury.
It does not occur to me that there are any negative implications to be drawn from the fact that the pose suggest that the photo was taken intentionally to document the injury.
Even if this were nothing more that an accident on a bicycle, the person might want such a photo for insurance purposes.
As I have mentioned before, I am more curious about the washed out skin tones and the red which is presumably blood. The washed out skin tones are reasonably explained by over exposure from mis adjusted flash. But, would that kind of over exposure account for the red blood? I personally can’t help but wonder if there was some kind of editing performed on the photo.
At this point I want to state clearly, I don’t know what if anything was done to the photo. But I think it is a reasonable question.
@malisha
“Your point is well taken that the prosecution bungled the bail hearing.”
That’s not my point. I am truly clueless.
I was just pointing out what others, not commenting at this blog, think, ranging from liberal defense attorney bloggers to conservatives to the independent press many of whom seem to think the prosecution bungled the bail hearing, and radically overcharged Zimmerman.
If I have a point it is my constant surprise how the politically correct at this blog constant form up lynch mobs long before the evidence is in, only to walk away later wiping the egg from their face.
@ Anon:
Your point is well taken that the prosecution bungled the bail hearing. But I think this is a very important point. One of any number of things can be happening, but what comes to mind to me at first is the following:
(a) Maybe the prosecution appointed by the Governor needed to (i) draw a charge significant enough to quell those very obvious charges of police and prosecutor corruption, and recover from the obvious racist issues that were pretty obvious and visible; AND at the same time (ii) provide for a proceeding where the prosecution could not possibly win, so they could say, “SEE, we TRIED, and we coudln’t convict, so that means that what was initially done was NOT CORRUPT but was well-reasoned and appropriate and was neither racist nor unreasonable. Yes, I am saying that the prosecution might be deliberately messing up so that the acquittal can absolve THEM (other players but the same prosecutor’s office, in the end) of wrongdoing. Remember, the feds are still investigating. So if the prosecution comes in gangbusters (faked and pre-arranged) and falls on its face, the feds have no grounds to say the actions of 2/26/2012 were a criminal deprivation of constitutional rights under color of state law. Could be that people are being smarter than we give them credit for.
(b) Maybe the prosecution is deliberately letting Zimmerman get a few “leg up” decisions pre-trial so no “error” appears later and they mean to really nail Zimmerman for what he has done, but they also want to be in control of much of the spin before the show starts. Since Zimmerman could be released no matter WHAT bail was ordered (millions could be raised overnight by his gun-toting corporate sponsors), leaving it low enough to be respectable and not letting the prosecution bomb at the first public hearing could be very good strategy while they design the kill. That’s what I would be doing if I were not corrupt and I were prosecuting this case, anyway. Remember, you hold the feet to the fire of the side you’re going to support in the end, for it protects against appeal. And if Zimmerman is convicted of ANYTHING he doesn’t want to agree to (and even if he pleads, he will appeal and then file a habeas corpus claiming his plea was coerced because he was so afraid of being murdered by an unruly mob), the appeals will be saying he was discriminated against, disadvantaged, deprived of due process, portrayed as satan, prejudiced, shmejudiced, orange-juiced and thrown from a great height. I mean it will be “oh poor me, my head my head, oooooooh woooooooh help help help” from now until the end of time or until he is released and elected governor, whichever comes first.
There are probably a hundred other possibilities. Let’s watch the career paths of all those prosecutor personnel involved in this and that may help us figure out what the post mortem will be.
That was directed to threadjacker, blowhard, and pixel spiller Malisha.
Whatever, most of your rambling, judgmental, longwinded diatribes here marks you as a silly bunt too.
@Malisha: I agree with the intent; however, ABC has her on tape saying what she said, to Martin’s attorney with her mother present. I have heard that tape. Also, she was interviewed by the prosecutors for several hours prior to them bringing charges against Zimmerman.
I think she is their witness for 2nd degree murder, that what she heard, an exchange between Trayvon and an aggressive Zimmerman, is THE damning evidence against Zimmerman for his lie about how the altercation started. I do not believe the charge of 2nd Degree murder would have been brought without it.
The fact that she was on the phone is not in dispute; nor is the timing (when the call log of his cellphone provider showed their call disconnected, and the shot timing based on the recording of a neighbor’s 911 call on the incident).
I do not think any of that is in dispute. As I said before, she can testify to what she heard, and I believe she told the prosecutors exactly what she told ABC News, and she will repeat it on the stand.
I do not know if they have Trayvon’s cell phone or not: If it is damaged and they can show that damage would have resulted in the disconnect, I think that adds plausibility to the notion that Zimmerman attacked Trayvon, perhaps knocking the phone out of his hand. People do not throw their cell phones to the ground in order to fight, and people do not start an attack on another person (if Trayvon had jumped Zimmerman) with a cell phone in their hand. Trayvon had a phone in his hand right up until the altercation began. It makes no sense that he began the fight.
@ Bigfatmike: Well, let me put out a few first drafts for coined cursewords:
Fluker — someone who tries to be a bigshot (and a person not suffering from erectile dysfunction) but who actually comes off as only a person who can kill a fish once it’s hooked, reeled in, and thrown on deck
Mother-Fluker — someone who blames all of society’s problems on one or another bad mother (This used to be called the “Hitler’s Mother Syndrome”)
Prussy — a man who is cowardly but hides behind a collection of sort of “John Wayne” phrases and behaviors meant to show that he could whup folks even without the props guy, the stage crafters, the fight choreographers, the cameramen, and the staging
Stash-wipe — someone who is so degraded and inferior that he can be compared to used toilet tissue
Liar — somebody whose credibility is tarnished by misspellings.
Oh dear, I’m so tired of this already, cun’t anybody take over for me now?
Malisha, I think you get the prize – BEST OF THE DAY.
I think you have earned Chair of the Search committee.
Fluker
Mother-Fluker
Hitler’s Mother Syndrome
Prussy
Stash-wipe
Does it get any better – I think not.
You may not have given new meaning, but definitely new vocabulary for when I feel a rant coming on.
Rare talent indeed.
Tony C again: I agree those terms are not misogynist but back when I asked my friend about the misogynist curses, those were not very much heard, at least where I came from. We had bitch, bastard, son of a bitch, etc., a pretty tame lexicon. When my son came of age to use his own, I heard these others, and now, very rarely hear the old ones — ah, how I miss the good old days. My son could expand your collection a bit too, but since I was writing about what Matt called Mespo (if I can believe my eyes), I wasn’t thinking of them. If you have seen Katori Hall’s play “Hurt Village” you can expand that even more!
As to the affectionate use of “c*nt” I would check on the citation. I would also suggest that perhaps Matt did not mean to use the affectionate term for Mespo, at least not without consent.
Malisha I think you and Tony C. have come up with the most perceptive point the whole day.
We definitely need some new curse words that cast opprobrium on the intended subject and don’t impugn the reputation or integrity of anyone else.
I would like to be the first to call upon you both to form a search committee to fill this important need.
Mespo I know you were being satirical, and I am not suggesting that anyone watch Riefenstahl for the ideology. But to compare her mesmerizing work with these YouTube videos is totally unfair to Riefenstahl.
I suppose I should not criticize without watching every minute of every video. But a man has to know his limits and I know mine – not another minute of that YouTube stuff – ‘Oh the inhumanity of it’ – ouch! ‘OK, I’ll cop to the plea, but please not another minute, no… no… ahhhhhh’
And finally, how does anyone get so may typos? Doesn’t any one else have their typo’s underlined in red for immediate correction? Sure, everyone will have some, especially if working fast. But doesn’t the presence of many indicate someone is formatting for effect, to make a point?
@ Tony C: I did not mean that it would be hearsay when it got into court, Tony, so forgive me for using a legal term for it rather than explaining my real intent. (Didn’t mean to make you sigh, agree with what you said to me, once again.) What I meant was that I was using facts that came from reported events like the initial phone call of Zimmerman to the cops, and Ayala’s police report in hard copy, in print, and that kind of statement. But I was omitting things that witnesses were said to have said, because the reports of the witnesses, so far, while perfectly believable, have omitted their names and they have not (with the exception of the school teacher who called 911 while the child was shot to death) spoken directly to the camera yet. So I mistakenly called it hearsay when it will obviously be testimonial evidence once there is a trial. The reason I didn’t even use it in my assessment was that (a) the girlfriend has not yet made a recorded statement that has been aired in the news; and (b) therefore I didnt’ want to invite a whole nother round of “you’re using stuff that could be false and you want to pre-decide and pre-judge everything because blah blah blah.”
What I was hoping to show was that with a very SMALL bit of evidence that isn’t really controverted, it is possible to prove both aggression and ill intent on Zimmerman’s part. Even with the cops either destroying, hiding, or refusing to collect most of the evidence that would probably have proven much more about Zimmerman’s alleged criminal conduct that night, what there is that has already been revealed raises a very STRONG presumption that his story about self-defense is utter hogwash, and not very effective hogwash at that. (Anybody have some experimental dirty hogs for us to test this on?)
Tom Maguire:
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2012/04/the-george-zimmerman-bail-hearing.html
This was a ghastly opening day for Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda, who seemed unprepared and admitted as much…
It’s hard to pick the lowest of the low, but the darker moments for the prosecution included:
– The admission by co-lead investigator that he had not personally interviewed George Zimmerman;
– the admission that he had not requested Zimmerman’s medical records from the hospital;
– the admission that the state has no evidence to contradict Zimmerman’s claim that, following the advice of the police dispatcher, he headed back to his car;
– the admission that the state has no evidence to contradict Zimmerman’s claim that Martin assaulted first.
– the admission that the investigtors have not been “given any insight” by the voice experts at the Orlando Sentinel and the FBI who attempted to identify the screams on the 911 tape (My ‘told you so’ moment).
The NY Times makes no mention of the comical prosecution presentation. Better their readers get that grim news elsewhere. [OK, their unmarked updating has now added a section of the prosecution debacle.]
The LA Times has a bit of the bad news deep:
The hearing was also notable for the extensive grilling that O’Mara gave one of the investigators for the state attorney’s office, Dale Gilbreath, who helped prepare the probable cause affidavit that was the basis for Zimmerman’s arrest.
The affidavit says Zimmerman “confronted” Martin, after which a struggle ensued. In a likely preview of the defense strategy at trial, O’Mara questioned the use of the word “confronted.”
“Do you know who started the fight?” he asked the investigator at one point.
“Do I know? No,” Gilbreath said.
“Do you have any evidence that supports who may have started the fight?”
“No” Gilbreath said.
YOU KNOW IT WENT BADLY FROM THE HEADLINE: ThinkProgress:
Prosecutor: Zimmerman Allegedly Slapped His Ex-Girlfriend And ‘Asked Her How It Felt’
They left out “Defense Counsel Slaps Prosecutor, Asked Him How It Felt”
The judge was far less impressed that Think Progress by Zimmerman’s inglorious past; fro the Guardian live blog:
The judge all but pooh-poohed the 2005 charges brought against Zimmerman for felony battery of an officer and resisting arrest. The charges were later reduced to a misdemeanor and Zimmerman never served prison time, although he was required to attend anger management classes.
This kind of thing is all too common, the judge said, suggested that the charges were somehow inflated and should not be taken as an indicator – that he, at least, would not be taking them as an indicator – of George Zimmerman’s propensity for violence.
Well, the prosecutor impressed the stalwarts on the left, so he has that working for him. Too bad about the judge…
Jeralyn Merrit: “Did the Prosecutor Blow It or Did It Fold? Answer: Both”
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2012/4/21/22713/4445
@mespo, yeah, the last video Matt linked to starts off with truther/anti-vax conspiracy nonsense and goes down from there in what seemed to be a stormfront direction before I could take it no longer.
However, calling a male a cunt is a proper use, at least in the UK, and the urban dictioinary suggests it can even be used affectionately.
Here is Eric Idle (at 1:20)
Malisha: Not all curse words are misogynist. Asshole is not, dick, prick, dickhead, dumbfuck, and fuckwad are not. Even cocksucker is generally reserved for males, it is more of a gay bashing thing than a woman bashing thing.