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
Tony C, I re-read your apology protocol and mine. I like yours. I might quote it, with attribution, if you don’t mind. In regard to your proviso that you apologize with the “same level of privacy/publicity,” I am reminded of a story. A friend of mine is a rather celebrated award-winning Broadway actress. She was working on a play with a difficult director, and he was not directing with the kind of respect and cooperative attitude she is used to as a professional. He was directing her with an insulting and bullying quality, which he did not use toward the male cast members. She would go home every night exhausted by her need to silence her objections to mistreatment the whole time she rehearsed. (She felt it was necessary with this director because of some circumstances I don’t need to delve into here.) Then one day he absolutely went over all her boundaries and just verbally abused her. The male lead took up for her and defended her from the director! Then other actors showed their support. But the director wasn’t softening his stance and ended up calling her a “bad actress.” I mean, this was just nuts and the whole theater world would have to agree.
The next day before rehearsal he called her into his private room and apologized, saying he had been out of sorts and this and that and blah blah blah. She said, “You reviled me publicly but you’re apologizing privately.”
I get the whole thing. I would ask myself, “Is there any circumstance under which I would come back onto this thread in 2013 and apologize to Bosco (or was it Matt? or Anon?) for having thought Zimmerman was a murderer or for having thought Rico Grey narrated his abuses as if he was “just being a man”? Actually, no. Because if facts came to light that made me change my mind about Zimmerman, they would have to be some fairly extreme, bizarre facts that I could not have anticipated. And having read Rico Grey’s deposition, there are NO facts that could make me change my impression of his bravado as he described beating up 4/5 of his baby-mamas.
So I guess I’m safe with that.
Malisha, I read a lot of what you write. You did not miss your calling at all.
(Malisha1, May 11, 2012 at 7:26 pm
LeejCaroll, I keep having the fantasy that if a doctor “gave me six months to live,” I would become an educator! So far, missed my calling.)
RWA = right-wing authoritarian. It does not mean the person has to be politically right-wing, though. It’s just a personality type given that name by a Canadian psychologist. You can read about it here:
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
Be well, thanks for all your comments.
Oh, and about the “insult” – “idiot” — I just used it as an excuse to write something I thought was funny but nobody (but me) got any laughs from it! See, “I’m dyin’ in this room!” [That’s what comedians would say when they were doing stand-up acts in the American Borscht Belt and nobody was laughing at their jokes]
Last note, sorry, Malisha, Matt indeed said you are an idiot, it probably did not register with me too much, since I think this is a rather harmless insult, indicating that’s not what I meant. If he addressed me that way, I wouldn’t concentrate too much on the little term but on what could make him utter it.
Basically I absolutely agree with you, the story is not about the ability to outrun somebody, if that was the case, we wouldn’t be as puzzled as we are. How did both of them spend the minutes before 19:16.* , after let’s say 19:14.
I shut up for good now. But please explain “RWA” narcissist to me, there was another acronym above I wondered what you meant but missed to ask. I’ll check back for that, but will keep my mouth shut for a while.
How do we get Jonathan Thurley to open a new threat? It’s by the way not disrespect, when I do not use prof. in speaking about him, quite the opposite. His selections show that he would more than deserve the use of the title, if it was only used to show respect. Thanks prof. Thurley for reminding me, I have to call my mother.
But strictly I will have to retire anyway, I should have known earlier, but it’s too late now, Trayvon Martin’s story has completely seized me like other similar stories did before.
Thanks Malisha, your brainstorming will help. I already discovered possible contradictions in Taaffe’s case. But this starts to turn into hard work, and you always have to keep in mind people may not lie but relate hearsay and combine unrelated issues in their minds. You remind me that I shouldn’t only save links but also the documents just in case.
One tiny thing, I can understand your little funny exchange about Matt, but strictly, without going back, I did not have the impression he called you an idiot. Which in turn reminds me of the many, many issues in this case which are used in arguments from one side or the other that no one has ever had reliable facts about. I was slightly astonished that after all George is not that much smaller than Trayvon was, and that probably nobody ever recorded his weight at the time of the shooting. He seems to have lost weight, if I can trust my very limited ability to judge from the police video and the bond hearing. Anyway I registered “empty space” in the shoulder part of his jacket. Did he spend some of the 1.000 $, e.g. for telephone cards in jail for a new jacket, and the wrong size was delivered?
Bottom line: I may not belong to Matt’s political camp, but as long as he doesn’t use an extensively mental stereotyping pattern, I have no problem with that.
No it wasn’t a pamphlet, it was a tiny book in size with many, many pages. It recorded things in the police training or education that felt reminiscent to the Nazi reign to one of us lucky enough to be born post WWII.
Tony, I wish Americans wouldn’t use so many acronyms. How do they handle to always know which one they are alluding to, if it is not an apparent context?
(marrying a RWA narcissist or something)
If, I find something interesting in Zimmerman’s court documents, I’ll report back here, to save our host the reflection if it isn’t advisable to automatically close threads after or so 1.000 comments.
Please make all necessary corrections or fill in words like “host of” that somehow disappeared in one of my notes above in this context: a host of colleagues. One of these colleagues (or was it a couple?) by the way, showed us their film about death row which ended with a black poet on his way to the cell. I wish I would remember it’s title. I prayed he would be pardoned.
Tony C, thanks for the explanation. Here’s my protocol for “being wrong”:
1. If I’m wrong about an understanding of something I read, heard or experienced, and the other person involved was affected, of course I offer an apology, as in, “Oh I’m sorry, I got you wrong on that.”
2. If I’m wrong about something that I just plain misquoted or got wrong, and I passed along an incorrect impression, of course I apologize, as in: “Oh sorry, I got that WRONG, let me correct it.”
3. If I DID something based on a wrong assumption or wrong impression, I will apologize for the act and try to set it right. (“I’m sorry I deducted that $10 from your allowance; I forgot that you used your own money that time.”)
4. If I inadvertently harmed someone I apologize all over the place and I FEEL bad about it and sometimes I go too far and can’t stop apologizing.
5. If I feel like I was wrong about something in general, I will take a long, hard look at it. If people were involved and could have been insulted or something, I will include the apology angle in my long, hard look, but it is very uncommon. For instance, I guess there is some very small possibility that I could come to the conclusion, a year from now, that Zimmerman was not wrong to shoot Martin. (How I might come to that conclusion is beyond me right now, but let’s assume it arguendo.) I would not apologize or even imagine that I owed an apology for having thought otherwise, because I was not on his jury, I was not his judge, and I did not do anything to him. Would I want to come back on-line and apologize to Matt? Not at all. If he couldn’t stand the idea that I had disagreed with him in the past when I was theoretically wrong, that would be something for him to take up with his therapist. (“Malisha is wrong and she won’t admit it or apologize!”)
So that’s probably all the scenarios I can think of. Oh, except, of course, the one where I do something wrong (marrying a RWA narcissist or something) and try to correct it (divorcing him, for instance) and even in spite of all the corrective measures, it still creates mischief in the world. I don’t apologize in that instance either, I just blame the system.
@Malisha: if I discovered that I was wrong about something, that would not prompt me to offer an apology,
I do not always apologize, but depending on the level of “wrong,” I personally consider failing to admit I was wrong both immoral and cowardly. It lets stand a claim I know is false, and lets stand a harm I know is wrong, because I believe telling somebody they are wrong when they are right IS a harm to them, and the only way to salve that harm is to admit, with the same level of privacy/publicity as my wrong claim, that I was wrong and they were right.
Admitting I was wrong and apologizing for it are different things; it is not necessary to apologize for understandable mistakes I did not willfully make.
@Bosco: Here are YOUR words: You DO NEED ALL the facts to this serious case. What was the motivations behind both? Who provoked who? Why was there a conflict?
All three of those questions cannot be answered, for all three of those questions, the jury must infer the answer (make their best logical guess).
If you wait to find out Trayvon Martin’s motivations AS A FACT, you will never go to trial. If you wait to see if Trayvon Martin was “provoked” by being followed, you will never go to trial. If you wait to see who swung first, or why they swung first, there will never be a trial.
You want us to wait for facts that will NEVER be in evidence, and the result of that will be that what most of us, and most of America, thinks is an obvious crime will never be punished.
The result of “no trial” would be one more case thrown on the mountain of proof for blacks that the justice system is racially biased and sees blacks as expendable and presumed guilty.
But there should be a trial, because the dictum is “beyond a reasonable doubt,” it is not “beyond all doubt,” and I see no reason to doubt that it was Zimmerman provoking Trayvon from the start. I think every action of Trayvon’s that we know of (or have speculated about) was done (or would have been done) in response to an equally threatening action of Zimmerman’s, like following him.
This whole story is about Zimmerman’s aggressive actions and what Trayvon did in response to those actions. That is glaringly evident from Zimmerman’s descriptions of what Trayvon was doing in his 911 call, plus the fact that Trayvon was talking on the phone with his girlfriend the entire time: He wasn’t committing or about to commit a crime. if you cannot see that, I think you are presuming, without any evidence now or plausibly forthcoming, that Trayvon might have been guilty of something that provoked Zimmerman first.
I think hanging on to that thread is beyond reason, if what Trayvon did, no matter how aggressive, was in response to Zimmerman’s pursuit of him, then Zimmerman was the first aggressor by conducting the pursuit.
Leander,
I have friends in Germany. If you find the pamphlet and want to get it translated and the author agrees, I can try to enlist a good translator there.
Thanks.
Leander, when Frank Taafe was originally giving interviews to the media, he messed up (commenting that Zimmerman had an anger management problem and that Zimmerman was “fed up”) but he also gave a very good view of the indignant, huffy, aggressive, bristly, itchy-finger tone that he apparently shared with his gun-toting buddy. That interview will ultimately land the homeowners’ unincorporated association in a world of trouble, I imagine. What really impresses me, now, in going back through the reports that are still on-line from that period and my own memory of reading them back then, was the statement that there had been “several break-ins and one shooting” in the neighborhood in the past. This had been mentioned as if it was being used to explain Zimmerman’s conduct in (a) arming himself; and (b) following someone he allegedly thought “threatened” the community; and (c) failing to wait for the police to show up.
The homeowners who were eager to identify themselves as members of that unregistered, unincorporated “association” were issuing statements supportive to Zimmerman in the pre-arrest days, saying he solved crimes, he prevented crimes, he was protecting the neighborhood. THen on March 1, apparently, someone walked out of a meeting of that unincorporated association because the group was STILL not acting on the information that George Zimmerman carried a gun “on patrol” — AFTER THE DEATH OF AN UNARMED CHILD IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. So a few days after Zimmerman shot Martin, this unincorporated association was still reportedly supporting his right to carry a loaded gun and confront people!
In view of this, I wouldn’t really trust anything the homeowners’ association mouthpieces say. I also wouldn’t trust much the police said early on because they were trying hard to prevent an arrest in this case before Lee stepped down and before Corey was appointed. And we don’t know how hard they tried to prevent Corey from drawing charges, either; all we know is that she decided to file those charges. We don’t know what went on behind the scenes. And although we DO know who did what to whom that night (Zimmerman profiled, trailed and killed Martin), we do not know who did what to whom after that night and we don’t know who’s doing what to whom now.
Tony C, thanks for your reassuring post. It was my sense of humor in action, on that “What if I’m really an idiot?” post. I think my sense of humor takes a little getting-used-to.
Believe me, I do know that I’m not an idiot. As to being wrong, I certainly wouldn’t agree that I was wrong about something simply because people strongly disagreed with me or called me an idiot or something like that. Furthermore, if I discovered that I was wrong about something, that would not prompt me to offer an apology, since people are allowed to be wrong and therefore I, a person, enjoy that right as well.
I have a long history of being the kind of “wrong” I have been accused of on this thread, by the way. Not only does it not bother me, at times I’d say it comforts me. The saying, “Fifty Thousand Frenchmen can’t be Wrong!” has always given me a good laugh.
@ Bosco, so why are you doing serious things in a playground?
But if you want to do serious things here, and you think we need “ALL THE FACTS” before expressing opinions, why don’t you list the first ten essential facts you think the prosecutor absolutely needs before proceeding to trial? Here is what I think she needs:
1. Autopsy report of Trayvon Martin’s body, including estimate of how long it would have taken him to die from the fatal wound and, if there was an injury other than the fatal wound itself, approximately when in time that would have occurred, based on the physiology of the deceased
2. Diagram and crime scene photographs of the body and entire surrounding area, including where bullet casings were, and blood spatter anywhere within 200 feet
3. All recorded phone calls made that evening from the area of the killing
4. Complete phone records of Zimmerman’s cell phone, Martin’s cell phone, and Zimmerman’s home phone, and his wife’s cell phone, and the cell phone that was allegedly used to take the picture of his head on the scene
5. Complete report from the EMT on the scene — I think his or her name was Bradley but I’m not sure — and from all medical personnel who were involved in any way with that incident that night, including the ambulance dispatcher, the ambulance drivers and staff, and personnel at the morgue
6. Complete records of phone calls to and from each of the officers on duty that night whether made from the station house telephones or their own cell phones, including calls to and from Wolfinger
7. FBI-approved analysis of all the recordings from all calls (911 and other) from 7 – 7:30 that evening, including voice analysis to compare to voice-print from George Zimmerman, made on the phone call he placed to the police that same evening
8. All medical, employment, educational, psychiatric and psychological records on George Zimmerman going back to age 18, including records of the diversion programs he attended
9. Complete forensic analysis of the clothes Martin was wearing, the cell phone and earpiece he was carrying, and any other physical evidence from the scene
10. All police reports and all memos, including reports of interviews with the witnesses both that night and after that night, including reports of the police interviews of Martin’s parents, including police reports of the interviews that various witnesses have revealed to the media between 2/26/2012 and now
And I bet she had all these things except, perhaps, items from 4, 6 and 8
You have to understand this booklet was never published as a book with an official ISBN number. It was published like a cheap pirate edition. I once knew I think it was something like 100 copies. That’s why you constantly had to lend it to somebody. They did not have a chance to buy a copy. By now it’s part of his work as an artist, I guess, but I never asked him about it.
authoritarian patterns never
chancechange. I have to finish to try to answer the question above.Two different things of course meant I stored them as two different stories.
Malisha, I’ve lost contact. Last thing I heard, he lives in China. He is a very special type of artist. But the little booklet, is on my mind over and over again. I once told a researcher about it, and at that time tried to get a copy. My own copy I once lent to someone. It is one of the books that never returned to me. Since many people were interested in the topic, it was hard to figure out by the time I missed it, whom exactly I had given it too.
Strictly the artist is a close friend of one of my sister’s best friends but I never make a difference. My sisters have the same taste concerning their friends as I have. I followed his work for a while and met him occasionally. But he doesn’t belong to the “settled”.
But I will finally try to trace him. The last I had was an email address, it somehow got lost in my many papers, with many other things more urgently on my mind.
I first have to read it again after all these years. Then I can decide if it makes sense to translate it. May not be easy. May need an edited edition for “foreigners”. But strictly since the authoritarian patterns never chance it could well be even non-German people can discover special patterns. But I do not know, if have never thought about it that way.
Actually something else would be quite interesting. I once met him with a couple of former police colleagues. I have the impression that the last time this was really heavily on my mind was when there surfaced some glimpses of police “special treatment” of black people by the Hamburg police. And maybe these guys could tell me some insider stories.
They were a funny lot, all I remember of the day I spend with them, was that I laughed so hard that it started to hurt. My rule of thumb by the way is that ideologues do not have much humor.
But obviously in police work may occasionally be hard to not profile specific–them Arabs, hello?–I think there was a lot of African related drug business at the same time. But obviously on the lower levels that are much more easy to target. But strictly it’s a vague memory by now. And unfortunately a huge backup drive containing that time period doesn’t work anymore. So it would take time to restore my–if you allow me to use the German term–holey memory, memory full of holes.
*******************************************************************************
I am trying to get behind the story left in my mind by Zimmerman supporters (Taaffe, anonymous spokesperson of the houseowner’s association?) that he helped arrest a black perpetrator. So far without success. This is the most interesting thing I found.. Wouldn’t have Chris Francescani in his “lengthly profile” have mentioned this?
Does my memory trick me, I thought these were two different things. That he once indeed prevented a burglary. But why does Francescani not report it, but instead suggests a connection between the arrest of Burgess and Zimmerman?
I never thought about that before, but I do now.
@Malisha: Matt is calling me an idiot. I mean, what if he’s right?
Who cares? Why would you care what complete strangers thinks of you? Especially since Matt obviously does not care what we think of HIM.
I personally do not worry whether somebody thinks I am an idiot. If I am wrong I admit it and move on, to do otherwise crosses the line from being excusably wrong to inexcusable overt lies, continuing to assert something I know is not true, or even just leaving people in false doubt I created.
Tony C-to respond to your comments on May 11, 2012 at 1:46 pm and 3:41 pm
It seems that you are misconstruing my points either purposely or ignorantly.
Being that YOU had verified that you have well rounded observational prowess by being that of a research scientific Id say your attempt at misconstruing are done on PURPOSE.
Your words-“The facts you want are impossible to determine”
***Its obvious that you are attempting to MIX my questions of conjecture with the topic of facts and EVIDENCE yet to be determined.
A lot of people here will fall for that
(for reasons of ignorance or racial motivations) and that’s what people like you count on.
Your words-
“So the result of your “wanting all the facts” is to postpone, indefinitely, the punishment of any crime that may have been committed.”
***So your saying the motivation is to ‘POSTPONE indefinitely’ any punishment? The OJ Simpson trial is a GREAT EXAMPLE of that and they had ALL the evidence and facts.<
Matt, I can see the understandable frustrations that you have here. Just remember after-all that this is merely a 'playground' for those that PLAY on assumptions, prejudices,ignorance's and sensationalism's
Leander, has your friend’s book about the police been published in English? What is the title of it in any case? Author? I think the issue of the education of police officers EVERYWHERE is very important. We are in a society where you naturally assume you can go to the police for help, but you may be surprised to find something quite different.
“Justice for Trayvon Martin” activities reach Europe:
Trayvon Martin Furor Echoes British Campaign for Justice
I am told we still do have racial profiling too*, and the latest scandal shows that while a group of neo-Nazis that targeted Turkish German shopowners for about a decade, police did not connect the dot. The usual assumption were some shady mafi-style revenge actions. …
But, as you sure do not doubt anyway, we could offer cases of the white gang or neo-Nazi style killings too. This is one that led to the creation of a foundation:
Amadeu Antonio
*Our federal police historically has deep roots in national socialism, the people that build it up came from the main Nazi police academy in Berlin. It seems the same continuity existed in the police. We of course always suspected that. A good friend of mine, an artist, went to the police instead of joining the army, I didn’t even know you could. He wrote a diary about his education and published it anonymously. It was one of the most startling things I ever read. He was trained in the early seventies in Hamburg. I met him in the late seventies.
I am speechless, I simply can’t believe this. As a juvenile or young woman I reacted rather aggressively to the word miss in German, which is Fräulein, some kind of incomplete Frau, or “little” woman. The “lein” is a diminutive. A house is a Haus in German, a little house would be a Häuslein.
How can we explain a young journalist in 2012 writes something like this?
Trayvon Martin’s parents call for an end to racial profiling in Britain
Did he simply not get Sabrina Fulton is divorced. Even if she was completely unmarried, isn’t she old enough to be addressed as Ms? Oh, I see Mr Taylor still uses Mrs.