Submitted by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
At this point, to be honest, all of the back and forth regarding “evidence” in the Zimmerman Case that has occurred here over a number of threads has been mere speculation that misses the salient issues raised by this case. The real (admissible) evidence will be presented at the trial and a hopefully an unbiased jury will make its decisions. The issues that we need to discuss from my perspective are:
1. Did the Sanford Police make a mistake in releasing Zimmerman rather quickly and allowing him to retain his gun, which was potential evidence?
2. Was there undue outside influence used upon the police to end their investigation quickly?
3. Is there a degree of probability that in many Stand Your Ground venues, had the victim been white and the protagonist of color, that the protagonist would have been immediately arrested?
4. What are the purposes of a business oriented lobbying group, like ALEC, in getting “Stand Your Ground” Laws passed?
5. Is this once again an instance where a media circus has poisoned the ability to have a fair trial?
The George Zimmerman shooting of Trayvon Martin has been marked by the typical aspects of what we have come to know as a media circus in American justice. Since this country began, when it comes to criminal justice, our free Press (Media) has found that sensationalism sells. Consequently, when a particular criminal case raises widespread public interest, the Press (Media) fans that interest beyond even the initial public interest. The process of leaking “new evidence” as the case plays out brings with it angry public debate over the significance of the leaked “evidence” and the guilt or innocence of the protagonist.
This creates an uneven public relations battle between the prosecution and the defense. I say uneven because in almost all instances the prosecution has the advantage in terms of media access and also the public’s presumption that the police/prosecution are their protectors. We have seen this occur in this particular case and quite frankly, save for the basic facts that are indisputable; none of us really know what evidence are public relations ploys to sway opinions and what facts will actually be admissible as evidence at trial. What makes this case somewhat different than others is that in this instance the original prosecutor and the Sanford P.D. actively were trying to justify their actions in releasing Zimmerman and not continuing to prosecute him. Their leaks were perhaps attempts to justify their actions. Now that the public uproar has brought in new prosecutors and investigators the leaks to the press may take on a different tone. What we don’t know, as the latest photo of the back of Zimmerman’s head illustrates, is whether the current prosecution is seeking true justice, or continuing to participate in a potential whitewash.
I would like to mention four cases that have occurred in my lifetime that show the problems encountered when sensational cases become prosecuted in the press. The first is the case of Dr. Sam Shepard, a Cleveland physician accused of murdering his wife in 1954, convicted he spent a decade in prison, only to be exonerated at a second trial:
Sheppard was brought to trial in the autumn of 1954. The case is notable for its extensive publicity and what the U.S. Supreme Court called a “carnival atmosphere.” Many have compared the O.J. Simpson trial to it, in terms of the often lurid press coverage it generated.
Some newspapers and other media in Ohio were accused of bias against Sheppard and inflammatory coverage of the case, and were criticized for immediately labeling Sheppard as the only viable suspect. Some believe that a specific headline from the Cleveland Press, “Why Isn’t Sam Sheppard in Jail?,” clearly indicated the bias of the media against Sheppard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Sheppard
The second case I’d like to mention is that of Caryl Chessman. Chessman was executed in 1960, having been convicted in a storm of lurid publicity. The issue wasn’t Chessman’s guilt per se, but whether California’s “Little Lindbergh” law should have been applied in a case where there was no murder. The publicity and antipathy towards Chessman, who was no doubt a low life criminal, obscure the fact that he hadn’t committed murder. In fact many proponents of his death lost sight of the fact that this was not a murder case:
“Born in St. Joseph, Michigan, Caryl Chessman was a criminal with a long record who spent most of his adult life behind bars. He had been paroled a short time from prison in California when he was arrested near Los Angeles and charged with being the notorious “Red Light Bandit.” The “Bandit” would follow people in their cars to secluded areas and flash a red light that tricked them into thinking he was a police officer. When they opened their windows or exited the vehicle, he would rob and, in the case of several young women, rape them. In July 1948, Chessman was convicted on 17 counts of robbery, kidnapping, and rape, and was condemned to death.
Part of the controversy surrounding the Chessman case stems from how the death penalty was applied. At the time, under California‘s version of the “Little Lindbergh Law”, any crime that involved kidnapping with bodily harm could be considered a capital offense. Two of the counts against Chessman alleged that he dragged a 17-year-old girl named Mary Alice Meza a short distance from her car demanding oral sex from her. Despite the short distance[citation needed] the woman was moved, the court considered it sufficient to qualify as kidnapping, thus making Chessman eligible for the death penalty.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caryl_Chessman
The last two cases I want to mention are much more familiar to everyone so I’ll just include the links to each one. O.J. Simpson’s murder trial was perhaps the most publicly viewed trial in our Nation’s history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O.J._Simpson_murder_trial . Let me first say that I never liked Simpson, either as a football player, actor or celebrity. I thought he was an overrated runner and his public persona always seemed to me to be that of a complete phony and media whore. It was surprising to me then, when the case broke that I began to develop sympathy for someone I see as a loathsome man. What bothered me about this case was that from the beginning the prosecution waged a public relations war to convince the public of O.J.’s guilt, through strategic leaking and via officials making definitive statements about his guilt to the media, prior to even his arraignment.
I watched the entire arraignment and trial on TV at work because the City Agency I worked for was being split up and for literally months I had nothing to do but sit in my large office watching the trial on TV. At night my wife and I would watch the recaps at home. Based on what I saw I feel the verdict acquitting Simpson was the correct one because a credible case for “reasonable doubt” was made. He may well have been guilty, but to me the inept prosecution had botched their case. The reader may feel differently, but I think must admit that there was a firestorm of publicity on the case that made a serious trial into a circus.
Finally, last July prior to the verdict I wrote about “Should We Care About Casey Anthony” as a guest blog: http://jonathanturley.org/2011/07/02/should-we-care-about-casey-anthony/#more-36728 . Afterwards, being retired, I watched the entire trial and truly believe that the correct verdict was also reached based on the evidence and the over charging of the case. The reader again may disagree with my judgment here, but also must admit that the media sensationalism that characterized this trial was way over the top.
In the latter two cases I think that there is some comfort to be take by the fact that the juries in each seemed to actually perform their duty and look at the evidence presented without bias. In the Sheppard Case the defendant was convicted due to the improper publicity and it took a Supreme Court verdict to help set him free. He left prison a broken ma and both his and his son’s lives were destroyed in their attempt to exonerate his name. This is somewhat less comforting. Caryl Chessman, bad human being that he was, should not have been convicted of kidnapping in the sense of the “Little Lindbergh” law, but deserved a possible life sentence for rape. The pre and post trial publicity made it impossible for California politicians to try to prevent execution.
The Zimmerman case has again raised the wrath of anger and injustice on all sides. Zimmerman has been demonized and his victim Trayvon Martin has also been demonized. Zimmerman’s trial, should he not take a plea, will be a circus raising hackles everywhere. Whatever decision that comes from it will be questioned by people whose minds have been made up via the information leaking out. In the end we will all be victims of yet another diminishment of our legal system via a process we must be very loath to rein in. Democracy and freedom cannot flourish without widespread information on public happenings. There is no one we can honestly give the power to make a decisions as to where the media crosses the line, because invariably all human decisions are ultimately self-serving.
At the outset I posed what I see to be the six salient issues to be drawn from this case, whatever the outcome at trial. I’ve avoided taking sides on these issues, though truthful disclosure by me would say that at this point I believe Zimmerman is probably guilty of some form of aggravated manslaughter, but truly what do I know more than anyone else?
As for the five questions I posed here are my own answers/opinions:
1. Did the Sanford Police make a mistake in releasing Zimmerman rather quickly and allowing him to retain his gun, which was potential evidence? Yes. To me the Police should not ever make the decision as to whether “standing one’s ground” is a viable defense. They need to collect all the evidence and present it to the prosecution. The prosecution must then present it to the court. SYG is for the court/jury to decide.
2. Was there undue outside influence used upon the police to end their investigation quickly? I believe that Zimmerman’s father played a role in trying to avoid charges against his son and that influence was used to try to make the case go away.
3. Is there a degree of probability that in many SYG venues had the victim been white and the protagonist of color, that the protagonist would have been immediately arrested? My belief is that if the shooter had been a person of color and/or what is considered a foreign ethnicity, they would have been arrested in any of those venues with a reversed situation. The only caveat is that if they were someone of wealth or connections, then they might not have been arrested.
4. What is the purpose of a business oriented lobbying group like ALEC in getting “Stand Your Ground” Laws passed? I think that ALEC has been pushing these particular laws because many large corporations employ security forces that are armed. With these laws many actions by these armed security forces would be held to be justified, thus blameless.
5. Is this once again an instance where a media circus has poisoned the ability to have a fair trial? Absolutely, as I made clear above.
What then is your opinion on these issues, taking out the guilt, or innocence of George Zimmerman?
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Gene, I am getting dizzy from all the dodging and weaving going on by anon. I have not seen moves like that since Crazylegs Hirsch played for the Rams.
Just to be clear, anon, do you even know how a phone handshakes with the network? I don’t think you do.
Basically when you turn your phone on, it tells the network:
Hello, I’m model X phone.
I have sim card number XXXXXXXXXXX.
I’d like to register on this network.
The phone company servers are queried by the tower to see if the phone is a client phone or a phone from another network.
Then the connection is then allowed or denied as appropriate.
Once connected, the network servers checks to see if there’s any asynchronous data waiting to be transfered (i.e. voice mail messages, etc.) and it will send that data along with the pertinent network information (like the time) to the phone which interprets it and does whatever is necessary (tell you you have a msg, change the clock, allow for synchronous communication, etc.).
The phone company servers communicate with each other and with other public web servers that broadcast the time according to atomic clocks around the world. The network time on the servers is broadcast to the computers running the towers which in turn communicates the network time with the phones. If the individual phones are setup to auto-sync the time, then they adjust their time displayed according to what the tower tells them, but if they aren’t the phone still needs to know the network’s time in order to allow synchronous communication.
“Gene has been arguing that it is impossible to change these time stamps.”
Straw man fallacy.
I never said the word impossible. That word came out of your mouth. I implied “difficult” and “improbable”.
Actually, it’s not a wrong answer just because you think it is, anon. Technically it is correct. The fallacies you are committing are the Nirvana fallacy and the continuum fallacy.
As to your opinions of me personally? How many times to I have to tell you I don’t care what an anonymous asshole on the Internet thinks of me for that to sink in to your abnormally think skull? Do you honestly think anyone else will care? If you do, might I suggest that you were deprived of oxygen in the womb. If you think you’re hurting my feelings? You’d be wrong. I find it funny and a sign of obvious frustration. If you think you’re shaping the opinion of me to anyone important to me? You’d be wrong there too.
You should spend a little less time huffing paint in your mom’s basement.
It’d be good for you.
Huh?
Otteray Scribe, I’ve now said for the third time, that the photo is almost certainly time stamped correctly.
Go take another geritol, take a walk, and get some blood back into your head, it will do you good.
Gene has been arguing that it is impossible to change these time stamps.
This has nothing to do with Zimmerman, it has to do with Gene making shit up, and you encouraging him to do so.
anon, the question is not whether it is possible, but is it likely? Keep in mind, that as Gene says, the standard is to a reasonable certainty, not an absolute certainty. It ain’t likely sport, and you can just keep on whistling past the graveyard.
Well Gene Howington, nice try at shifting the goal posts.
The question you answered was:
“Malisha,
“And how do we know that the cell phone’s date stamp cannot be changed””
You’ve responded several times now that the answer is it cannot be changed.
Now you shift the goal posts to tell us what you think you know of telephone networks.
But the question you answered was:
“And how do we know that the cell phone’s date stamp cannot be changed””
And the answer you gave was:
“Technically speaking? It suppose it is theoretically possible to change it, but to do so would require hacking into the cell company’s NOC and resetting the time/date, but that would affect every phone on that segment of the network. It would also draw a lot of attention in the NOC”
Which is totally and completely wrong.
Now most people at this point would have the intelligence and grace to admit they blew it, but since you’re a shifty dumbassed lawyer, you can’t bring yourself to admit that you were wrong.
And so you just play games.
Gene Howington, unethical, lying, ignorant, dumbassed lawyer.
Yep, OS. Good tactic.
Probability seems to be a real problem with the pro-Zimmerman crowd. They all want certainty. Too bad for them the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt, not absolute certainty.
Gene, this phone business reminds me of the old lawyer cross examination stunt of asking the witness endless, “Well, isn’t it possible that….(fill in the blank with some vague reference to the evidence).
I developed a stock answer to use after about the twentieth stupid “Isn’t it possible” question, as the jury is going to sleep and the judges eyes are glazing over. “Counsel, I am going to respond to each and every one of your questions in the affirmitive; and in fact, if you ask me if is possible the sun might come up in the north tomorrow I will respond to that with a ‘Yes’ as well. The better question is whether all these things are likely, and the answer to that is, ‘No.’ “
Yeah, and how’s that anonymous thing working out for you, 2112?
You still don’t get it, do you, anon? Even if you change the time display manually on the phone? The network still knows what time it is for the local network and so does your phone. It’s on a synchronous network. If your phone and network are not on the same clock? Your phone won’t work. Two separate issues forensically. You cannot really fake the time on a phone. You can only change the way it displays the information to you from that particular phone.
Man, you are dense.
Otteray,
“no one gives a rat’s ass what date is on a photo”
Apparently Malisha does.
I’ve already said it’s almost certainly the case the photo is time stamped correctly.
What’s notable is that once again your associate Gene Howington has been caught either making shit completely or just lying.
In this case he has asserted twice now that the dates on the photos can’t be changed and represent the network time.
You know that to be horse shit, but you won’t correct him.
I’ve caught Gene Howington out to be a liar or just plain ignorant many times now, going back to his nonsense about no way to be anonymous on the net.
Still, you can’t help but back that son of a bitch up, no matter how much bullshit he spews out. Instead of tell him he’s wrong, you support him and try a little misdirection aimed at the guy who is right.
Oh well. Par for the course from you.
anon, no one gives a rat’s ass what date is on a photo. You can set it to any time zone you want. What is important is the time itself, and if somebody fiddled with the settings on that camera phone, I am sure the FBI labs will be very interested, since tampering with evidence in a felony is some serious shit. And who has the time and inclination to change anything? The damn photo shows the date and time. What else do you want. You are straining at gnats.
You can play fantasy games all you want. Have fun.
Gene Howington, the depths of your idiocy knows no bounds, and for this I have to thank you, because it is truly a humbling and educational experience that helps me understand the wide diversity in the human range.
To think someone as clueless, as moronic, as drooling as you can pass the bar. What does that say about the tolerance and standards of lawyers everywhere?
Okay numbnuts. Malisha is clearly speaking about the time date stamp on the bottom of an iPhone.
We know this because Otteray Scribbler has shown us the EXIF information of the injured head photo of Zimmerman which identifies the phone as an iPhone 4s
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeandodge/6954519102/in/photostream/
And Malisha asks ““And how do we know that the cell phone’s date stamp cannot be changed””
To which you responded, no it can’t not unless Superman flies around the world really fast, and then when I pointed out there is a menu setting to change the date, you said, nuh uh, not really. That changes the displayed date not the real time and date of the phone.
SO EVERYONE ASK YOURSELF AS A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.
You are a phone designer. You allow the user to change the time and date of the phone.
Now you are creating the camera app.
DO YOU TIME STAMP THE PHOTO WITH THE NETWORK TIME, OR DO YOU TIME STAMP THE PHOTO WITH WHAT THE USER HAS ENTERED AS THE CORRECT PHONE TIME?
Now try it for real.
Take your phone off the network time, and enter the time manually.
Enter 1/1/2010
Make sure your phone is not set to automatically update its time from the network.
Take a picture.
Examine the details.
What time and date is stamped on the photo? Today’s date, or 1/1/2010?
Please report your findings.
I’ll go first. On my Samsung Galaxy IIS running Android 2.3.6, the photo is contains 1/1/2010 in its EXIF information EVEN though the date is really 4/23/2012.
Gene Howington: what did you find on your phone? Please let us know.
Well we may never know. There definitely were two news reports of witnesses saying their information, offered to the police, was either not welcome or that they were pressured into agreeing that what they said was not really what they wanted to say and so forth…
I’m not sentencing, Leander22. In fact, that’s the part I don’t care about. What I DO care about is the fact that the police on the scene and the police after the fact and the prosecutor (Wolfinger) after the fact did not want to do ordinary police work and ordinary criminal justice work with this case. Now I don’t think that’s necessarily way different from what happens in perhaps 30% (just grabbing a number, no idea what the studies would show if it were possible to do them) of all cases. I have heard of case after case where either the police, not wanting to charge somebody, covered up instead of investigating or, on the flip side of that dirty coin, manufactured evidence to make sure some “asshole” didn’t get away. My point is only that from what has been reported so far, witness statements were not taken but probably can be recovered like “lost” data that is really somewhere on the hard drive, just not with its “ikon” in plain view. Blood tests, blood smudges, hair or skin traces under fingernails, powder burns, signs of impact, etc. etc. may not be available. But someone saying, “I heard this” or “I saw that” can sometimes be retrieved and in this case, it’s certainly going to be part of a major effort to do so.
“Wait and see” is fine but there is a gigantic public debate about this, and it is a very valuable and important debate, not because Zimmerman killed Martin (although I do not downplay the importance of that, and do not want to be misunderstood on that point) but because the police/prosecutor cover-up, either way (for nailing someone who has not committed a crime or for giving someone a “walk” when they have) is a major, undeniable, dangerous, destructive part of our society and we need to deal with it.
sorry, Malisha, I was putting it ambiguously. I think De la Rionda meant he couldn’t be sure what Zimmerman overheard from the witnesses on the scene. At least that’s how I understood it, Obviously they came all out to take a closer look.They may have spoken with the officers and with Zimmerman too, at least I think John did. Zimmerman may have been present all, or most of the time.
You seem to have the Selma & Mary in mind. They were the ones that went public. I found their descriptions of Zimmerman behavior after the shot quite interesting. But strictly they did not witness anything while it happened. As far as I remember they only heard the fight and the screams. Besides their story too may have changed after realizing what had happened, they weren’t inside his head when he was straddling Trayvon’s body or walked around dissoriented.
To be quite honest, I think it would be much more important to know what really happened than to sentence him. On the other hand my position may change abruptly if I knew. Complicated. But obviously the lawsuit will be only harden the narratives on both sides.
How long will it take, till we know? A year?
anon,
I just caught one of your posts directed at me. Because, believe it or not, I don’t read most of the bullshit you post. So I’m going to play a bit of catch up.
I want to thank you for demonstrating that you don’t understand the difference between setting a phone display and the clock functions used by the synchronous networks that the phone itself uses to function.
There are two mobile wireless network synchronization schemes. FDD (frequency division duplex) and TDD (time division duplex). FDD is also used in wired networks, but both systems base their synchronization on network set time. You can set your phone display to show whatever you personally want. Your phone itself is still getting its time signal from the network. When you are off-network, your phone is using the time based on your last network connection, but it re-syncs when you go back on-network to the new network’s time. If your phone displays time in Jakarta but you are in Miami, the phone is still operating off of the local networks synchronization. Synchronization is essential to guarantee transport channel alignment for handoff and guard band protection.
Your phones won’t work without it.
In short, you can make your display different, but by network usage data, the actual local time can be derived. The only way to really change the time setting is to do so at a network level. And as I said, that would attract attention and be a lot of extra work.
Speaking of time, it should be about time for you to freak out again.
But there were witnesses who were not INTERVIEWED and who can still be witnesses — it wasn’t necessary for Rionda to hear what they said at that time, because it can be said now. In fact, in one instance at least (probably at least two, but some of the information is sketchy and unconfirmed), a witness WANTED to give the police her evidence, and called, and tried, and was subjected to refractory police conduct basically preventing her from sharing the information she HAD. So it won’t matter, in the long run, whether ALL the evidence available that night, when the police messed everything up, was gathered or was NOT gathered. Physical evidence, yes, of course that should have been preserved and cannot be recreated. In fact, in light of the funny stuff that has already happened with regard to the various head shots of the only still-standing star of that night’s performance, it would seem to me that evidence gathering of the blood on the back of Zimmerman’s head (and testing of it, of course) is something lost to the data control procedures forever. “And was that blood on the back of Defendant’s head in fact Defendant’s blood?” “I don’t know; we didn’t test it.” Ho hum, what can we say?
To me, the failure of the police to document all that had to be documented that night makes it less feasible to make out a case of self-defense. The prima facie case of OFFENSE would seem to me still preserved in the recordings of the night and the statement of the girlfriend on the cell phone, but the after-the-fact statements made by the Defendant himself wouldn’t automatically carry the day.
Thanks for you patience.
The only question now is whether the Sanford Police Department contains sentient life.
The problem seems to be all the mistakes already made. De la Rionda told GZ in the bond hearing, he couldn’t be sure what he had heard from the witnesses at the crime scene.
This case is not one that lends itself to the psychological autopsy technique. For one thing, we know that Martin was armed with candy and a soft drink. Zimmerman was armed with a 9mm pistol. Martin is dead. Zimmerman is very much alive. The only question now is whether the Sanford Police Department contains sentient life.