The evidence continues to roll in on the Zimmerman case. While the new evidence is not entirely bad for the prosecution, it does contain some evidence that will likely bolster the defense of George Zimmerman in the second degree murder trial over the killing of Trayvon Martin. Regardless of the ultimate impact, the evidence again shows (in my opinion) that prosecutor Angela Corey over-charged the case in Florida.
Some of the new evidence shows that Martin had traces of THC (the active ingredient of marijuana) in his blood stream and urine. Martin was suspended from school due to a marijuana offense (though it involved an empty marijuana baggie). Another benefit to the defense is that Martin father is shown denying that the voice calling out for help was his son — though he later changed that view when he says he was given a better recording. Other witnesses have indicated that it Zimmerman who was calling for help.
Generally, the existence of drugs in the system of a victim or defendant is admissible. The suspension would appear inadmissible under standard evidentiary rules.
There is also evidence that some neighbors described Zimmerman as a bully and a racist. That would help bolster the reported hate crimes prosecution being considered by the Obama Administration, though I still have reservations based on the evidence as it currently stands. Also the police viewed the shooting as “avoidable” — if Zimmerman had left the matter to the police.
I am not sure how much of the neighbor’s view of Zimmerman as a bully or racist could come into evidence. Such accounts, however, can have the benefit of further discouraging Zimmerman from taking the stand as a witness — always a benefit to the prosecution because (while they are told that a defendant has a right not to testify (jurors expect to hear from defendants).
On the whole, however, I would view the evidence as more positive to the defense. First, I have previously said that I was most interested in the distance of the shot and forensics. It now appears that Martin was shot from an intermediate range (no more than 18 inches and as little as an inch away). That would support the claim of Zimmerman that they were in a wrestling fight when the gun was fired. The greater the distance the stronger the case for the prosecution. The defense will likely present expert testimony to try to reduce the range further on the stand. Also, the report does have people at the scene saying that Zimmerman’s nose appeared broken — supporting the later medical report of the family doctor (though such injuries could occur from Martin defending himself).
Moreover, at least two witnesses appear to support Zimmerman in describing the man in the hoodie at straddling the other man and throwing punches. The report state that the man in the “‘hoodie’ [was] on top of a white or Hispanic male and throwing punches ‘MMA (mixed martial arts) style.’ He then heard a pop. He stated that after hearing the pop, he observed the person he had previously observed on top of the other person (the male wearing the hoodie) laid out on the grass.” One report also says that Zimmerman can be heard yelling for help 14 times on a 911 call recorded during the fight.
While the reports blame Zimmerman for getting out of his vehicle (he says that he was trying to get a house number for the police), that is not itself a crime. Of course, none of this means that Zimmerman was not the aggressor. Given the presumption of innocence and the need to prove the elements beyond a reasonable doubt, this evidence presents an added problem for the prosecution in my view. I have expressed skepticism over the way the case has developed and how it has been charged from the outset. As a criminal defense attorney, I would view this as a strong defense case even on the manslaughter charge, particularly given the poor police work at the scene.
What do you think?
Here is the police report.
Source: ABC and NY Daily News
Bosco: “I’m not resisting anything. Ill answer questions that are pertinent and not questions that are purposely asked that would be misconstrued for biased reasoning and that’s why i choose to ignore your questions.”
OK. You kept a very sensible distance. Your purpose “was to report in what direction he was going to for the police”
So you seem to have acted intelligently and out of consideration for your neighbour.
You still resist to answer the very very simple question – “Would you have followed him down a dark alley”.
Let me suggest what your answer would be.
It would be along the lines of “No Way!. Do you think I’m crazy?”
I suggest that you are continuing to resist answering this very very simple question because you realise that such an answer would not reflect well on Zimmerman’s actions.
Such a conclusion in regard to Zimmerman’s actions would not be “misconstrued for biased reasoning”. It would be common sense.
That it is common sense is reinforced by
1) Neighbourhood Watch rules that forbid such action
2) “We don’t need you to do that.”
One of the outcomes of this case might/should be that police dispatchers, as part of their duty to protect the public, will put their advices in stronger terms so that the more stupid members of the public can be better protected from their own stupidity and that other members of the public can be better protected from the stupid.
Bosco: The “rush to judgement” was done by the Sanford PD, who did not even book George or test him for the level of prescription Meth-amphetamines in his blood stream.
Maybe George had been doubling up on his pills to get a rush? There are all sorts of way to abuse the drugs George was prescribed. i have even heard of people crushing and snorting these prescription drugs like cocaine.
“But Of course if i were directly behind the guy in the hood,within a foot say, that would provoke him to do something about it. It would for anyone. Either fight or flight.” Bosco
And if George did this very thing to Trayvon?
Zimmerman was close enough to knock the cell phone out of his hand.
Otherwise DeeDee would not have been disconnected.
@Bosco: By the way Tony, apparently you ARE a Dumb-ass
Yes, Bosco, my ass has no brains, unlike your ass which has your head up it.
By the way Tony, apparently you ARE a Dumb-ass
ha ha Tony, You feel the need to attack my words .
Of course i put two words together to make a point. Let me help you out a little.
‘prowess’ definition -‘exceptional or superior ability, skill, or strength: his prowess as a public speaker.’ A Layman’s prowess as a speaker as an example too.
Its apparent that you are very blinded by your own self image .
For you to add- on to your self description ,again,speaks volumes.
SlingBlade ,
I’m not resisting anything. Ill answer questions that are pertinent and not questions that are purposely asked that would be misconstrued for biased reasoning and that’s why i choose to ignore your questions.
You don’t have to accept anything that i said here. I don’t care.
But Of course if i were directly behind the guy in the hood,within a foot say, that would provoke him to do something about it. It would for anyone. Either fight or flight.
I wasn’t, he was approx 1/2 block ahead and trailed so that it was more of a full block to a block and 1/2.
My purpose was to report in what direction he was going to for the police.
He WAS in someone’s car,,he DID pass me by as I was getting to the sidewalk.
He MUST have seen me when i pulled up or why else would he have quickly gotten out and go?
If you missed what i said before ,,i used the word HYPOTHETICALLY.
Hypothetically had he turned around ,attacked and killed me. Would I be the one at fault? NO.
You and others want to avoid that hypothetical with your rambling about details. People here also go on to say that Martin was innocently going by as IF they WERE THERE and witnessed the whole thing. NONE of you have.
I have not been saying that Zimmerman is a good guy. I have been saying that there has been a RUSH TO JUDGEMENT all along. To see the reversed racism created by the pundits and pseudo-liberalism is very upsetting to more than 25% of Americans. (Malisha)
Bosco: “You want me to give out ALL of the facts and in particulars to what happened with me last year, is that it??”
No.
Just
1) Did you follow that person down a dark alley?
2) If no such opportunity presented itself, would you have followed if it had done?
3) If you did or would not follow, what would be your reason for not following?
This query seems very simple.
Why do you resist answering?
@Bosco: my “layman prowess”? WTF is that? A layman is a person with no formal training, not a person with prowess.
I identified myself as “white” because other posters seemed to assume I was identifying with Trayvon Martin’s race. I was not, I understand something about what blacks go through in this country based on proximity and my readings in academic sociology, but I have no personal experience with racism or bigotry (or to my knowledge, favoritism) based upon any physical characteristic of mine. As a teen, I believe I was once arrested (and released without charges 12 hours later) based upon my long hair, Army surplus jacket and holey jeans.
Do you think in doing so that gives your opinions and stances MORE credibility?
No to opinions and stances, BUT I think it gives my scientific claims more credibility because I know whereof I speak. Just as Gene H. being an attorney gives his legal opinions more credibility, at least to my ears. He is trained in the law and knows what he is talking about. That makes the probability he is RIGHT far more than the opinion of a layman in law like myself. I can read English, but I haven’t benefited from the study of centuries of precedents in the study of how that English has been interpreted, in actual court cases, with lives and fortunes at stake.
I am a research scientist in a narrow field, but I have a lot of exposure to science, free online access to thousands of journals, studies and data, and a massive library a two minute walk from my office. I understand the math, the statistics, the methods, the claims, and the language in general used by scientists and the itty bitty nuance of why claims are phrased using particular words and what they really mean.
So that expertise doesn’t have to mean anything to you, I do not write for only you, and I believe it does means something to others when we talk about a scientific understanding of the world and people in it. At least it can help them see where my opinions on such matters originate.
OBVIOUS Convolution ,ASSUMPTIONS and conjecture used by all the main players in response to my last few comments.
But of course, this is a >playground of biased ignorance< after all
No surprises here
btw, I agree with Bill Maher about Zimmerman. He is a fucking liar and I hope there is a trial so he will have to own up to those lies.
That would the ‘following’ sort of following, and not the ‘just happened to be walking behind’ sort of following.
Had you clearly eyeballed your hood and observed that he had noticed this – and then you got out of your car, and ‘just happened to walk behind’ along the street – you might still be ‘just happened to be walking behind’.
When you leave the street and enter a dark area, you have definitely run out of ‘just happened to be walking behind’ space.
Bosco
There is a very important difference between your experience and Zimmerman’s.
Let’s accept that your hood very definitely had been in another person’s car.
If he had become aware that you were following him, he would be well aware why you might be.
On the other hand..
If you were mistaken, and he had simply been walking past on his way home from the 7-11 with skittles and tea, then had he noticed you following him, the obvious conclusion for him was that you were a mugger or other person who posed a clear threat.
You do not get to provoke a fight, to frighten somebody into fighting you, and then kill them in “self-defense.” Tony C.
Exactly. No amount of excuses will cover this one fact.
We certainly have been called all sorts of names on this thread, the Zimmerman supporters are really angry insulting people it seems.
(btw, I am not Jewish, but my SO is a descendant of the Jewish family that owned Monticello for 70 years)
Maybe they are on the same prescription Meth-amphetamine that George was taking?
I am sure Zimmermans brain worked on high speed too, taking his Adderal.
Bosco, the man you discretely followed (oh if only George had taken some instruction from you) was actually in the act of committing a crime. Martin was not. There was nothing suspicious about his behavior except in Georges drug addled mind.
@Bosco: Last year when i followed that hooded individual while calling 911 (at a distance)
The distance is pretty key, isn’t it? Following somebody at a distance may alarm them, but unless you have a gun in your hand, you are not presenting a physical threat to them. If they try to run away and you take specific action to follow them and look for them, then you should understand that from their point of view that has become “pursuit” and will escalate their fear of you. But you are still within your rights if you are not presenting a physical threat to them. If you find them and get within striking distance, or out of fear they decide to confront you instead of continuing their effort to escape, at THAT point you have frightened them and present an imminent physical threat to them. If YOU do not back down and back away, THEN, as the law reads and appears to me as a layman, you are committing an assault by intimidation.
You can be guilty of that crime even with otherwise legal actions, speech, or gestures, and without touching the person in any way. If you are close enough to inflict physical harm and your actions up to that point would give the other person good reason to fear that physical harm was imminent, THEN you have committed a crime.
Whether the other person had good reason to fear an attack or not is up to the jury to decide; there is no bright line rule that would work, they have to interpret your actions and decide that.
Now to answer your question with that framework in place: Most people would not conclude that you following somebody from a distance presented any kind of physical threat to the person you are following, so even if it frightened them or made THEM suspicious of you, they are not entitled to take any action against you. If they try to run and you chase them, that is MORE reason for them to fear you, but you still do not represent a physical threat to them. If they think they lost you, and then turn a corner and there YOU ARE, then you DO represent a physical threat to them.
In your story, you never got close enough to represent a physical threat. In the Zimmerman story, he did, and that is where your analogy falls short.
Slingblade, Your ignorance is shining too.
You want me to give out ALL of the facts and in particulars to what happened with me last year, is that it??
Oh but you DON’T NEED all of the FACTS and in particulars in this Florida tragedy .You have already decided Zimmerman’s fate.
Read above,,the definition of Blind JUSTICE.
Malisha , it is called BLIND JUSTICE for a reason
BLIND JUSTICE-Is a legal concept regarding the neutrality of the dispensing of justice”
If Zimmerman were a black man you would have no problem in giving him a fair shake. Racist.
Bosco: “Last year when i followed that hooded individual while calling 911 (at a distance) hypothetically, if he had noticed me and then turned around ran back to me and shot me dead, would i be the one who committed a crime by taking notice of him and “hunting him down”?
Ill answer that for you >NO<."
You’d be very hard put to find anyone who would give a different answer.
This is because the question is ridiculous.
You seem to want to relate your experience to the Zimmerman/Martin case.
As I have already said to you above, they are not really comparable.
I asked (what you termed a litany of) questions about your experience that would clearly illustrate that your experience was very much different. You chose to ignore the opportunity to bring clarity.
In order to follow someone from a distance, you have to be able to see them at all times. Otherwise you can’t keep a distance.
You say you kept a distance.
Zimmerman clearly did not.
You didn’t answer as to whether or not you followed down a dark alley where you lost sight of him.
You didn’t answer as to whether or not you *would have* followed if he had gone down a dark alley.
Zimmerman did that, and very stupid he was to do it – even if was following someone who was actually just retuning form the 7-11 with skittles and tea.
It sounds like you behaved sensibly in the situation (assuming that you kept a good distance and did not follow down a dark alley)
Both you and Zimmerman had a worthy ‘protect neighbours’ basic motivation for reporting your suspicions and indicating where the person you suspected was headed.
1. Zimmerman went too far (in more sense than one)
2. When going too far brought him face to face with Martin, he made entirely the wrong choices.
His stupidity resulted in a death.
Had his stupidity resulted in his own death, that would be unfortunate.
His stupidity resulted in the death of someone else, and that is manslaughter at the very least.
Welcome Tony C, >>applause applause<<
I had asked you before what was your self motivation in INFORMING us of your caliber.
Your response was–
"I inform people I am a (WHITE) research scientist…an atheist (and)I am not a lawyer:
So THEY KNOW in general where my training is, where my biases are, and where my opinions are those of a layman"
Ill ask this of you once again,
Do you think in doing so that gives your opinions and stances MORE credibility?
Do you think that 'THEY' will put more regard into your statements and to what you have said thus far?
Ill repeat something ive said with some candor,
Tony even IF you were an 'Uneducated Pygmy Garbageman' you would STILL rise OR fall based upon your WORDS and point of view on a thread.
The fact that you felt compelled to give a descriptive of yourself so that "THEY KNOW" of your layman prowess speaks more volume than you know-Dumb-ass!
.
but I am relapsing …
Poor Zimmerman got bonked on the head, humiliated, smacked on the nose, and now he has to stand trial (or plead) for murder.
Many of us feel sorry for him, for all that. Others, not.
Bosco, your outrage is misplaced.
You’re outraged that people are not being “fair” to Zimmerman?
In view of the fact that those of whom you complain so bitterly are unarmed, are not near Zimmerman while he goes about his business, and have no intent to shoot Zimmerman, your sense of outrage is something that you may continue to harbor and express, and of course you may even revel in and stoke up for whatever it gives you, but it leaves me cold, it does not impress me, it does not worry me, it does not make me feel I have to answer to you for it, and I will never change my positions based upon it, no matter how many times you emphasize how right you are in judging me to be so impossibly and “refusedly” wrong and bad.
We do NOT have to agree to disagree on anything, Bosco. You can disagree that I should be allowed to disagree, in fact. It may have some effect on something in the universe at some point in time, but not on me, not here, not now.