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Judge Rules Defense Can Use Trayvon Martin Tweets
theodp writes "The NY Times reports a judge in the second-degree murder case against George Zimmerman has ruled that Trayvon Martin's school and social media records should be provided to the defense. Judge Debra S. Nelson said Martin's Twitter, Facebook and school records were relevant in the self-defense case. In those instances, showing whether a victim 'had an alleged propensity to violence' or aggression is germane, the judge said. The defense also got permission for access to the social media postings of a Miami girl who said she was on the phone with Martin just before the shooting. Time to update the Miranda warning to include: 'Anything you Tweet or post can and will be held against you in a court of law'?'"
Nope, I'm staying outta this one. Just keep walking, everyone.
This case has always been much more about media bias than about a mexican shooting a black.
Tweeting, and posting on facebook or other social sites are forms of speech, speech is protected by the first amendment but that said it can also be used against you in any court of law. 'Anything you say can and will be used against you' so I think the current miranda rights cover that.
So nothing really ground breaking here as far as I'm concerned.
As in; "Anything you Tweet or post can and will be held against you in a court of law'?'"
The last time this case was featured, we got some pretty damn detailed descriptions about how the brave vigilante Zimmerman shot a 100 pounds lighter unarmed criminal in desperate self-defence, or how the helpless kid Martin was brutally murdered by a psychotic racist pursuing him for wearing a hoodie. So, any bets on how this round of defending one's position on an issue one can't possibly have any informed opinion about by making shit up goes?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Zimmerman, not Martin, is the accused here so of course he should be entitled to what ever exculpatory evidence he can find. If the "Miami girl who said she was on the phone with Martin just before the shooting" wanted her social media postings protected on 5th amendment grounds and the court found that they weren't protected there might be a story here, but the summary at least doesn't hint at that.
In most criminal trials they can't bring up what a scumbag the guy has been in the past. Wonder whats going on here.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Consider: A protected twitter account, a twitter account that is public, a posting on Facebook that is restricted to certain friends, a posting that is open to friends of friends, your school records, your medical records. In each instance, there is a varying degree of privacy expected. That degree of privacy ought to be the measure of how a court accesses the information, rather than the medium the information is stored in.
Okay so you say "Time to update the Miranda warning to include: 'Anything you Tweet or post can and will be held against you in a court of law'?'"' And FTFH "Judge Debra S. Nelson said Martin's Twitter, Facebook and school records were relevant in the self-defense case." Miranda is for the accused. Basically your snide comment makes your headline look dumb.
The defense has argued that Trayvon was the aggressor and are going to see if his school records and online life back that up. The internet is not some parallel dimension with no relationship to our real lives. If Trayvon was into "Thug Life", MMA, etc... or was suspended for getting into fist fights at school (he was suspended at least 3 times) then this is relevant to the case at hand as it makes the notion that he attacked Zimmerman more believable.
Time to update the Miranda warning to include: 'Anything you Tweet or post can and will be held against you in a court of law'?
Sorry but courts allow emails to be introduced as evidence so long as authenticity can be established. Why shouldn't this hold true for tweets and facebook posts? This has absolutely nothing to do with Miranda.
That's true about the defendant, but we're talking about the victim here. It's much easier to get character evidence entered about the victim than it is about the defendant.
WTF! Trayvon is dead. Why would the cops give him a Miranda warning?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
"Anything you tweeted six months ago can and will be twisted to portray you in whatever light suits the prosecutor's agenda."
It amazes me that so few people understand how truly dangerous social media is. Everyone who uses it is creating a permanent record of things that used to be hearsay. Even the most innocuous posts can come back to haunt you. Like any corporation, people need to be exceptionally careful about the image they present, even if they believe it to be private. Failing to so so could easily affect ones entire life.
For example, Take a fellow we just received a resume for. The gentleman had all of the qualifications we were looking for, and did quite well on a phone interview. Googling for this guy produced some pictures of what we presumed to be college gatherings that demonstrated extremely poor judgement on this guys part. Final result: no in person interview, they guy is on our block list, and he will never even know why he didn't get an in person interview. How many different opportunities is he going to miss out on that he will never know he missed because of those photos. Same thing goes for all social media postings. How long before Facebook decides to start "enhancing their revenue" by providing this kind of damning information to HR services for a fee. The company I work for wouldn't hesitate for a second to pay for such a "search", and neither would a lot of places. Facebook has almost no real risk of exposure because no HR department would want to publicize this kind of research, and people would have no way of finding out they had been the "victim" of such a search.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
This is to be used for the defense, not for the prosecutor.
Even if the kid was bragging about breaking into houses, and even if Zimmerman was aware that Martin broke into houses, that doesn't clear Zimmerman: A citizen with evidence of somebody else's criminal behavior that isn't in immediate danger is supposed to notify the police, not shoot the alleged criminal.
What I'm assuming they're claiming they're after is evidence that Martin was a violent person who was likely to have responded to Zimmerman by assaulting him. What they're actually almost definitely after is information that they can use to drag Martin's name through the mud to try to convince the jury that Martin's life was not worth protecting under the law.
I watched a defense attorney try this exact move while I was sitting on a jury. The defendant had been accused of smashing a brick over the victim's head, making her smoke crack, dragging her into a house, and then cutting up her face with a knife. The defense counsel offered no defense except to insinuate as much as he could get away with that the victim had entered the house voluntarily and traded the use of her car for the drugs. The jury realized very quickly that this didn't matter at all, because the available evidence made it quite clear that defendant had still taken a knife to the victim, and we were only asked to decide whether an assault with a deadly weapon had occurred. It was plain to me that the point of the "defense" was not to suggest that the defendant was innocent, but to suggest that the victim was a worthless human being so we wouldn't care what the defendant had done.
I am officially gone from
This is definately a "blame the victim" move... Pretty low for the courts.
I don't see what good it would do? Unless the kid was bragging about breaking into houses or getting into fights, there's not much gonna clear the guy. In fact, if the kid tweets about being followed once before, even if he's upset about it, then it's only going to backfire.
But he was bragging. Bragging about punching bus drivers in the face. He was also seen in YouTube videos refereeing Fight Club style fights.
You can read some of his tweets here: http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/26/the-daily-caller-obtains-trayvon-martins-tweets/
And if you think someone if blaming the victim, you're right. They are blaming Zimmerman for defending himself. Read the NYT article carefully. Every article from the NYT and most media outlets always make reference to Trayvon being unarmed as if that means you should never be shot or be the recipient of deadly force. The also say Trayvon "hurt" Zimmerman's head. Hurt? Hurt is when you trip and skid your knee. Hurt is not what happens when someone is slamming your head into a concrete pavement.
The courts have *long* recognized that deadly force can be used against unarmed attacker(s) under certain conditions.
Again, all part of the narrative put for by most media outlets --especially the anti-gun NYT-- that despise guns in the hands of civilians and those who use them for self defense.
I'm surprised that the comments here seem to lean toward supporting the Martin side of the story instead of the Zimmerman side. If Zimmerman just wanted to shoot Martin, why did he get in to a physical altercation first? Why did he call 911? Can we at least give Zimmerman a chance to state his case? Isn't it possible, even probable, that Martin attacked Zimmerman after being followed?
The first verdict in this thread came from some "other" AC....
All public tweets are archived in the Library of Congress, so why not...
No it is not "blame the victim" move. It is putting all relevant facts into the daylight move in my opinion. If you are a proven aggressor against law enforcement or any other thing for that matter and if you were in a conflict with this group, it is the other party's right to present what and who you are with all publicly available information. Otherwise, we are going into the gray area of a homeowner shooting a thief inside his house and getting sued for the thief's injuries.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Why should they need to have prior knowledge?
In an fairly extreme example: if I post on FB about my martial arts hobby that I'm going to go out and beat some random guy on the street up. Then I'm shot dead out on the street. Then the shooter is prosecuted for shooting innocent me with wide reporting of how innocuous I was. Then it's certainly reasonable to use my prior statements displaying bad intent to call that description of me into question and of my martial arts training to suggest capabilities beyond what might normally be expected of someone my age and appearance.
I don't know all the details of this case and almost certainly neither do you. But it's ludicrous to suggest prior statements are only relevant if the defendant knew about them beforehand or can't be used in this situation under some misunderstanding of the constitutional protections of free speech.
I agree 100%.. once you post it publicly, there is no taking it back. You can't un-ring that bell. Think in terms of the novel 1984. The only thing safe from tampering is your thoughts. In that novel they convinced the populous that they had thought police to even spy on that.
Time to update the Miranda warning to include: 'Anything you Tweet or post can and will be held against you in a court of law'?'"
In 1912, instant messaging meant sending a telegram or mailing a postcard. "Ten words or less." In 2012, you tweet. That changes nothing. Evidence that is relevant to an issue in dispute is admissible unless there is a compelling legal reason to exclude it.
A Miranda warning is required only when you are about to be interrogated by the police, with damn few exceptions, what you expose to others has always been fair game.
Even if the kid was bragging about breaking into houses, and even if Zimmerman was aware that Martin broke into houses, that doesn't clear Zimmerman: A citizen with evidence of somebody else's criminal behavior that isn't in immediate danger is supposed to notify the police, not shoot the alleged criminal.
What I'm assuming they're claiming they're after is evidence that Martin was a violent person who was likely to have responded to Zimmerman by assaulting him.
Zimmerman has always articulated from day one that he shot to stop the active attack. That he only got out of his car to give the relevant information to the 911 dispatcher of Martin's whereabouts. That Martin came back to confront ZImmerman, threw a punch and continued to beat him while he was supine on the ground. Being on the ground with an attacker actively slamming your head into the concrete pavement is reason enough for using deadly force to stop and attack.
Zimmerman has never said that he shot Martin for looking suspicious. The media has latched onto speculation --as if it were fact-- that ZImmerman merely shot someone for walking around. The media has put forth the accusation that Stand Your Ground laws allow for this to happen legally when nothing could be further from the truth.
P.S. Guess which state was the first to enact a Stand Your Ground Law? California. Yes. Hardly the red state bastion of the NRA.
Here's a very informative video about what Stan Your Ground laws are really about: http://www.cato.org/multimedia/events/stand-ground-laws-self-defense-or-license-kill
Mr. Martin is not on trial. He's dead. Mr. Zimmerman is on trial. If the prosecution could find any "Tweets" or FaceBook postings of his that they could use against him the court would permit it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
You also forget that the Miranda warning is there to tell you that you do not have to speak to the police, and nothing more. Mr Martin or Mr Zimmerman could have either written things on paper, online, or in blood and they can be used in a court of law. It doesn't matter when or where you write your stuff down, if the prosecution or defense find it, and can prove its admissible, it's in. Finally, Miranda Rights do not protect anything you say to the police, at all. The only way you can have something thrown out due to lack of notification of Miranda rights is if you can show that they intended to arrest you, or did arrest you, and asked you to talk without Mirandizing you first. This is why, if you watch videos of police interviews, they almost always ask the person if it is okay to talk to them each and every time an officer comes into the room. However, if the police come by to ask you questions as a witness, or neighbor to a crime, and you say something incriminating during that questioning, you're screwed. That's why there is a YouTube series from an ex-cop, now lawyer talking about why you should never ever talk to the police.
It's the way the system works. It's how it's designed. If a fact is relevant, then it's admissible. The defence is arguing that this is relevant. Given that he's going to be locked away from society for a very long time and have his life ruined, I don't think it's too much to ask to be absolutely sure that his actions were totally unjustified.
It's important that all relevant facts are disclosed. The court is meant to consider these facts impartially. If the court can't be impartial, and we need to hide factual information from the jury, then we have bigger problems than this specific decision.
You think he's guilty. That's fair enough. So do I. The court is acting on the presumption that he's innocent, and that's how it should be.
you KNOW that's not why they're doing it. If this were the case, half of court cases would have the lawyers looking through victims' internet history. They're only doing it in this case because widely-publicized stories always lead to biased rulings, and they want to look for any and every angry comment or argument the kid's ever made online to give him a negative image.
You aren't going to see the defense showing any tweets like "brb gonna go beat up this neighborhood watch guy" or "lol gonna rob a store without a gun" or anything that would indicate that Trayvon had bad intentions the night he was killed. Instead you're only going to see negative comments he made on completely irrelevant things like youtube videos or on somebody's facebook wall weeks or months prior to his murder.
He shot and killed a man.
True.
He deliberately went out with a weapon
True. It's legal in Florida.
to kill someone.
Not True.
How is that not murder?
You're not seeing the difference between homicide and murder. He admits killing Martin, but - as the law allows - says it was in self-defense.
And maybe you got rid of your best candidate because of prejudice based on what he does in his private life. You're part of the worst scum of this Earth. Fuck you.
So you declined an interview to a qualified applicant because they partied in college?
I hate to break it to you, but almost all your other interviewee's did too. What we need to do - as a society - is recognize certain social norms. We already do to an extent, but its the silent code that its all ok until you get caught.
Having just read RA Salvatore's Homeland it reminds me of the Drow society - everyone attacking each other and scheming and its fine if you get away with it but if you get caught society punished you to the utmost.
Hypocrisy at its finest.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Being on the ground with an attacker actively slamming your head into the concrete pavement is reason enough for using deadly force to stop and attack.
being in such a situation isn't going to give you much opportunity to draw a weapon and fire it, let alone do much else.
I guess the facts of the case are too tied up in partisan opinion and vested interest to make a good verdict happen.
I'm not defending the kid but, wouldn't shooting an unarmed man (or boy) be responding with "excessive force"? They threw stones so I shot them is not a valid defense.
But the jury isn't being asked to decide whether an "assault with a deadly weapon" has occurred. They're being asked to decide whether or not the killing of Trayvon Martin was an act of self defense (and thus unfortunate, but legal under Florida law), or an act of 2nd degree murder (and thus illegal, and carrying with it a stiff prison sentence).
Since all we have is one side of the story, past patterns of behavior on the part of Martin & Zimmerman may be very relevant in assessing the evidence. *IF* Martin has a history of breaking into houses, getting into fights, etc. etc., then it makes Zimmerman's story - that he was standing there when Martin approached him and assaulted him - somewhat more believable. If Martin is shown to be the poster boy for good kids everywhere, then it makes it far less believable. Just as past patterns of behavior on Zimmerman's part are relevant - does he have a history of racism? does he have a history of assault? does he have a history of waving his gun around like a maniac? All of these things would make his story LESS believable.
It's all relevant, because there simply aren't many facts beyond "deceased young black male, shot at close range" and the defendant's claim that "I was jumped, and acted in self defense." What a jury is being asked to decide is - is Zimmerman's story reasonable?
Fact, the young man (17 years old) was shot in the back
Nope, shot in the chest, from the front
and the evidence suggests he was shot at some distance, apparently trying to run for his life.
Nope. Estimated distance was 24 to 36 inches, about arms length for someone his height.
Their has never been a single bit of corroborating evidence that Mr. Zimmerman was in any way assaulted.
Nope. His face and head showed signs of a severe beating and Martin's knuckles were bruised in a way consistent with punching someone in the face and head.
It you attack a cop with stones or a knife or even your hands, it is not excessive force for them to shoot you. Why should it be any different for the public?
Well, in Florida you are allowed to use deadly force against a person if you feel threatened and are in a place you have a right to be. Unfortunately both people in this case can make that claim since they were both allowed to be where they were...
After seeing so many comments on Miranda rights, I couldn't help drop this link: http://www.salon.com/2011/03/24/obama_rolls_back_miranda/
I think it pretty well shows that Miranda warnings aren't what they used to be, if they are anything at all.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Only if you believe it's impossible for an unarmed man (or boy) to kill you or do serious bodily harm to you. Since there are plenty of examples of that happening, I'd say no, defending yourself with a gun against someone attacking you with their body is not excessive force.
Deadly force should never be used, even in self defense.
There are times that deadly force MUST sometimes be used in self defense, if you intend to survive.
Because officers are given firearms training, as well as training in the use of non-lethal self-defense?
Look at it this way: If you got in a fist fight with someone, would you want them to pull a gun on you, kill you, and get away?
thatescalatedquickly.jpg
It sounds more like they declined to interview him based on his poor judgment of partying... but of posting pictured that paint him in a rather unprofessional light.
Are user-deleted tweets retained for a period of time on Twitter's severs? Perhaps indefinitely?
Yeah, because everyone who listens to hip-hop or trains MMA is a violent thug! Maybe he played some violent video games too! They should dig up his Call Of Duty account and see how many kills he has! Or maybe he has an Orc character in that satanic WoW game!
Not what OP said or probably meant. Nice strawman, though!
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
This is probably one of the dumbest things I've ever read on Slashdot
Zimmerman weighed all of ten pounds more than Martin, but you seem incredibly misinformed and about 8 months behind on this. Try to catch up
If they exist, you sure would. You do realize that the "defense" in this case refers to George Zimmerman's legal team, defending him against the charge of 2nd degree murder - of which he is innocent, until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt... right?
If those tweets exist, they'd certainly be used. Just like if Zimmerman tweeted, "BRB GONNA GO MURDER A BLACK KID IN A HOODIE," the prosecution would be waving those around as well. In both cases, neither Zimmerman nor Martin were quite so obvious about their intentions. And in both cases, the opposing legal teams will seek to use past incidents, statements, and character witnesses to support their point.
The defense will try to cast doubt on the charge of 2nd degree murder by showing that Martin was a violent, antisocial kid who had a habit and a history of getting in fights and behaving violently. This would support Zimmerman's story that he was assaulted by Martin.
The prosecution will try to show that Zimmerman has a long history of racism, harrassment of minorities, and irresponsible gun handling, in order to make the idea that he assaulted Martin and then shot him for no reason other than that he was a black kid walking around the neighborhood.
If Martin has many incidents of fighting and run-ins with the cops and school authorities, and Zimmerman has a pretty clean history, then that pattern of behavior would support Zimmerman's claims. If Martin, on the other hand, is pretty much a choirboy, and Zimmerman has a long history of harassing minorities in his neighborhood, that would cast a lot of doubt on his "self defense" claims.
If Zimmerman outwieghed Martin by 70 pounds, it was obviously not 70 pounds of muscle. So, yeah, it's quite possible the pudgy guy got knocked to the ground. The video you refer to wasn't very good. Other pictures clearly show injuries. One thing everyone wants to ignore is that injuries take time to show. I took a very hard blow to the back that left a tiny scratch. Two days later I had an impressive bruise 15" or more across.
IMO, there's no arguing that Zimmerman shouldn't have confronted Martin. Martin wasn't doing anything wrong. If Martin jumped Zimmerman, this is clear self defense. If not, it's murder. Which was it? I have no idea. Good luck, jury. I hope you get it right.
Yeah, like the persona a 17 year old black might create on the internet for the consumption of his friends and peers would never be exaggerated or puffed up to give himself greater street creed. This is like the poor guy that spent 20 years in jail because he lived in the same greater neighborhood as a girl that was murdered and he was caught drawing zombies and gore in his junior high home room. Kids do stupid things, its part of the growing up process, its why driving insurance for a 17 year old is astronomical. None that justifies hunting them down and executing them.
If Martin is shown to be the poster boy for good kids everywhere, then it makes it far less believable.
Of course, that could be highly unfair treatment. It assumes that past behavior is a reliable predictor of future behavior.
That is sometimes, but not always the case.
We can't even use past performance to reliably predict stock prices, and the behavior of individual humans has far more uncertainty.
It would be quite unfair to all involved to rely on just a story alone, and a history of past behavior. It's quite believable that the "poster boy for good kids everywhere" could decide do something wrong, due to known or unknown motivation; or that someone who often did bad things did not do anything wrong in this instance.
The Florida law makes no exception for provocation. It doesn't matter. The law is written poorly, but that doesn't make you right
Yeah, because that kind of guy applies for jobs that require a resume and interview....uh huh.
A fist fight can easily end in the death of one of the parties. If you didn't start the fight, is your only option supposed to be lay there and take it? Hope you don't end up dead by the time the attacker stops?
Non-lethal self defense training or not, you pull a knife and get close to an officer, you're getting shot and rightfully so.
Chances are he's shown throwing up at a party and OP will act like he has never done this in his life, or that he's a better man because it didn't show on Facebook (never mind the fact that everyone and their cat has a camera now)
Not that it matters, because you employ someone because of their skills, not what they do on their weekend. If the guy has pictures of him smoking a blunt in the server room it's a different story.
being in such a situation isn't going to give you much opportunity to draw a weapon and fire it, let alone do much else.
Nice blanket assumption. Ever been in that exact situation?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Multiple friends and himself put him at 170 the night of the shooting. The weigh listed was on his license, which can be months or years out of date. You're still wrong about just about everything in your post though. So try to keep up.
How many other "facts" do you want to make up? Your entire post reads like a fantasy novel and takes away any bit of credibility you might have had. Shit, you even made up the supposed direct quotes from him you use.
So following someone gives them the right to assault you? But being assaulted isn't enough reason to defend yourself ?
This nation is in serious trouble - if you knew him, you knew the kid was going to be shot one day. Only a matter of time for his attitude type. We all just hoped he might survive the first shooting so he had a chance to change his ways. Didn't work out that way.
NYT piece here listing him at 170 lbs: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/us/trayvon-martin-shooting-prompts-a-review-of-ideals.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all At his booking he was listed at 185, but weight can fluctuate, especially under high stress conditions, which I think you'd agree he'd been under. Either way, it's not like Zimmerman was a grown man fighting a toddler. A 17 year old football player is going to be strong and in great shape. That doesn't make Zimmerman right or even in a moral grey area for what he did, but quit trying to portray someone like Martin as a helpless child.
Police didn't tell him shit, a 911 dispatcher did (hint, you are under no legal obligation to do a damn thing that a dispatcher tells you), his only response was "Ok". In 2 different posts you've made up completely different quotes of his, you can't even keep your false statements consistent even minutes apart.
Following someone isn't stalking them, it isn't hunting them down, stop using loaded phrases. If he suspects someone of illegal doing, he can legally follow them, if someone else initiates a physical attack on him, he's allowed to defend himself, even if it's with a gun.
The only thing that doesn't wash is your ability to fabricate every bit of "evidence" you've claimed.
Unfortunately, "Turning around and swinging at someone who's annoying you," is not a proper response to any sort provocation, short of actual self defense against a physical assault, and the law in Florida makes no allowance for whether or not you were "provoked" into assaulting someone.
The "appropriate" response to someone following and harassing you is to call the police, and report the incident, and ask for a police officer to come and assist you. Not to turn around and coldcock your harasser.
According to Zimmerman's story, all he did was follow Martin so he could report where he was when the police arrived. If that is true, there is nothing illegal about that, even if Martin viewed it as "annoying" or "provocative."
Sorry for the illiterate morons who can't grasp context, I guess I should have said Zimmerman weighed 170.
I think everyone can agree that Zimmerman probably should not have pursued Martin any further once he called in the local authorities. He may have been stalking, he may have been simply trying to keep an eye on the kid to make sure he didn't do anything in that neighborhood which was illegal or wrong - the court case will bring that portion to light, if the prosecution and defense are on the ball.
However the altercation started, it quickly went one-sided (as most altercations do) and ended up with the defendant using deadly force to stop his attacker. He was on his back, he'd had a large laceration to the back of his head from falling and/or being pounded on the concrete. Those are two things which if taken alone, would already warrant the use of escalated force.
The rule is that you escalate force as necessary to thwart the opposite force, using the means available to you. If you possess pepper spray, a truncheon, and a sidearm then your escalation of force is pretty obvious, as it would be in the case of an everyday law enforcement officer. If all you have is a pistol, then you go from fists to lethal force instantly when a certain threshold is crossed by the assailant. Since you can't be sure that the guy who smashed your skull into the concrete and is mounted on top of you will stop at any point, you pull the trigger and keep pulling until you're out of ammo or the threat is neutralized.
Personally, I think the prosecution overcharged this case. Murder Two can be extremely difficult to prove beyond reasonable doubt when there multiple eye witnesses; on a dark/rainy night with little direct testimony it may be nearly impossible . If they'd really wanted a shot at putting Zimmerman behind bars, they'd have gone for manslaughter.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Except you willfully ignore the part about getting into trouble for fighting and other things, and just leave it at what he likes to listen to and watch. Him getting into trouble for fighting plays into the assumption of the previous 2 and makes it not profoundly ignorant.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
If I yell and curse at you, that can be considered provoking, If I yell at you and you come charging at me trying to harm me, then I have a right to defend myself from you.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Seems fair to me. Use all social media comments as required. I'd never speed, burgle, assault or defraud anyone. Ever, ever, ever. And you can tell that to the judge! Please do!
So I fail to see how they are relevant to the situation where he killed this kid.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
In the same way invading Iraq wasn't self defence. You can call it a defence department, you can make up all the shit you want about being for 'deterrence', or weapons of mass destruction or the like. But that doesn't make it defence.
The Zimmerman/Martin thing is harder to figure out, it's possible the KID was acting in self defence, thinking some joker was following him and took pre-emptive action and got himself shot (hence the wounds on zimmermans head) it's possible he was a bad kid trying to assault someone, it's possible zimmerman is just a nutter allowed to own a gun and finally decided now was his chance. Honestly, I have no fucking clue. It's he said vs the dead guy + whatever physical evidence they have. That's not a strong case for anything. That doesn't mean Zimmerman didn't decide this was his chance to be a vigilante hero - but that's hard to prove, and it's harder to know what the dead guy was thinking, given that he's well, dead, but the burden of proof either way is going to be tough, because Zimmerman, even if he was the most honest person in the world, doesn't know what Martin thought he was up to.
And of course, to go back to my military analogy. How is Iran wanting nuclear weapons not self defence? This is the problem, when you let people carry guns everyone who might get into a dangerous situation has to assume the other guy might have a gun and might use it, and then your country starts to look a lot like tribal pakistan or Yeman.
Time to update the Miranda warning to include: 'Anything you Tweet or post can and will be held against you in a court of law'? Although I am assuming (hopefully correctly) that the above is in jest, It seems obvious to me that it would be the case without needing any clarification on the matter specifically when a person's character is to be determined. Anything you say means just that, not just in front of an officer. This is a touchy case for a lot of reasons, although I am in favor of prosecution from my limited knowledge of the case just on him being told not to follow the suspect any longer. Had he simply done that we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Fact is, social media postings and school/work/ect records are used all the time, the only difference is this case is all over the media.
On the internet everybody is a bigger mouth than in reality. I know quite a few people which have semi "violent" forums post, but are cowards in real life. Saying that facebook post shows a history of violence is utterly bullshit. A history of violence is when you bully others, steal, go into a lot of fight. Facebook post are for poseur. If this is used as defense than it is utter bullshit. I hope the prosecutor make sure to check trayvon in real life to show such "history of violence" from facebook psot for the bull it is.
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visit randi.org
So you declined an interview to a qualified applicant because they partied in college?
No where in that post did I say it was a party. In point of fact, it looked to be some kind of hazing ritual. It wasn't even the candidates involvement in the ritual that put the nails in the coffin. If it had been hearsay, we would have dismissed it. The part that got him permanently removed from consideration was that he was stupid enough to allow evidence of a crime to be permanently recorded. That kind of lapse in judgement we can do without. The posting of the pictures were obviously thought to have been private, but through one stupidity or another, the pictures were made publicly available. The moral of the story, is never trust any repository of legally admissible evidence that you, yourself, cannot legally set fire to and destroy.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
What in the world does Miranda have to do with this case? Does everyone understand that the term "Miranda" refers to a specific Supreme Court case that dealt with the rights of persons who were placed under arrest, and where prosecutors wanted to bring their statements to the police as evidence against them into the case? Miranda has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the statements of a deceased person who was never arrested and who is not facing prosecution. The ONLY person who could raise a Miranda issue in this case would be Zimmerman's attorney, on behalf of his client. C'mon people - don't be completely ignorant of the basics of the law - it will only hurt your chances for success in life.
If you didn't start the fight, is your only option supposed to be lay there and take it? Hope you don't end up dead by the time the attacker stops?
That's what the judge told me back in high school. ``You can't fight back unless your life is in danger! Here is a 400$ fine, don't do it again.''
But that's all we have. So what would you rather they do - release Zimmerman, drop the charges, and forget about it? Or investigate, and determine whether or not it's reasonable to believe a crime was (or wasn't) committed?
I'd much rather see the investigation conducted, personally. I'd hate to think that our justice system will basically exonerate you by default - as long as you kill the other people who could contradict your account.
(1) this is an unusual, though not unheard of, use of what is rule 404. However, it opens up the chance of a mistrial and appeal.
(2) it also means the defense has opened the door to 404(a)(2)(B)(ii):
(B) subject to the limitations in Rule 412, a defendant may offer evidence of an alleged victim’s pertinent trait, and if the evidence is admitted, the prosecutor may: (i) offer evidence to rebut it; and (ii) offer evidence of the defendant’s same trait; and
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Is still public data, regardless of what 'medium' its in, and is admissible if its relevant.
Dont want it in court someday, dont blab it everywhere to everyone.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You don't think somebody wouldn't mention to friends, relatives, etc that the company they work for uses it? That a disgruntled ex employee of Facebook or a company that uses it wouldn't mention it?
It would become common knowledge very quickly and open up a shitstorm of trouble for FB.
You don't think its common practice for HR to do a simple Google search for every applicants public profile? So what if HR is looking at Facebook postings as well. Its not like people are compelled to post on Facebook. With a global economy, there are thousands of applicants for every position. Of the ones that are qualified, there can often be little to differentiate, so HR will use whatever means at their disposal to whittle the selection down to just a manageable number. Why else do you think job listings are so damn specific these days. They're not trying to get just that one guy out of a million, they're trying to weed out the other 999,000 applicants, and get down to a number they can work with. They are looking for any reason at all to disqualify, and thereby simplify the task of sorting through the remaining applicants. Facebook wont care because the vast majority of their users wont care. Slashdot != normal society.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
You had a shitty lawyer, would have been easy to argue that you were afraid for your life, that is unless you decided to throw the first punch.
its not an assasination if its all true and the kid was scum.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Actually even that doesn't matter. There have been cases where someone initiated a confrontation, only for it to have been escalated and finished with deadly force by the defendant, who got off because Florida's law doesn't care about provocation. These cases all come down to the witnesses, and right now we only have one. Regardless of whether or not the law is good/just or Zimmerman deserves to walk, he likely will because of a lack of evidence and/or legal vagueness.
But since defending yourself with your body against someone attacking you with a gun is also not excessive force, there's a bit of a problem here. Zimmerman was hunting Martin down and was armed with a gun. Martin clearly felt his life and safety were threatened by Zimmerman. So, you have two people committing an act of self-defence against each other. So, then you have to ask how the heck this situation happened and could it have been foreseen. I think that a violent confrontation is a foreseeable consequence of hunting someone against police advice. So, when someone dies as a result of foreseeable consequences and their own negligence, it's generally considered to be at least manslaughter.
Its called "paraphrasing", if you need the call verbatim here is the actual call. In it, you will hear Mr. Zimmerman being far more concerned the black kid would "Get away" than the possibility that someone's life might be at stake, and that the dispatcher clearly informs him to leave it to the police. And though he is not legally required to obey the dispatcher (or even an officer had he been speaking to one) that places the onus of the subsequent events on his choice to pursue and ultimately precipitate a deadly shooting. He willfully placed himself in what was for him a threatening situation and then chose deadly force to resolve it, and I'm sorry, but the account in question simply doesn't make sense. He claims injuries he didn't have. If he lied about those, then how can we take the rest of his story with any seriousness. The problem here is not the gun. It is the vigilante and that is why we have the rule of law. Let me put this another way. If I take a bus to the middle of a ghetto, get out and walk down the street, and someone get's up in my face for being in the wrong place, and I get scared because this looks like its escalating to physical violence, do I have the right to shoot this man, and now that I've terrorized an entire neighborhood by that logic don't they all have the right shoot me? The kid was running away from perceived danger, it was right there on the call. Zimmerman was stalking the kid, and he had the gun. What else matters. He was free at every moment up to the final confrontation to walk away, only this black kid wasn't going to get away. And he didn't.
Miranda has nothing to do with this, it guarantees the rights of the defendant/accused, not the victim, and that's how it should be.
A bit hyperbolic, but it touches on several essentials. The causes of Martin's suspensions have been revealed repeatedly, and they are not violence related, but some people on Slashdot are willing to post speculations that there's something beyond that. When you keep looking for the thing that bolsters your opinion, and it's just not there, just maybe it's time to question your opinon instead of doubling down on it.
Beyond that, there was a point where the police locally knew a few things and only those things, for certain. At later times, other facts came to light, and the situation became more complex, but in the first few hours after the shooting, there was a definite point where all the police had to go on were these facts:
1. They knew they had a homicide, and who did it.
2. They knew that the person who did it was claiming it was justifiable self defense.
3. They knew there were major flaws in the shooter's story - changes in the range the encounter supposedly took place at, changes in what the suspect said to dispatch, what he claimed dispatch said to him, how the deceased person had attacked him, what blows were thrown, what blows landed where, and so on. They knew that their possible murderer had repeatedly changed his story.
So why didn't they charge him right there and then?
All debate about what has been revealed weeks or months later ignores this simple question. There was a definite point where George Zimmerman was a strong suspect for a charge of 1st degree murder. Most detectives would have been willing to insist on holding him for at least the standard 24, and go before a judge to apply for a warrent to search Mr. Zimmerman's home. Many would have been willing to get the judge up at 3 AM, if needed, on the strength of what they had at that particular point. Why not in the Martin case?
Who is John Cabal?
You are the perfect personification of what is wrong with this case.
it's possible he was a bad kid trying to assault someone,
Even based on Zimmerman's version of events that's not very likely. Or at least not very likely in the particular situation that led to Martin's death.
If that "unarmed man (or boy)" has a rock, he's not unarmed. A rock can (and has, and will no doubt again) kill if thrown with sufficient force and aim. 17 year old boys routinely throw baseballs at a very small target in the range of 50- to 80-miles per hour (see: Little League, pitching), it's not all that difficult to throw a similarly sized rock over shorter distances with a lot of accuracy.
Now, somebody throwing a single rock, and it clattering harmlessly down the sidewalk behind me because they missed me, certainly shooting them in response would be a questionable decision. But what's been alleged by Mr. Zimmerman is that Mr. Martin jumped on him, and began slamming his head into the concrete slab of the sidewalk. In that case, again, it would be very easy to kill someone, and shooting someone who seems to be trying to kill you by splitting your head open on the sidewalk doesn't seem that excessive to me.
Why don't you explain to us why you think it *is* excessive? Assuming that you are Zimmerman, and somebody is slamming your head into the sidewalk - how do you defend yourself? What's your strategy?
What's really going to bake your noodle later on is that GP probably partied in college, too. Maybe the guy he rejected didn't want to work for hypocrites.
For instance as much as I've posted about being trans here, if a potential employer finds my UID and rejects me on that basis, I don't want to work for them either. Doesn't waste my time with an interview that might end in "you're really a guy?!?!?!omg1111eleven GTFO COPS ON THE WAY." (Similar has happened to me, cops were not amused by the guy who called them.)
After all, if my employer is so worried about what I do in my free time, there's going to be one hell of an awkward conversation when he finds out that my three week trip to Europe is really three weeks of me recovering from sex change surgery. If this boss is female, I could be assaulted and/or accused of rape when she realizes a "man" was using the same bathroom as her for the past say 4 or 5 years or however long it takes me to save up after I move on from my current employer. (I'll need to stock up on popcorn for when I start living as a woman with a female name, even at work. A few sexist women I work with are going to head asplode and the drama's gonna fly.)
Better to just avoid the whole drama and let employers like that live with their second-rate but squeaky clean employees.
So, in other words, I completely agree with you, and I think the free market will sort it out.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
From the information released so far, I've been in a similar enough situation to believe that Zimmerman is lying.
Learn to love Alaska
Well, Zimmerman admitted to chasing Martin, so I think we can be pretty certain who initiated the confrontation. He was carrying a gun and, when Martin approached him, I'm pretty certain Zimmerman's story is that he turned away from Martin and went for his phone. If Martin saw that he was carrying a gun, which is very likely given the clothing Zimmerman was wearing, he would have had very good reason to think that Zimmerman was going for his gun.
I'm not sure anybody would ever want to work for you if you summarily dismiss people for things you find questionable. Was he a Nazi, having sex with goats, or attending a Klan meeting? If not, why in the hell would you care? Do you want everyone to be a clone of you or your corporation? Do you not value individualism and the inherent strengths of hiring a diverse pool of employees? I'm pretty sure I can find something somebody will find questionable about you, but that's their hangup. Smart companies understand this and don't go on social media witch hunts when hiring candidates.
People do stupid things. Young people do lots of stupid things. We all know that, but as a corporate officer, our job is to protect the company from risk as best we can. An employee with a demonstrated history of publicly bad judgement is a risk. No company will willingly take on risk if it doesn't have to, unless its officers are derelict in their duties. If an applicant is the only one who can do what is needed, the company might choose to take them, but these days, you get many times the number of applicants you used to. You show me a company that doesn't do a thorough background check as part of its hiring practices, and I'll show you a company that hasn't been burned yet. Everything an employee does has the potential to reflect negatively on a company. Just ask the secret service about their agents behavior in south America. Those people did, the things they did, on their own time, but it still reflected negatively on their employer. Funny how that works.
I bet those agents were dynamite fun to be around though.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
He shot and killed a man.
True.
He deliberately went out with a weapon to kill someone.
False. You're attributing intent where none has been proven. Carrying a gun does not equal intent to kill anymore than wearing your seat belt indicates an intention to get into a car wreck.
How is that not murder?
See above.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
So following someone gives them the right to assault you?
yes, in most cases.
But being assaulted isn't enough reason to defend yourself ?
not if you initiated the violence.
Learn to love Alaska
Which is immaterial to whether the defense should be able to look at it for potential use. You're talking about prior restraint because they might use it in a particular way even though there are legitimate reasons to investigate it for use.
'Anything you Tweet or post can and will be held against you in a court of law'?'"
This goes without saying when you're communicating in a place where there is no expectation of privacy.
While you're at it, why don't we add "shooting yourself in the head with gun could be fatal" and "consumption of raw plutonium could have serious health consequences"...
Twin or more? ITA
Apache/Spring/La
Furthermore, if you can't tell a candidate is an asshat long before you decide to google them, then your hiring practices need some work.
You missed the point: Long before the applicant gets the chance to say anything, their background check has already been completed. The only reason the guy I mentioned even got a phone call was because he was recommended by a current employee. Otherwise the background check would have been done first, and the interview would never have taken place. Normally inside recommendations move an applicant into the interview pile even if they do not meet 100% of the qualifications (saves us a bunch of effort if we can pass along a guy who the team is willing to take without having to wade through the resume pile. We can just interview the one candidate; If they pass, we skip the rest of the applicants altogether. The background check is a formality, but it still gets done for this very reason.)
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
I'm curious where you go from "you should call the police if someone is following you and harassing you," to "you should call the police when someone jumps on you and starts beating you."
Because that's not what I wrote at all, and I'm curious how your reading comprehension went so wrong so quickly.
Under Suspicion (released 2000) has a couple scenes well before its time, around how online activity can haunt you later.
I'll try not to give spoilers, but in one scene, they present Internet history and email logs.
Given the year, and admittedly my niavity about what was a mainstream technology that was only 5-6 years old(note mainstream), the scene was a wake up call for me.
It stood me in good stead when social media came along. Post like your are writing to the Editor and your real name will be published.
The film stars Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman. Two of my favorite actors to boot.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
From the description I've seen, there was one shot to the chest at about 3 feet distance. Not consistent with a panic shooting, nor with someone in grappling distance. Though Wikipedia lists the distance as "1 to 18 inches". But still one and only one shot. And no knuckle bruising noted, so a pummeling of Zimmerman by Martin doesn't seem likely. For all we know, Zimmerman caused his own wounds after to justify his killing. But we do know that his actions were not consistent with what a "reasonable person" would have done.
Learn to love Alaska
But a tweet by Martin has no impact on whether Zimmerman was justified. The facts of the case do (who did what), not trying to impeach the character of the deceased. Hopefully, the prosecution will be able to use this peek into private lives to show the pattern of aggression by Zimmerman.
Learn to love Alaska
Possibly.
The legal standard in most states for the use of deadly force is belief of imminent severe bodily injury or death. Essentially, would a reasonable person believe they might die or be severely injured and that use of deadly force would prevent it? States differ on what other avenues must be attempted prior to the use of deadly force, such as trying to run away, etc.
You can die in a fist fight. You can certainly sustain severe bodily injury.
There's another issue here. In most states, the initiator of the use or threat of force can't claim self defense. So if I punch you and we start fighting, you could then claim self defense if you shot me, but I couldn't if I shot you. The same if I pulled a knife and threatened to stab you.
And thirdly, there's the difference between what's moral and legal. There are probably situations where I'd think the person's choice to shoot was morally despicable but should be legal under the general principles of self defense.
So following someone gives them the right to assault you?
yes, in most cases.
But being assaulted isn't enough reason to defend yourself ?
not if you initiated the violence.
Neither of your responses are correct.
Violence is never a legal response to a nonviolent provocation. Sticks-and-stones and all that. Also, picking a fight (assault and battery) that turns into your victim trying to kill you allows for you to defend yourself against.
So much misinformation here. I'm sure you're one of the people who criticize the media for using old photos of Martin when he was younger and more innocent-looking. That is a valid criticism. By the same token, calling someone who hadn't been on a football team for years a football player is also deceptive. The strength and conditioning you get from a sport can go away pretty quickly once you stop playing it.
Also, based on the up-to-date (before his death, of course) pictures I've seen of Martin, as tough as he was trying to look, he was a stick insect. Comparing him to Zimmerman, who was a bouncer (unclear how recently since the events where he worked as a bouncer were illegal and he's not likely to want to admit to profiting from an illegal enterprise), I'm pretty sure Zimmerman could have broken him in half in any protracted fight.
" 'Anything you Tweet or post can and will be held against you in a court of law'?" Trayvon Martin is not a defendant in any proceedings Tweets and posts are not being used to put him in any legal jeopardy. What they will be used for is to paint a picture of who he was. Heaven forbid that the jury actually have a picture of Trayvon Martin close to what he really was instead of what the prosecution wants you to think he was.
The prosecution is probably going to be painting Martin as a living saint who would never harm anyone or anything, to pour doubt on Zimmerman's defence that he was attacked. If the tweets indicate violent behaviour then that will invalidate that line of argument.
That's just one thing that might happen. The defence team will have put together a lot of prosecution scenarios. It's not hard to imagine some of them will depend on the nature of the victim.
But the jury isn't being asked to decide whether an "assault with a deadly weapon" has occurred. They're being asked to decide whether or not the killing of Trayvon Martin was an act of self defense (and thus unfortunate, but legal under Florida law), or an act of 2nd degree murder (and thus illegal, and carrying with it a stiff prison sentence).
An act of self defense is an affirmative defense. You say to the jury, "Yes, I shot this person. But this why..." Self defense is legal in all the states of the Union. Why would it be unfortunate? People seem to think that Florida is somehow special in that you can shoot with impunity even if you just "feel" the least bit threatened. NOT TRUE.
Take New York State, for example. NYS (where I live) has no stand your ground law. The relevant statute says you have a duty to retreat when in public. BUT, it doesn't apply if you can't do so safely, e.g., I have a toddler with me, doing so would mean running into an active highway, I'm in a wheelchair, I'm wearing a cast on an appendage, etc.
In Florida, you have no duty to retreat if you are in a public place where you have every right to be. But all the other other legal standards for acting in self defense still apply. That is, was I the initial aggressor in the confrontation? Did the attacker have the ability to attack? Did he have the opportunity? Was he placing me in jeopardy? Read here: http://www.useofforce.us/3aojp/
Since all we have is one side of the story, past patterns of behavior on the part of Martin & Zimmerman may be very relevant in assessing the evidence. *IF* Martin has a history of breaking into houses, getting into fights, etc. etc., then it makes Zimmerman's story - that he was standing there when Martin approached him and assaulted him - somewhat more believable. If Martin is shown to be the poster boy for good kids everywhere, then it makes it far less believable. Just as past patterns of behavior on Zimmerman's part are relevant - does he have a history of racism? does he have a history of assault? does he have a history of waving his gun around like a maniac? All of these things would make his story LESS believable.
It's all relevant, because there simply aren't many facts beyond "deceased young black male, shot at close range" and the defendant's claim that "I was jumped, and acted in self defense." What a jury is being asked to decide is - is Zimmerman's story reasonable?
Not only that, but the legal standard would be: what would a reasonable person do at that time under those conditions knowing what the accused knew?
Get your head out your ass.
Clearly you missed the whole part of the MSM showing martin at 12 years old instead of 17, whitening his pictures, claiming Zimmerman as white, NBC editing a 911 call to further their narrative, etc.
You've self-identified as another Obaaaaama cultist.
Actually thats not true. This is the part of the florida stand your ground law that deals with provocation. The problem is not that the stand your ground law has no clause on provocation. The problem is section 2 (a) and (b) have such big loopholes that they are meaningless. The right limit to this law would be to prohibit aggressors from claiming protection under stand your ground...period. Someone who is defending themselves after provoking a fight can still use a traditional claim of self-defense and make their case to a jury.
776.041Use of force by aggressor.—
The justification described in the preceding sections of this chapter is not available to a person who:
(1)Is attempting to commit, committing, or escaping after the commission of, a forcible felony; or
(2)Initially provokes the use of force against himself or herself, unless:
(a)Such force is so great that the person reasonably believes that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and that he or she has exhausted every reasonable means to escape such danger other than the use of force which is likely to cause death or great bodily harm to the assailant; or
(b)In good faith, the person withdraws from physical contact with the assailant and indicates clearly to the assailant that he or she desires to withdraw and terminate the use of force, but the assailant continues or resumes the use of force.
That kind of thing happened recently here in the Pittsburgh area.
The details that we know at the moment are that one man backed his vehicle into the other man's vehicle. They began to argue. The man whose vehicle was struck punched the other man in the face. The man who was struck in the face pulled a firearm and shot the attacker, killing him.
The shooter is sitting in jail awaiting arraignment while the investigation continues.
If the story that the witnesses told checks out, I suspect that this shooter will be freed.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
If someone has a gun and you don't, attacking him is the last thing you will do, unless you are corned and cannot run away. Unless Zimmerman actually pulled his gun at Martin and put him in a situation where he couldn't possibly escape, or escape were unlikely, before firing at him, Martin had no logical reason to attack him if he knew he had a gun. More likely than not Martin attacked Zimmerman because he was unaware he had a gun and if Zimmerman didn't had a gun he could easily be the one dead or at least severely injured.
Exerting your freedom and going where you are legally allowed to go even if you know you may be attacked, whilst taking precautions to defend yourself in case you are attacked, is hardly negligence.
Zimmerman could have been charged with harassment and or stalking
And you can cite the Florida law requiring persons to obey the instructions of 911 operators, and which further provide that self-defense is rules out if that law is broken?
My life is far more important to me than yours.
I think that most people would think the same even if they might not admit it.
He was on his back, he'd had a large laceration to the back of his head from falling and/or being pounded on the concrete. Those are two things which if taken alone, would already warrant the use of escalated force.
Two problems there. There was no large laceration visible on the police video. Also, if Martin was actually above Zimmerman when he shot him, why was Martin's blood not on Zimmerman?
Martin played HS football and was all of 4 months removed from playing. He still would have been lifting weights unless he had planned on skipping the next season. That is a toss up I doubt we can determine, so I will give you that. The rest isn't misinformation. It's mostly you not knowing what you're talking about, which is not unusual since most people haven't followed the case that closely.
I don't know that Martin felt his life was threatened. He might simply have been annoyed at being followed and decided to beat the snot out of Zimmerman to teach him a lesson. That's what Zimmerman claims, anyway.
This is definitely not mutual self defense. There was a time when no one was doing anything wrong. Martin's certainly free to walk around the neighborhood, harming no one. Zimmerman's certainly free to watch him, and even ask him what he's doing, though Martin's free to tell him to f*ck off. At some point, someone escalated to violence first, unless there was something really bizarre like Martin starting to take a swing at the exact moment Zimmerman pulled his gun. Whoever changed this into a violent confrontation has no legit self defense claim.
Zimmerman was told to de-escalate the situation by the 911 operator by staying in his vehicle and instead he decided to escalate. That's murder.
The dispatcher told Zimmerman that they don't need him to follow Martin after he got out of his car. Zimmerman then said he was on his way back to the car. A suggestion or an order from a dispatcher is not the same as an order from a police officer. Even Sanford PD admitted as much. Zimmerman's claim has always been that he only got out of the car to give the dispatcher the best information on the location of Martin.
You think Zimmerman was acting in a predatory fashion while he was actively on the phone with the police?? Did you listen to the tapes? Won't you at least give the man the benefit of the doubt and let the evidence come out for the jury to hear?
No it is not. He had the legal right to ignore the 911 operator and get out of his vehicle. Even if it may be considered a stupid move it was still within his rights.
Your life is no more important than anyone else's, to assume so is extremely arrogant and selfish.
??? Do you not understand the notion of "social contract"? You can say that our lives have equal worth, OK, fine. You don't attack me and I won't attack you. However, if you do attack me, you give up the right to not be attacked. You get that, right?
So if I have to kill you to stop the attack, I damn sure will, and that's one of the most fundamental human rights there is.
You have it backwards. It isn't an attempt to make white people afraid of blacks, it is an attempt to get blacks outraged against whites. If it was an attempt to scare white people, they would not have misreported Trayvon as a young child. They would have made shown him as being as big and menacing as possible. Instead, the media has portrayed Martin as being a lose cannon, and Trayvon as being a defenseless child. The fact that you call him a child shows that you have fallen for it hook line and sinker. The media even went so far as to splice the audio tapes together in a way to try and vilify Martin.
Which ever one is the aggressor (could even be both), it is clear that the media is not trying to rally white people up against blacks.
The *killing* is unfortunate. In the final analysis, a 17 year old kid is dead, regardless of the reasons. I consider that unfortunate, and I can still be sorry to hear of his death, even if it was a completely warranted act of self defense on Zimmerman's part.
If the shooting was self defense, I'd never suggest that Zimmerman shouldn't have defended himself... but the outcome is still tragic.
Which apparently includes bouncer for illegal house parties. A job from which I now seem to recall he was fired from for being too aggressive and brutal. That's certainly relevant, but I'm pretty sure that it's probably not going to be admissible.
Yes yes, we all know teenagers are EXACTLY who they pretend to be on Facebook. No one ever exaggerates or role-plays online.
Just look at the posts on this thread: all the self-righteous self-defenders who talk so goddamn tough about how they've trained to Rambo their way out of any conflict. There was a reply post a few weeks ago about some kid who was bullied so badly that he now has an arsenal of guns and makes his own body armor, or rather that's what he claims because, y'know, internet.
The defense should have access to this data, but any rational person knows it's a kid pretending to be bad ass. Now, getting thrown out of school for starting fights is more accurate, tangible info compared to web bragging from an overinflated sense of self-worth: aka, teenagers.
This is a good example that anything you say online is fair game, and is eternal. Same goes for pictures and dumb youtube videos. I kinda feel bad for all the young girls who post risque vids of themselves the end up on porn aggregators, that shit's out there forever. Note: I said "kinda", I'd also like to thank them from the bottom of my .. uh .. heart.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Being on the ground with an attacker actively slamming your head into the concrete pavement is reason enough for using deadly force to stop and attack.
Shooting someone who is on top of you, beating your head into the ground, would likely result in getting some of that person's blood on you, don't you think?
:(){
That's because you don't know shit about Florida's SYG law and precedent set by existing case law
The prosecution will try to show that Zimmerman has a long history of racism, harrassment of minorities, and irresponsible gun handling, in order to make the idea that he assaulted Martin and then shot him for no reason other than that he was a black kid walking around the neighborhood.
They will try to show that if they can, but the judge probably won't allow it as it will be prejudicial.
No
Your entire point is fucking irrelevant. Florida law doesn't differentiate between someone creating the circumstance and a normal, innocent bystander. Your beef is with the law not Zimmerman. What he did was stupid, dangerous, and wrong, but it was not illegal. Going into the hood screaming NIGGER and wearing swatiska tats isn't illegal but it sure as fuck is stupid
Not that it matters, because you employ someone because of their skills, not what they do on their weekend.
It's far from the truth. Experienced managers hire good people first and skilled people second, if not third. The reason is simple: you can train a junior engineer to become senior engineer. It takes time but it can be done. On the other hand, you cannot take a bad man and train him into being a good man. And you never want to give keys to your offices and access to your code to a bad man.
With regard to weekends, if a person is bad on one day of the week he cannot be good on other days of the week. Exceptions are possible, but you can't count on them. If a person takes drugs on Sunday, do you think he will just heroically suffer through the withdrawal for the rest of the week? If a person needs illegal drugs but you aren't paying him millions, don't you think he will steal from you to pay for his habit? If a person is seen doing risky, illegal things, will you invest $100K into his training, knowing that he can be arrested at any time?
Even the pattern of employment matters, let alone the illegal sex pictured on Twitbook. If a candidate can't hold a job for more than a few months he is not viable, and his resume goes into trash. Even if he is a genius you simply can't have him for long enough to realize any business advantage.
If the guy has pictures of him smoking a blunt in the server room it's a different story.
What if he walks 20 feet, leaves the building, and smokes his blunt outside - and then returns to manage your precious network? Do you think the amount of THC in his blood would be any different? A known druggie is 100% unhireable - nobody wants that liability, for many reasons. If you are a drug user or otherwise "a bad man" in my opinion, I will not hire you. Since the reasons of rejection are never reported, you have no case in court. Businesses have no duty to hire anyone; the only thing they can't do is they can't reject candidates on protected grounds (gender, skin color, etc.) - and no smart person will ever do that. I don't care what your skin color is; but you must be a good person and a good employee. That's all that it takes, really.
He was told no such thing, and even if he had, direction from the dispatcher is not binding. The narrative as evidenced by the actual 911 tape is that Zimmerman was already out of his car and attempting to locate Martin by the time he was told by the dispatcher that they did not "need [him] to do that". At that point, deescalation was likely impossible, even if the dispatcher's "order" had been clear and binding -- and, again, it was neither.
To be clear: Zimmerman was profoundly stupid to get out of his car at all, regardless of any advice he was given. Being stupid, though, is, unfortunately, not illegal... nor is it cause to file what nearly every unbiased legal expert considers trumped-up murder charges. The man may be guilty of something, but it's not 2nd-degree murder. This entire case is a blatant waste of taxpayer money with only one goal in mind: furthering the career of an overzealous and morally contemptuous prosecutor. Everyone on each side who is getting wound up about this case is playing directly into her hands.
I see your point.
If you notice that someone is following you in a car and he has a gun, and if he gets out of his car and runs after you with his gun, I can't imagine why you'd feel justified hitting him first...
Neither of those is actual evidence, which is why I hate these 'psychological profiling' stuff in court, it's the worst form of pseudoscience when someones innocence depends on whether or not they have a 'criminal mindset' according to the court. This is a tricky legal situation: in self-defence, the burden of proof is on the defendant, he is the one who has to show that he was attacked. Which in cases like this one is almost impossible. Sadly, I have no idea how this could be solved.
Zimmerman was hunting Martin down and was armed with a gun. Martin clearly felt his life and safety were threatened
That is not a fair way to describe what happened. A neighborhood watchman following what he considers a "suspicious" looking person is not "hunting them down with a gun". Sure he may have been overzealous and it is not pleasant to be followed around and considered a criminal when you are not, but that's not enough of a reason to jump on the guy and start pounding his head against the concrete (saw the pictures?). On the other hand, once that happened, Zimmerman WAS justified in using deadly force to defend himself. It's a shitty deal for Trayvon but this case should never have been brought to trial and it wouldn't have been if it wasn't so politicized.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
"6' tall" means just about nothing. My nephew is 6' or 6'1", easily six inches taller than me, and I kick his ass all the time. Why? Because he's a skinny little punk, and I'm a muscular wrestling coach. You're projecting that "6'" means "automatic bad-ass." Shit, lots of basketball players are tall, but can't fight worth beans.
And you're basing that on what? Surely not the law or what the majority of people would feel is an adequate response. You being followed is NEVER a reason to instigate a physical confrontation.
There is nothing showing that Zimmerman initiated the physical attack.
Yeah I was stronger and taller than my dad at 15 years old. Didn't matter that he outweighed me by 15 lbs. Weight can be important, but it's not the be all end-all
They are not police except in the cases where it's an actual officer is acting as dispatcher and there is still zero legal obligation to do what a dispatcher tells you to do. They aren't there, they don't have all the facts and have no legal or moral authority to give you orders that you must adhere to.
158 pounds, on the autopsy table, and over 6' tall is a skinny kid. At 5'5", I weigh 155, but I lift weights, and stay in shape. This kid hardly sounds imposing.
Your posts are laughable
1st degree murder...whaaaat? That's premeditated murder, like when you lie in wait for someone. Sorry, you have no business discussing this situation with adults.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
No they are not. Dispatchers do not have a badge and cannot issues lawful orders. He was under no more scrutiny than if you or I had told him to stop. Stanford police stated as much early in the investigation and said he was under no obligation to do so.
There was bruising and other marks on Martin's knuckes. Read the autopsy report
Here's the interesting part: since Trayvon Martin is dead, the only accounts we have of the incident is those of Zimmerman. In other words, the only thing we know about the entire incident comes from the person looking at life in prison if the entire thing isn't self-defense. Somehow, we should believe Zimmerman and not challenge his account of the events? Despite a very clear motive to lie his ass off?
As for what the intent of the Stand Your Ground Laws is, it matters very little. The only thing that does matter is the outcome of laws. And right now, the outcome of Stand Your Ground Laws is that if you're ever in a confrontation with no witnesses (or very pliable witnesses), make sure to kill whoever is confronting you.That can't possibly work long term.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Fuck the low res police video. How about the pictures taken by police on the night of the shooting or the doctor notes from the day after? http://gma.yahoo.com/warning-graphic-photo-possible-evidence-shows-george-zimmermans-050145810--abc-news-topstories.html
I agree, there are inconsistencies. I guarantee I'd have fired more than one round if I were in that scenario...but then again being a "reasonable person" I wouldn't have been pursuing an unknown entity at night.
I haven't seen the autopsy data indicating levels of GSR, type of bullet, trajectory, estimated distance, etc...so I couldn't say for sure; that's something the trial will bring to light. There are far different patterns of ballistic reaction at zero distance vs. arms length or anything further. Knuckle bruising is a great point. Only if he'd been training on a heavy bag or some other practice would he not develop bruises or abrasions from punches to someone's head, but that doesn't rule out grabbing the face/head and smashing it down.
I thought of the same possibility; perhaps Zimmerman smacked his own head on the concrete or otherwise damaged himself to make it seem plausible. Considering the guy on the other end of the muzzle is dead, we may never know whether that is true or not. It is 100% speculation, and is therefore thrown out the window without witnesses or other proof. The police video does show something on Zimmerman's head, though it is not very clear from the angle or lighting. A video released later shows a long laceration which hadn't fully healed as Zimmerman walked police through the crime scene.
Nonetheless, I still maintain that Murder Two is going to be extremely difficult to prosecute and stick in this case. The prosecution will need to be spot-on with their arguments and the defense will need to be bumbling and incompetent to lose that fight.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
I've been in enough fights as a kid to know that when it gets to the point that when your head is being smashed around, you're not enough in control to pull out a concealed weapon and use it. Furthermore, I've been in enough accident to know that if you smash your head on the ground - even mildly - you're not in a state to do much else afterwards.
All in all, from my experience, Zimmerman's account doesn't pass the bullshit test. Too many things don't properly tie together. My suspicion is that there was an altercation, but that it wasn't nearly as life-threatening as Zimmerman made it out to be.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Nifty piece of information on Zimmerman's background as a bouncer: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/31/1079454/-Zimmerman-was-Fired-from-Security-Job-after-he-Snapped. Yeah, it's dailykos, but that story was pretty broadly distributed. Feel free to find your own link.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
You are operating under a false principle. I'm 40 years old so I'm considered and old fart. When we get job applications we do a Google or Facebook search and all I see is kids posting things online that I did when I was a kid and I would of posted if I was their age. I remember one kid had a great resume. We looked online and he was in a metal band. He had wild hair and facial hair and piercings. We found videos and he was basically screaming at the top of his lungs. Pretty funny stuff. So we gave him an interview and he came in all clean cut and gave a great interview. We gave him the summer internship. A few weeks in we started calling him by his band name as a nickname. He said "That's so weird, I'm in a band with that name!". We didn't tell him we knew all about it for another week and he was freaked out.
I would never hold what someone posts online. We all have our demons and if there wasn't a criminal record I really don't care.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
It most definitely _is_ excessive force by any rational person's standards - it just may not be judged as such by the courts.
Courts get stuff wrong all the time.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Of course, that could be highly unfair treatment. It assumes that past behavior is a reliable predictor of future behavior.
You are misunderstanding what this is about. This is not "there's a 17 year old, tall, strong kid looking at me. If he's never done anything wrong, then he is harmless. If he has a history of fights, then I look for my gun". This is a case "The guy shooting the 17 year old claims it was self defence. There are no witnesses. Do we believe him? If the 17 year old has never been in trouble, then the guy is likely lying. If the 17 year old has a history of fights, then it is quite possible that the story is true".
The defense has argued that Trayvon was the aggressor and are going to see if his school records and online life back that up. The internet is not some parallel dimension with no relationship to our real lives. If Trayvon was into "Thug Life", MMA, etc... or was suspended for getting into fist fights at school (he was suspended at least 3 times) then this is relevant to the case at hand as it makes the notion that he attacked Zimmerman more believable.
But if Zimmerman were following Martin around, perhaps making Martin feel threatened, and Martin attacked Zimmerman, isn't Martin the one "Standing his ground"? Albeit without a gun?
The defense has argued that Trayvon was the aggressor and are going to see if his school records and online life back that up. The internet is not some parallel dimension with no relationship to our real lives. If Trayvon was into "Thug Life", MMA, etc... or was suspended for getting into fist fights at school (he was suspended at least 3 times) then this is relevant to the case at hand as it makes the notion that he attacked Zimmerman more believable.
I did see a video from social media that purported to show TM in some kind of HS "fight club". Not good for the prosecution if so.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
The copious amounts of blood from a shooting tend to come out the exit wound (and there was none in this case). You get some from the entry wound, but not nearly as much. Zimmerman's jacket had four bloodstains containing Martin's DNA, so there's your blood.
Never mind the eye witnesses that support GZ's version of events...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
It's a judgement call. I've seen cases where the police have waited years before arresting the (eventually convicted) murderer. If the person is not a flight risk, and not a danger to do further violence, there is no reason to arrest them.
I asked a lawyer friend about this case specifically, and he suggested that the actions of the police and prosecution indicate they actually didn't feel confident that they had the evidence to convict him.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
nope, but I've been beaten up before - I was more concerned with stopping my head getting kicked in, arms up to protect my head from more blows, and I still came away seriously bruised and bloody.
A smack around the head isn't like in the movies you see, you don;t roll away, take time to snap out a quick witticism, pull your gun and put several shots in the bad guy while your hair stays in place.
Your life is no more important than anyone else's
To me it is.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What about the notion that Zimmerman had a history of violence himself, actually getting fired from his job as a bouncer for being too unstable? Is that relevant? If so, how does the relevance of that rank compare to getting into fights in school, or getting suspended for marijuana dust?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Yeah so my point still stands. Next time save yourself the time and effort in posting.
I completely disagree. He offered relevant information and clarified what the law says. Even if it doesn't invalidate your point, it's a good post.
Discussion is not about winning arguments, it's about exchanging ideas to better understand things.
Possibly, but he also knows what the content of the pictures were while you don't.
There are a lot of things I could find out about a person regarding how they spend their off hours, and many of those would give me pause in hiring them. Many would also absolutely preclude them from being hired even with an otherwise excellent resume and great interpersonal and interview skills.
The statement regarding not hiring someone because of pictures wherein the content was not actually described doesn't say anything concrete about Geoskd. Telling someone they're part of the worst scum of the Earth because they refused to hire someone based on knowledge you're not privy to, however, says volumes about you. The fact that you were unwilling to log in to make the statement says even more.
Drinking a couple beers with friends is not the same as gang-raping a group of freshman girls. There's a lot of area that could possibly be covered under "poor judgment at a college gathering." The former is relatively low on the scale, while the latter is pretty high. He didn't elaborate on the poor judgment in question, so assuming it was "because they partied in college" is not the most intelligent of assumptions you could make in this situation.
Yes, most people partied in college. Absent a concrete statement that it was the partying, and not other behavior, which ruled him out is a tad bit presumptuous (to put it mildly).
Was he a Nazi, having sex with goats, or attending a Klan meeting?
Perhaps he was all three. The content was not actually described, merely the setting in very general terms. It's thus illogical to castigate someone based on further assumptions, because nobody but the original poster actually knows what the conduct in question was.
Here is the 911 transcript relevant portion. Show me where he was ordered (your words) to "stand down" and when he said, "No, I'm not letting him get away." I know the actual facts are a bit of a nuisance in the way of painting Zimmerman as a homicidal psychopath stalking someone.
From the 911 Transcript:
911 dispatcher:
Are you following him? [2:24]
Zimmerman:
Yeah. [2:25]
911 dispatcher:
OK.
We don’t need you to do that. [2:26]
Zimmerman:
OK. [2:28]
911 dispatcher:
Alright, sir, what is your name? [2:34]
Zimmerman:
George. He ran.
911 dispatcher:
Alright, George, what’s your last name?
Zimmerman:
Zimmerman.
911 dispatcher:
What’s the phone number you’re calling from?
Zimmerman:
407-435-2400
911 dispatcher:
Alright, George, we do have them on the way. Do you want to meet with the officer when they get out there?
Zimmerman:
Yeah.
911 dispatcher:
Alright, where are you going to meet with them at?
Zimmerman:
Um, if they come in through the gate, tell them to go straight past the clubhouse and, uh, straight past the clubhouse and make a left and then go past the mailboxes you’ll see my truck. [3:10]
.
Zimmerman's father was formerly a judge (retired from being a magistrate in Virginia) who knew the police chief in the town of Sanford. That may have been a key factor in G. Zimmerman not being charged as he brought up the "stand your ground defense". Zimmerman was brought in to the police station and interrogated for at least 5 hours [according to the wikipedia page and a few orlando sentinel stories]:
EMTs treated Zimmerman at the scene, after which he was taken to the Sanford Police Department. Zimmerman was detained and questioned for approximately five hours.[17][18][19] He was then released without being charged;...
It may mostly be a thin-blue line encompassing judges and former judges that just wasn't able to hold because of all of the publicity which ensued.
I'm sorry, maybe I misunderstood, but did you really just say most teens have a history of violence and justify it as being part of growing up? Seriously? If this is true where you live, you should move. The rest of the world is different.
Talk to your shrink about your crippling case of delusional paranoia
Perhaps you could explain how Martin ended up on Zimmerman's chest, pounding his head into the sidewalk?
They've always said, gun ownership is about responsibility. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. OK, so Zimmerman took a gun and started a conflict. HOWEVER it went down, Zimmerman escalated a nothing-doing situation to a murder. So, as someone who doesn't own a gun, do you think I'm OK with this? You think my response is, "oh well, that sucks but we'll never know if Trayvon lunged at him."
Hell no, my response is if gun owners don't see a problem with this kind of a situation, then strike these stand-your-ground laws from the books. Obviously, the line for gun owner responsibility has been rolled back and I'm not letting that line get rolled over onto my corpse one day.
I had an old guy basically try to start a fight with me once absolutely out of the blue. I had a very strong inclination that he was armed. Had we met in a dark alley and he felt more empowered to shoot me out of witness sight, he would've had a hell of an argument for self defense with me being 250 and him being a tiny old man.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The court should not be putting George Zimmerman in a position where he is forced to prove his innocence. Material which is relevant to proving his guilt can be admitted as long as it meets the standard of evidence but it is generally easier to get character evidence about the victim admitted than it is to get character evidence about the defendant admitted. Courts look down on putting the victim on trial but when there's a lack of witnesses there's not much of a choice.
Please remember that it is the prosecution that has to prove George Zimmerman's guilt, not George Zimmerman that has to prove his own innocence. Under Florida law they must disprove Zimmerman's account of events using investigative procedure, not by hoping that a jury will find him guilty on a whim. This case has already made a mockery of our justice system.
How delightfully lofty and optimistic of you. Next time you're being beaten to death by a murderer and you have a knife or a gun you can use to defend yourself, I hope you remember what you just said and lay back and die like a good boy instead of harming some innocent brute to save your own life.
No. SYG laws are easily misunderstood.
In general, they allow an individual to use force in self defense when they believe that they are faced with an unlawful threat. The keyword there is unlawful. Following someone may be intimidating but it is not unlawful. Similarly, the moment that TM ditched GZ he was no longer faced with any threat.
Say again? "Who was the aggressor is hard to say..."
I'd say the one who followed, lost, and reacquired the other then, against the instructions of the 911 operator, exited his car with his gun to confront an innocent man was the aggressor. When you start a fight you don't get to claim self defence after shooting the unarmed man you freely engaged without any provocation on his part. Assuming of course that you don't consider being black an provocation.
> Are you a lawyer or other legal expert, or just some guy making stuff up?
No. I am just someone that might sit on a jury and somone that doesn't want a jackass like Zimmerman prowling through the neighborhood. With my own HOA we had a nice visit from the local police asking all present to never engage in that kind of nonsense.
Dirty Harry is both a fictional character and well trained.
You are neither.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So flip a coin? If my life supposedly isn't any more important than anyone else's, why are you assuming *his* is?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
1st degree murder...whaaaat? That's premeditated murder, like when you lie in wait for someone. Sorry, you have no business discussing this situation with adults.
He's talking about the night of the shooting. Despite being asked (not told, since a 911 dispatcher cannot give you orders) to not follow the kid, he got out of the car anyway and then somehow the kid ended up dead after being shot with George's gun. There's potential cause for a charge of premeditation - (why did he get out of the car? Even if it's his "legal right" to get out of the car, as some /. posters have been using as justification for killing the kid, why did he get out and go after him if he thought Trayvon was dangerous or suspicious - he's not a cop himself, so what is he going to do when he catches up to him?) , however I doubt very much that he would have been charged with such a thing had this all been handled properly at the time - hence the holding of the suspect for 24 hours and the following investigation of the crime that should have happened but did not.
Except that all constructions of what happened suggest that Trayvon did not know that George had a gun until after the physical confrontation began (that's what the "concealed" part of concealed carry means).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
A "teenage boy" at 17 who is taller than Zimmerman. A 6' tall, 17 year old wearing a hoodie walking around a gated neighborhood in the middle of the night, in sweltering Florida, in a high crime area = totally normal.
Lol @ cornering him.
Zimmerman confronted him, Trayvon tried to keep it real and got blown away.
Yeah, because he was totally going to commit "crime" with his ice tea and skittles. Wearing a hoodie is not a crime. Being black is not a crime. Walking on the street at night is not a crime.
Following a guy in your car, getting out, confronting him and then shooting him in the event of a struggle is a crime. Given that Zimmerman is using the "stand your ground" defence, why not Martin? What else is he meant to do when a guy gets out of his car carrying a gun and marching over to him. Why no " stand your ground" defence for Martin who now has to decide whether to fight or run away from a guy coming after him with a gun? You can''t claim self defence if you were the aggressor. The holes in Zimmerman's story and the absurd decisions he made (even if they were totally legal and "his right" to do, like getting out of his car) really don't bode well for him, especially when his "dangerous, suspicious, violence-prone" suspect was armed with a can of ice tea and some candy. What was his game plan? Give people diabetic comas and then rob them?
But Zimmerman himself said that Martin was trying to get his gun, so he can't claim that Martin didn't know he had one. As for being cornered and not being able to run away, that sounds a bit like the actual situation. I don't have a map of the neighborhood to truly work this out, but Martin obviously didn't go directly home. This makes some sense when some scary stranger was after him for some unknown reason either because he didn't want to lead Zimmerman to where he lived or because he was essentially running and hiding from Zimmerman. Zimmerman gets out of his vehicle and is walking around looking for Martin when Martin comes out to confront him. It's possible that Martin was lurking, waiting to strike, but it seems more plausible to me that he really was cornered.
It's pretty certain that Martin knew Zimmerman had a gun, and Zimmerman has stated that, after lying to Martin about following him (instead of saying that he was with the neighborhood watch), he turned away from him and went for his cellphone. From Martin's point of view, it's hard to imagine that he wouldn't have thought Zimmerman was going for a gun.
Exerting your freedom and going where you are legally allowed to go even if you know you may be attacked, whilst taking precautions to defend yourself in case you are attacked, is hardly negligence.
Amazing that you apply that to Zimmerman but not to Martin. Also, I'm pretty willing to bet that if Zimmerman had been chasing a teenage girl around that way instead of a boy and had been arrested, you'd be calling him a moron rather than defending him.
Your opinion is less than worthless if you had any questions about it
Wow. What are you even doing on a discussion forum? You have a very high opinion of yourself indeed. I'm amazed you can even stand it for five minutes slumming it with us proles.
I don't know that Martin felt his life was threatened. He might simply have been annoyed at being followed and decided to beat the snot out of Zimmerman to teach him a lesson. That's what Zimmerman claims, anyway.
Even if Zimmerman didn't obviously have a gun (he claims that Martin tried to take the gun from him, so clearly Martin did know), I don't see how you could reasonably believe that no-one would consider his behaviour threatening.
But, when Martin asked Zimmerman what his problem was, Zimmerman didn't identify himself as neighborhood watch, but instead lied and acted suspiciously. This is Zimmerman's version of events, not Martin's (since, you know, dead).
No they are not. Dispatchers do not have a badge and cannot issues lawful orders. He was under no more scrutiny than if you or I had told him to stop. Stanford police stated as much early in the investigation and said he was under no obligation to do so.
"I advise you not to get out and approach the man you've told us is suspicious and dangerous, but you are free to do so if you want to. Oh, and that gives you a free pass to shoot him if you get yourself into more trouble than you were expecting".
Being legally allowed to do something and actually doing it are two separate issues. Common sense should have told Zimmerman to stay in the car if his story is going to add up. Why would he put himself in danger unnecessarily if he believed Martin was/could be a threat to him?
Just because a 911 dispatcher can't force you not to get out and approach the kid does not mean that he should have done it in the first place.
No, the physical evidence might say that Zimmerman and Martin fought. It says nothing about who the attacker is. Also, even if Martin did attack, it doesn't make him "a bad kid trying to assault someone". Based even on Zimmerman's account, it more likely makes him a scared kid in a standard fight or flight response who had decided that flight had failed.
No. SYG laws are easily misunderstood.
In general, they allow an individual to use force in self defense when they believe that they are faced with an unlawful threat. The keyword there is unlawful. Following someone may be intimidating but it is not unlawful. Similarly, the moment that TM ditched GZ he was no longer faced with any threat.
Fair enough, though if TM ditched GM, only to have GM reappear, within striking distance (i.e. a few paces), then one could argue there was a threat. If I were being followed, managed to lose my follower, only to have them reappear, I'd be questioning my safety.
And, since GM was told by 911 to not pursue (am I remembering that correctly?), while it might not be unlawful, it would certainly be inadvisable since representatives of the authorities instructed him thus.
At least I could imagine all that being a worthwhile argument in court.
Not sure we'll ever get the truth though; I read that witness statements changed over time, rendering them useless. They contradicted their own previous statements, etc.
Just a mess all around.
In other words, there's a slippery slope where if you are anything other than a little saint, you deserve to die and any trigger-happy douche can appoint himself as judge, jury, and executioner.
Does this
Following is when you just follow someone who isn't reacting to you. Chasing is when they do react to you and try to get away from you, which even Zimmerman admits Martin did. So, unless you have some special definition of chasing, Zimmerman was chasing Martin. Zimmerman lost Martin, parked, then looked around for him on foot. Then Martin confronted him (once again, provided that Zimmerman is telling the truth), which strongly suggests that Martin was hiding nearby somewhere. Zimmerman was on foot and apparently near his car, but wasn't leaving. Zimmerman lied to Martin about what he was doing and turned his body away from him and went for his cell phone. Martin almost certainly knew that Zimmerman had a gun (Zimmerman has claimed that Martin tried to take it). Given all those facts, it's hard not to conclude that Martin thought that this bizarre, random stalker was about to shoot him.
Maybe I'll answer later with something more serious, but if you honestly think that someone who smokes a blunt on a friday needs a motherfucking withdrawal to not smoke on Monday you are not in a position to judge ANYONE in this world, let alone decide if they are worth hiring.
If I pay my own money to someone then I can have any requirements I want. This is how the world works, regardless of what you or others think about it. If I don't want drug users around then there won't be any (that I know of.) Note - that would be regardless of their skills.
It may be a shock to geeks who use light drugs now and then. They may think that it's no big deal. Keep thinking that. Meanwhile business people avoid drug users at all costs - even if they, themselves, use the same drug on occasion.
One could think of some contrived case where the only man on Earth who can do some absolutely necessary job (say, save the world) has to be hired no matter what. That would be a fun subplot in a movie. However in real life when a company posts a job ad it receives hundreds of resumes, from all kinds of people - from young and old, from green to experienced, from exact matches to very loose matches to the job req. If a person is known for their "undesirable behavior" then the resume is trashed right away. Nobody in a business would want to be responsible for such a person because if that person steals something valuable to finance his troubles guess what, the manager who knowingly hired him may be fired or demoted soon. A business is not a kindergarten, it's not interested in helping people. A business is primarily interested in safely growing the profits. Drug users and the word "safely" do not intersect.
You again may want to point out that smoking some grass is very different from injecting heroin (or whatever it is that they inject these days) into one's veins. But you know, I'm not interested in details. I'm not a specialist on drugs, and I have no oversight over doses or choices of drugs that a prospective employee takes. Furthermore, in this labor market I don't have to care. There is plenty of "clean" applicants to pick and choose from; those that are known to be "unclean" won't be even considered. Take drugs and kill your career, it's that simple. You may disagree with that approach - but who cares what you think? You'd need to argue with tens of thousands of business owners, HR workers and hiring managers - and they have no good reason to even listen to you. Don't like that? Don't use drugs then. Or at least delete all your social accounts and be quiet about illegal things that you do. At least you will get a chance to be judged by your work.
Sorry, I've seen the pictures of Martin. Not just the young pictures, the ones from pretty much immediately before his death where he's posing and trying to look tough. He was a stick insect.
The weather in Sanford, Florida on February 26th of this year was a mean temperature of 58.7. Notes say rain and/or melted snow reported during the day. Mean wind speed was 7.83 MPH with gusts of 21.86 MPH. Sunset was at 6:23 PM. Zimmerman spotted Martin at approximately 7:09 PM. Temperatures in the evening could be expected to be below the mean temperature, making Martin's clothing completely weather-appropriate.
This was a gated neighborhood, as you observed. It was not, despite some break-ins, a high crime area.
So what you're really saying is that you wouldn't want him leaving evidence of all the illegal shit you do at your company. Now I get it.
Every college party I ever heard of was a massively illegal act. That didn't stop people, since kids will be kids, but it doesn't change the facts. Law enforcement just looks the other way, by and large. When you leave a permanent record that you are doing illegal things, you open up Pandora's box. I will submit that most people don't obey posted speed limits, but its another thing to make a video of you demonstrably exceeding the speed limit by 30 MPH, and post it on YouTube. The first act is common enough and with low enough risk to be somewhat tolerable. The second is a deliberate flaunting of the law that is both extraordinary and dangerous. Or did you think that anyone should be able to do monumentally stupid things, brag about it, and walk away without consequences?
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
This isn't a stand your ground issue ffs. Good thing you haven't been following the case at all. You clearly don't understand stand your ground either. It's not applicable to this case. .
I guarantee you all the robbers weren't wearing outfits from Banana Republic, they were dressed more like trayvon. And yes, you can claim self-defense if the person has escalated the use of force continuum. Do you have any background in security? Obviously not -- just another liberal westerner with white guilt.
Sanford is an old Florida town undergoing rebirth. If you've ever been there, you'll see tracts of trailer parks, ghetto housing while the new housing complexes are all gated communities (for good reason). Wearing a hoodie at midnight, on a school night, in a neighborhood with a higher than normal crime right is suspicious. You must be retarded if you don't understand that. Zimmerman confronted the him, Martin decided he was gonna "keep it real" and this was a case where keeping it real goes wrong.
Zimmerman didn't go out of his house that night with the expectation of killing someone in self defense and Martin didn't go out expecting to start shit. But he responded poorly and behaved like the underaged, tattoo'd delinquent that he was. Nice to see you failed to include the wounds on the back of Zimmerman's head.
Sanford is a dirty, high crime town. Have you ever been there?
No, I haven't been there, although I have visited towns similar to what you describe in Florida. But the "area" in question, was the gated neighborhood, not the whole town.
Instead of a beatdown, its fear of life... being intimidated?? its fear for your life... every paranoid over compensating coward will be able to shoot most people. These neighborhood watch fanatic types are always big cowards.
I don't care if the teen purposely pounded on him, his life was not in jeopardy... teens killing adults is quite rare; even in this country (hint: national news covers man biting dog means it is not that common.)
They've had somebody ID the voice yelling for help. I thought it wasn't zimmerman?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Zimmerman used a gun on an unarmed opponent - there are stages of escalation even in combat and you never go straight from "hands" to "gun".
Zimmerman said that Martin was slamming his head into a concrete sidewalk; that's potentially lethal right there. Zimmerman also said that Martin spotted the gun and said "You are going to die tonight". We only have Zimmerman's word for the latter, but as to the former, he had head wounds consistent with his story.
And a witness said he saw Martin on top of Zimmerman, attacking "MMA style", which most people took to mean beating with alternating fists.
So, while I agree with you that a simple bare-handed attack is several levels below lethal force response level, this situation may well have been an appropriate one for a letal force response.
In any event, it is not your job to make that decision, or mine. There will be a trial, and the issues of fact and law will be laid out.
Zimmerman was told to de-escalate the situation by the 911 operator by staying in his vehicle and instead he decided to escalate. That's murder.
No, no it is not. It isn't because that isn't what happened and a 911 operator's instructions carry no more weight than mine would. It is a request, nothing more. You're letting your desire for it to be murder cloud things.
I'm not sure I understand the desire on the part of some for this case to be something other than what it is.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
I guarantee you all the robbers weren't wearing outfits from Banana Republic, they were dressed more like trayvon[sic]
Which robbers? No-one involved in the breakins was caught. Robbers also traditionally dress in articles of ski clothing. Do we need vigilantes on the streets of Aspen, Colorado as well?
Wearing a hoodie at midnight, on a school night, in a neighborhood with a higher than normal crime right is suspicious.
Not midnight. Approximately 7 PM. It looks like he left to go to the store before dark and was heading back shortly after dark. Also, the neighborhood didn't have a higher than average crime rate. The crime rate was lower than average for the town.
Zimmerman confronted the him, Martin decided he was gonna "keep it real" and this was a case where keeping it real goes wrong.
Zimmerman did not confront Martin according to Zimmerman's own story. He chased Martin in his car, essentially cornered him but lost sight of him, went out on foot in search of him, then Martin confronted Zimmerman. At that point, Zimmerman did not announce that he was with the neighborhood watch, he instead lied and acted in a way that a reasonable person would consider suspicious and probably threatening.
> Are you a lawyer or other legal expert, or just some guy making stuff up?
No. I am just someone that might sit on a jury and somone that doesn't want a jackass like Zimmerman prowling through the neighborhood. With my own HOA we had a nice visit from the local police asking all present to never engage in that kind of nonsense.
Dirty Harry is both a fictional character and well trained.
You are neither.
I hope for the sake of justice that you're never on a jury for any case of importance. Your prejudice is showing.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
My goodness. Such vitriol.
I never claimed that walking at night, in a hoodie, in a gated community at night wasn't suspicious. I said it wasn't a crime. Maybe that makes me retarded because you lack reading comprehension? Probably.
This case is absolutely about Stand Your Ground. George Zimmerman himself (you know, the guy who shot the kid) has requested a hearing based on those provisions, so I'm not sure how this "isn't a stand your ground issue ffs". Maybe you can enlighten me?
I ask again. Why did Zimmerman confront him? If Martin was as dangerous-looking and suspicious as he claims then why get out of the car at all? He may have had the right to do so, and even the right to go up and confront him, but he had no reason to other than the belief that he would "get away" before the police showed up. In this "higher than average" crime area, Zimmerman put himself into a situation that he had no full idea about. What if Martin had been one of the burglars who had been seen a few weeks before, and armed with a weapon themselves? What if there had been more than one of them? He had no idea. As it turns out he got lucky - it was just an innocent guy with some skittles walking home to the house that he was staying at *in the community*. Martin had every right to be there too - and just "looking suspicious" is not a criminal act.
The wounds on zimmerman's head are irrelevant - I'd expect both of them to be bloodied if the situation happened as described by Zimmerman - a human fighting for his life is a pretty tenacious thing. As it happens I don't think things happened exactly as described - Martin doesn't have many offensive or defensive wounds based on the autopsy report, and neither does Zimmerman, other than the superficial head wounds (he was examined and treated at the scene by a paramedic and not hospitalised - his head wounds were nothing overtly serious).
I have no idea what happened that night, other than the fact that Zimmerman got out of his car and shot Martin. Whether he was justified in doing so depends on what he did in between those two facts. He should never have put himself in that position in the first place.
I see that you've already made up your mind though, that Marin deserved it, given your description of him (you'll note carefully that I have not judged Zimmerman's character based on his appearance, race, or personality, merely questioned some of the choices he made that night), so I think this discussion is ultimately pointless. You've made up your mind that this "underaged, tattoo'd (sic) delinquent" got what was coming to him because he was walking down the street at night in the neighbourhood where he was staying and had the nerve to try and run away from a guy following him in a car, and then on foot, who was armed with a gun.
So what if he "tried to keep it real" - surely that's self defence against a man coming at you on a dark street at night, on a school night, with a gun - that's suspicious and dangerous behaviour, as you pointed out! Martin would have to be retarded not to believe that wasn't suspicious! It was only logical that he defend himself, right?!
No. SYG laws are easily misunderstood.
In general, they allow an individual to use force in self defense when they believe that they are faced with an unlawful threat. The keyword there is unlawful. Following someone may be intimidating but it is not unlawful. Similarly, the moment that TM ditched GZ he was no longer faced with any threat.
Fair enough, though if TM ditched GM, only to have GM reappear, within striking distance (i.e. a few paces), then one could argue there was a threat. If I were being followed, managed to lose my follower, only to have them reappear, I'd be questioning my safety.
And, since GM was told by 911 to not pursue (am I remembering that correctly?), while it might not be unlawful, it would certainly be inadvisable since representatives of the authorities instructed him thus.
At least I could imagine all that being a worthwhile argument in court.
Not sure we'll ever get the truth though; I read that witness statements changed over time, rendering them useless. They contradicted their own previous statements, etc.
Just a mess all around.
No, you're not remembering that correctly, though I suspect the media reports were designed to make you think that was the case.
The 911 operator did not tell Zimmerman not to follow Martin. The 911 operator said, "We don't need you to do that."
That's not direction. The 911 operator isn't telling Zimmerman ANYTHING with that statement. To wit: I don't need YOU to breathe. If you don't breathe, you'll die. MY needs are irrelevant. The 911 operator might just as well have said, "I dress my hamster in polka-dot Fruit of the Loom underwear."
Wow, that's an amazingly bad analogy. BadAnalogyGuy would be disappointed.
Anway, you didn't address the point that one could argue that TM felt threatened by being followed, even though he'd shaken his pursuer at one time.
Though I suspect your response was designed to ignore that pertinent bit.
And WHO STARTED THIS FIGHT?
Even more likely than that, Zimmerman attacked Martin.
Of course, because as any murderer will tell you, the first thing you do when you're off to murder someone is to call 911 before committing the murder and ask the dispatcher to send the police immediately to your location.
My God, are people really this dumb?
We can argue all day about what may or may not have been said, whether excessive force was used, who was at fault, etc, but to claim this was some kind of premeditated murder is beyond stupid.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
And I remember in my early twenties being picked up by a kid around Trayvon Martin's age. He was African-American also, if it matters, he was about 6' 2, but fairly lean, though not as lean as Martin. He reached around and grabbed me around the waist and started carrying me backwards. It was all friendly and in good fun, but also a bit of one of those stupid male self-assertion things . I'm a little over 5' 8", so about average height, but he was quite looming and , although I probably outmassed him. I remember he was quite surprised when I reached down, grabbed his hands and simply pulled them apart, leaving his hands in some minor pain. If the situation were reversed, he wouldn't have stood a chance of pulling my arms apart and I could have squeezed him until his ribs cracked and, after he felt my grip, both of us knew it.
Your dad might have outweighed you by 15 pounds, but how was he built, and what kind of health was he in? If the extra weight was a gut and he had bad knees, for example, it's not surprising if you could beat him. Looking at Zimmerman, he seems to be pretty densely built. The fact that he had worked as a bouncer suggests he could probably handle himself, and age and experience count for something.
There's an overgeneralization that a lot of people make here though, expanding this unhirable status to include everything from hardcore drug addicts like you mention (reasonable) to just having a Red Solo Cup in a picture with 3 friends at your own house (unreasonable). That's why people really don't like the idea of prying into social media for information on employees - there's a few valuable things that you might get out of it (which you can, for the most part, find out via other avenues), but there's a whole slew of unknowns regarding the particular intersection of the HR worker's personal judgement and an individual's lifestyle that makes it a sensitive action to take.
Meanwhile, I'll keep monitoring our thousands of networking nodes in my rather prestigious position where they can't afford to replace me.
Absolutely. I have no knowledge of who you are, who your employer is, what you are doing on Sundays, and so on. And I don't need to know that. I'm glad that you and your employer have good working relations.
Only if I'm stuck in whatever retarded hiring process you manage.
There are many hiring processes. A three-man shop will have a vastly different policy than a multinational corporation with 100,000 employees in 50 countries. A new man in a 3-man shop can destroy the entire company if he is not careful and vigilant and honest. A new man at a multinational corporation can only steal some peanuts, to the tune of a few hundred thousand dollars, which is inconsequential, and the police will take care of the rest. This is quite obvious - in a larger company importance and influence of each additional worker is smaller; facilities are far apart; bank accounts are separate; even locks on doors at production facilities only allow some employees to some areas; and of course internal auditing service and internal security service are taking care of all edge cases. But even then we read once per year that this or that bank was nearly destroyed by an employee who gambled bank's money and lost.
Martin played football up to the age of 14. That's not 4 months removed from playing. You're the one who doesn't know what you're talking about.
Ever been in that exact situation?
I was. (Without the gun.)
Where I came from in Brooklyn, that was a typical fight. Sometimes I was bashing the other guy's head on the concrete pavement, sometimes he was bashing my head on the concrete pavement.
If I pulled a gun and killed the other guy, I'd expect to be prosecuted for homicide or murder. While getting your head bashed against the concrete isn't pleasant, it's not as bad as being dead.
I don't think Zimmerman was in danger of getting killed. He was in danger of getting the shit kicked out of him, and maybe a broken nose or a couple of black eyes.
When you add guns to the situation, people get killed.
There was no blood on Zimmerman because I don't know about the law? Please enlighten me.
In most jurisdictions, the law says you have a right to defend yourself with reasonable force. You don't have a right to kill your attacker. Of course, the NRA is trying to change those laws.
If you go around with a concealed handgun, confronting other people, and somebody fights back, you don't have a right to kill him. Try it and you'll wind up like Zimmerman.
That's fairly informative. I couldn't find anything about whether or not there was an exit wound.
You're really reaching on that
Florida does, in fact, have laws for manslaughter. Any time you anyone does anything stupid that gets someone killed where the outcome was remotely forseeable, it's manslaughter. Plenty of people have gone to jail for manslaughter who were far, far less culpable than Zimmerman.
As for your example of something not illegal but stupid, you can be assured that, anyone doing that who was subsequently attacked, but shot the attackers would be charged with manslaughter at least.
He played the same year he was murdered...so 4 months
Trying to educate people about shitty SYG laws.
Zimmerman should have not done what he did. That doesn't mean he was legally in the wrong when he did it. This isn't a difficult issue for people who have more than three brain cells. He's an idiot, but so are the white power morons who asked Chicago for a police escort while they marched and offended people. The laws often suck. Change them and avoid falsely punishing people.
Why else would someone carry a loaded handgun? Handguns in general are for killing people, if he was hunting deer or such he'd have a rifle and hunting in a residential neighbourhood is heavily frowned upon. If he was going to the target range, why have the gun loaded? Same with transporting it for other reasons. He was carrying a loaded gun, the only sane reason to carry a loaded gun is so you can use it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
There's an overgeneralization that a lot of people make here though, expanding this unhirable status to include everything from hardcore drug addicts like you mention (reasonable) to just having a Red Solo Cup in a picture with 3 friends at your own house (unreasonable).
I personally wouldn't fault anyone for being at a party, or for drinking alcohol there. As long as the man is not a professional alcoholic (that happens!) the drug is legal, common, and the employee cannot be blackmailed over that. (This is a serious consideration when your employee has to have security clearance.)
That's why people really don't like the idea of prying into social media for information on employees
I'm telling everyone that social media is evil, for one reason or another, and that no one should have an FB account. Perhaps that is throwing the water out along with the baby, but if you want a single, simple advice then that's it. Anything else would require a lot of labor in considering what and who may need to know, and who can be trusted with this or that risky photo without immediately sharing it with the whole world. I personally have no social accounts because I cannot be bothered to do this work - even if I trusted Mark Zuckerberg, which I do not.
there's a whole slew of unknowns regarding the particular intersection of the HR worker's personal judgement and an individual's lifestyle that makes it a sensitive action to take.
There is that. My own bias is against drugs, for example. Other people may have objections against candidates who like target shooting, or who hunt animals, or who date opposite sex, or who date the same sex, and so on. Legal protections against discrimination do exist, but there is no G-man behind the shoulder of every HR worker who singlehandedly decides what resumes go into trash and what get forwarded to the hiring manager. If anyone in the long chain of hiring dislikes you for any reason whatsoever, your resume will never end up on the desk of the manager - and without documented, in writing, proof of the reason for doing so you cannot prove anything. HR has special phrases for that, such as "More qualified candidates were selected." In reality, if a team in a company is largely homophobic, hiring a gay is not such a great idea; the opposite would be also true. By the law the gay can't be denied employment; but by realities of life he would be not accepted as a team member, and he would be forced to quit soon after.
But there is yet another consideration. Twitbook contains photos of people doing things that are illegal or that appear to be illegal. It could be driving way over the speed limit, or street racing, or drinking too much alcohol, or giving what appears to be alcohol to a person that appears to be a minor, or engaging in what looks like sexual activity with an apparent minor, and so on. People do not think of these as of crimes. Perhaps in their mind these are small infractions that are harmless as long as nobody was hurt. But if an HR person sees these photos, not only the candidate won't be hired - the HR person by law may be forced to report the finding to the police. This is not what your drinking buddies would ever do; after all, they knew that the "apparent minor" in the photo is your wife who is not minor at all. But the HR person wouldn't know that; neither would the police - who will investigate, and that may end up with your arrest if something doesn't add up ("Hey, she said she is 21! I didn't know that her birthday was two weeks after the party!")
In the end, it would be better for most people if social media did not exist. Public sharing of texts, images and sounds of arguably legal activity is not helping anyone. But people tend to share exactly those images, trying to impress their peers. Lacking this information, HR would have to fall back to what they know about the applicant - what he says in the resume, what his past employers say (very little nowadays) and what the applicant himself tells at the int
Florida's requirement (and it is not atypical) is that you do have a right to use deadly force in self defense if you're in reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm. If you're getting pounded in the head and your attacker has already broken your nose, that fear might well be there, and it would be reasonable.
Alive? A bit of doggerel from Usenet covers that one -- "Avoid the legal nets / that entangled Bernie Goetz / Yell 'Help Help Police' / Like Kitty Genovese"
Of course, your little narrative assumes that physically attacking someone who merely "confronts" you is "fighting back", an assumption I think is at odds with the law.
Challenging Zimmerman's account of events is fine. However, it needs to be challenged by investigation in accordance with the standards of evidence. It is not acceptable to throw him at the mercy of a jury and hope that something sticks.
That does seem to suggest that parts of the fight Zimmerman described did indeed happen. However, given the very visible blood in the picture you linked to, and the complete lack of blood in the police video (which does have some back of the head shots with sufficient contrast that anything like the later shots should be visible), the later shots of his head look a little staged since the blood wasn't flowing freely again after his trip to the police station. Not saying that the injuries aren't real, just that he may have whacked his head against something to get the blood flowing again. What you posted still doesn't really address the lack of blood on Zimmerman's front. I've been told there was some blood splatter and that the wound wouldn't have produced much blood, but it still seems like there should have been at least some visible. The police video isn't great, but it still gives some pretty good shots of Zimmerman's shirt.
In any case, the existence of a struggle doesn't really prove that the use of escalated force was warranted since it doesn't really say anything about details of the fight that aren't part of Zimmerman's story. It also doesn't address the fact that the whole thing happened because Zimmerman created a situation that would leave Martin fearing for his life.
Is a pretty damn impressive feat.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Seriously, isn't victim character assassination pretty much the ultimate admission of guilt? You give up on denying the crime all together and start victim blaming. That is a sign of guilt if I've ever seen one. Which is probably why I'll never get on a jury.
One of the few photos of myself on my facebook page is a picture of me with an empty birdbath-sized margarita glass in front of me. Judging from my expression, I drank that margarita (and, in fact, I did. And it was very good. Unfortunately, the restaurant is out of business now.). Another photo is me with two beers in front of me. I leave these up there to ensure that I never get hired by the sort of tight-assed company which would judge me according to essentially-innocuous pictures on social media.
And he should face the consequences of that decision, which should be a murder conviction. He's not being tried for disregarding a lawful order from anyone. The 911 was aware of the situation, advised him that police were on the way and that he should stay in his vehicle. He chose to escalate and should face the music for his decision.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I hope for the sake of justice that you're never on a jury for any case of importance. Your prejudice is showing.
Yeah, your prejudice against dumbasses with concealed weapons permits is showing.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
"A thuggish manner?" You mean in warm clothing that covers your ears in winter? You already tried to claim it was sweltering and didn't respond at all to the fact that your claim was complete bunk, and you're trying to call me incoherent?
Also, is it possible that the manner of his dress wouldn't have looked so "thuggish" if he didn't also insist on wearing dark skin?
In most jurisdictions, the law says you have a right to defend yourself with reasonable force.
Correct.
You don't have a right to kill your attacker.
Oversimplified. You never have a right to attack someone with intent to kill, but you sometimes have the right to use potentially lethal force to stop an attacker. The legal standard, as summarized by Massad Ayoob, goes something like this: You may only use potentially lethal force to prevent an immediate, otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm to the innocent. ("Grave bodily harm" has a specific legal meaning, look it up.) This standard is pretty much universal across the USA, and not only covers firearm use but also knife use, use of a baton against someone's head, or any other potentially lethal force.
If a guy you have never seen before is running at you with a knife yelling "I'll kill you!!", you are legal to shoot him if you have no other way to prevent him from killing you. If he falls down after you shoot him, and you walk up to him and shoot him a few times in the head, now you just committed murder. If you just taunted the guy a bunch or otherwise provoked the situation, it is murkier and you might be in big trouble.
TL;DR There are all sorts of laws and precedents covering the use of force in self-defense; you don't seem to be aware of them. Yet you seem to feel free in commenting on them.
Here is a nice, short summary that won't take you long to read: http://www.useofforce.us/3aojp/
Of course, the NRA is trying to change those laws.
What, the NRA is trying to make murder legal? I'd like a citation, please.
I presume you have no such citation, and are just assuming the worst about an organization you don't understand or know much about. I'm an NRA "Life Member" and I get emails all the time from the NRA. I think I would know if the NRA were trying to get murder legalized, or even if the NRA were trying to get a substantial change to the way self-defense works. So far they seem to be busy enough just pushing back against unConstitutional infringements to gun-owners' rights.
By the way, the NRA also offers gun safety classes, including classes for small children (the "Eddie Eagle" classes). The classes for children teach one message: If you see a gun: Stop! Don't touch! Leave the area! Tell an adult! The lessons repeat this mantra many times to make it sink in. You will note the complete lack of pro-gun propaganda there; it's pure safety. (I mention the gun safety classes because some people think the NRA is nothing but political advocacy. I literally once had someone tell me "I'd have much more respect for the NRA if they did something helpful like teach safety classes." Um... they have been teaching gun safety classes for decades.)
If you go around with a concealed handgun, confronting other people, and somebody fights back, you don't have a right to kill him.
Correct as written. If you cause a confrontation, and you wind up in legitimate fear for your life, and you use lethal force to save your life... you will be in serious legal hot water for provoking the situation. And the NRA is fine with that, and so am I.
Try it and you'll wind up like Zimmerman.
Zimmerman's story is that Martin confronted him, and then attacked him. Martin: "You got a problem?" Zimmerman: "No." Martin: "Now you do." Zimmerman also claims that Martin was slamming his head into the sidewalk, and that Martin said "You're going to die tonight."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trayvon-martin-started-confrontation-zimmerman-lawyer-says/2012/03/26/gIQAIlr0cS_story.html
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/zimm_he_said_die_CRLY0byLFjnhr
Following someone may be intimidating but it is not unlawful.
It depends. If Zimmerman was brandishing his gun while following or immediately before confronting Trayvon, it may well have been illegal, and could be reasonably interpreted as an imminent threat of bodily harm.
Trying to educate people about shitty SYG laws.
Maybe try a less antagonistic approach?
Acting like an arrogant ass is not usually effective.
Yes, it's perfectly normal for people to walk around like a thug in a gated community (especially one he didn't live in).
You really aren't very intellectually honest are you? First off, he was a minor with separated parents staying with his father who was co-habitating with his significant other in the neighborhood. In other words, even if only temporarily, he did live there. Secondly, how exactly do you define "walk[ing] around like a thug?". Is it the grievous crime of walking around while black? Or is just being young and male enough for you?
You've never been to Sanford. It's a town you don't normally just walk around in. If you can't understand that, you're too stupid to talk to.
Ok... No pedestrians in Sanford, got it. Not even in gated communities. And the fact that one of the witnesses was a 14 (might have been 13) year old pedestrian doesn't suggest that you're completely wrong at all. Oh, and despite the fact that you can't get the weather, or the time, or any other details right, I'm the stupid one? I think a little self-examination might be in order.
Essentially cornered him but lost sight
lulz
This is pretty much from Zimmerman's own version of events. Exactly where Martin was when Zimmerman got out of his vehicle to search for him is unknown and probably will never been known because Zimmerman killed him. We do know that Zimmerman chased him in his vehicle and Martin ran, but didn't make it back home, then Zimmerman got out of the car, then there was an altercation and Martin was killed. My description of events seems pretty in line with that.
I know you're trolling because there's no way you could possibly be this fucking stupid.
Uh-huh. Sorry, just saying it doesn't make it so.
I'm reaching on what? My own personal anecdote, or my assertion that being taller doesn't make someone some sort of killing machine? Height is no more the be all and end all than weight is.
You didn't really answer my questions. Was your father, in fact in good shape and good health. Did you ever actually engage in any sort of combat? Arm wrestling? Anything that demonstrates that you really were physically superior?
None of this changes the fact that the 17-year old Martin frankly looked a bit frail.
No one is disagreeing with that
No, he really did not. Where are you getting your information? Pretty much everything I can find says that he played football until age 14, went through an aviation program and didn't play football after that, though he did work concessions for games.
Yes he was in good health and shape, for his age at least. Any type of physical exertion, wrestling, basketball, whatever, showed I was above him physically. I beat him arm wrestling at 14 and haven't looked back since. I just don't think you really know what you're talking about. I remember being his size and 17. I was anything but frail, and I was an inch taller and weighed 5 lbs more.
Despite being asked (not told, since a 911 dispatcher cannot give you orders) to not follow the kid, he got out of the car anyway and then somehow the kid ended up dead after being shot with George's gun. There's potential cause for a charge of premeditation - (why did he get out of the car? Even if it's his "legal right" to get out of the car, as some /. posters have been using as justification for killing the kid, why did he get out and go after him if he thought Trayvon was dangerous or suspicious - he's not a cop himself, so what is he going to do when he catches up to him?)
And where's the case for premeditation? None of the acts above indicate such. I bet we'll find that he made a habit of talking to people he saw during his rounds which deflates your case even more.
It's worth noting here that Zimmerman might have in the past gotten a lot of mileage merely out of talking to potential troublemakers. If you're casing a neighborhood for robbery targets and someone sidles up and starts asking you questions about what you're doing, then you might give up on the neighborhood completely and look for something easier.
Could luck proving that
Good*
I'm not your google search engine. NYT and the Orlando Sentinel had what I am putting out there.
Gunshots wounds tend not to bleed out the entry wound because of cauterization. There was no exit wound. Either way gun shot residue was indicative on a shot being fired from 1-18" from Martin and there are witnesses that place Martin on top of Zimmerman, who claims that is when he shot Martin. For better or worse, no one can prove hi guilt and current Florida law allows for what he did. Hell there was a case where a drug dealer was allowed to walk because someone TOLD him he was packing and the dealer gunned the dude down. That's far more of an egregious offense than what happened here, but Martin is a minor and the community needs its outrage
Read the fucking autopsy report. It's only been public record for months now.
You haven't really made it clear in what respect I don't know what I'm talking about. It seems to me that you're trying to claim that being taller always gives someone the physical edge. Also, if you were stronger and taller than your father at 15 but only an inch taller than him at 17, you seem to have stopped growing early. In any case, being heavier or taller, or heavier and taller don't necessarily make someone physically superior, I think we can agree on that. Martin, however, was both significantly taller and significantly lighter than Zimmerman, who had himself recently lost weight. The only advantage I can see that Martin could have had was reach, and that doesn't count for much in close quarters grappling.
Clearly I am a liar, instead of an anonymous coward, and know nothing about the trial history of this law. READ ABOUT THE DISMISSALS, shut the fuck up, and go back to pulling your life partner's dildo out of your ass.
Neither is being a moron, but you insist on it.
That might be the 2nd dumbest post I've seen on Slashdot. None of his posts actually have any factual basis, but I guess I'm aiming for too high of a standard for an AC
Read the SYG law, shut the fuck up, and go back to your abode under the bridge. I've been assured the billy goats gruff will be by soon. Please educate yourself before you talk more. In this situation the SYG law will supersede the manslaughter laws because there is a lack of evidence against Zimmerman, not necessarily because he's innocent or was "right" in what he did. The case history across the entire state is overwhelmingly in Zimmerman's favor. http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/stand-your-ground-law-protects-those-who-go-far-beyond-that-point/1222930 Get a bottle thrown at you? Shoot the guy and walk Guy steals your radio? Chase him, avoid his attack, kill him, and walk. Guy speeds by your house? Chase him down with gun, shoot his friend, and walk Guy tailgates you? Chase him down, no witnesses, kill him and walk... PLEASE READ UP ON WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO PONTIFICATE ABOUT
There is simply no reason for anyone to take the life of another human being.
Most such self-defense killings have a reason along the line of "I thought my life was in danger and it was kill or be killed. So I killed the other person." There's a reason. It might not be a good or true reason, but it's a hell of a lot more than "no" reason.
I can understand the sentiment behind the first sentence, that deadly force should never be used. But deadly force is often used in the furtherance of evil activities. I just don't see a moral argument for saying that someone should allow themselves to be killed by another merely because it is immoral that the other person die. My view is that if my life is threatened by another to the point where it is them or me, I will try hard to make it them. Not only to save my life, which I consider sufficient reason in itself, but to protect others.
The EMS cleaned him up before he was brought in. Read the police report and autopsy report. I don't give a shit what you've been told. Public record clearly indicates he was injured and Martin had corresponding bruising on his knuckles. I'm not Gary Sinise but I can read an autopsy report.
15 lbs is not a significant amount of weight
And I'm not your search engine. Martin was a _former_ football player. He played up to age 14, then stopped.
Still, since we could just go back and forth forever making claims without references and demanding that the other look it up, here's a reference for you: Deconstructing HuffPo's Insufferable Propaganda Reporting on Trayvon Martin. The relevant section from that article:
Yeah, they love to keep talking about this football player Trayvon, except there’s one issue. He hasn’t played for years. I’m surprised they didn’t mention his weekly choir practice, or kitten rescue efforts.
The boy was a swift athlete, according to a friend, and played a range of positions up to about age 14.
...if I punch you and we start fighting, you could then claim self defense if you shot me, but I couldn't if I shot you. The same if I pulled a knife and threatened to stab you.
The problem is that if Zimmerman started the fight, and Martin (the only other witness) is dead, now Zimmerman can claim anything he wants.
Zimmerman's father, Robert Zimmerman, was a US Magistrate judge and his mother was a court clerk so, even before he had a lawyer, it would be easy for him to get advice on exactly what to say to beat the rap.
First, you make two assumptions that are not in evidence yet (unless I missed them):
1. That Treyvon was wildly smashing his head into the ground after an initial blow that made Zimmerman incoherent and delirious. We do not know how hard he was hitting zimmerman's head, or if the blows themselves weren't being rebuffed by Martin or at least using his neck muscles to soften the impact (which is a natural reaction to force being applied to one's head.)
2. You assume that based on your experience with "mildly" hitting the ground with your head, that no one is capable of being capable of anything after that. I contend your "mild" hit to the ground was harder than you thought, and that a light hit is going to make things a little strange (and hurt), but not cause what most people see with a heavy impact on the head.
Additionally, we do not know the extent of force Treyvon could've been exerting if he was scared and angry enough to try smacking Zimmerman's head into the concrete. He could've had a bad angle when he tackled Zimmerman, he could've been so angry that in his fit of rage ( or fear-induced rage) he was just glancing the head into the concrete, which would've given Zimmerman enough time to pull his gun and stop Treyvon. Also, there might've been moisture coupled with the cold weather, so Treyvon might not have been able to get a good grip on Zimmerman's head to smash it effectively. And we all know the slightest nick to the head causes lots of bleeding, and sometimes requires more stitches in minor scrapes and bumps than other parts of the body (because the blood vessels are so close to the surface unless you've got a huge fat layer around your skull... like some politicians. heh.)
So, without all the facts, Zimmerman's account is plausible. I'm not claiming I know and you don't. I'm just saying it passes the bullshit test, because it eliminates the "variables turned constants" that you use to come to the conclusion Zimmerman's lying.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Still having a bit of trouble with the positioning of Martin when he was shot. If they were struggling for the gun, as Zimmerman claimed, there should probably be powder burns actually on Martin's hands and arms. Presumably such forensic details will come out during the trial if they exist.
As for whether anyone can prove Zimmerman's guilt, I would think that it's more a matter of law than a matter of fact. I think they can probably convict based only on the details Zimmerman admits to depending on the interpretation of the law. You seem pretty convinced that the stand your ground law will protect Zimmerman, but I'm not so sure about that. For one thing, as you've said, he killed a minor, and this will be decided by a jury. For another thing, I think that the stand your ground defense is torpedoed by the overall issue of Zimmerman's poor judgement leading to a death.
As for the case you mention with the drug dealer, presumably he was actually being actively threatened by someone trying to rob him. Clearly that wasn't happening in this case. Martin would never have been a threat to Zimmerman at all if Zimmerman weren't implicitly threatening him by chasing him.
Great source you got there. I'll stick with the NYT. usually pretty reliable, and Orlando Sentinel, the newspaper that broke pretty much all the news on this story.
No you could not
So far I've just seen summaries in news articles. Now I've read the report. Almost perfect shot through the heart from straight on. Seems even more like it should get blood on Zimmerman and that the body should have fallen on him when shot.
By all reconstructions, testimony and other means available to the court, Martin was on top of Zimmerman. No one really contests that at this point. Your take on his SYG being torpedoed is idiotic, because, as I've demonstrated in this thread, you have zero knowledge of SYG case history in the state. There have been multiple PUBLICIZED instances where the instigator shoots the victim to death and walks. Do some god damn research. This is one such case: http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-06-27/news/sns-mct-miami-man-freed-in-stand-your-ground-ruling-20120627_1_miami-man-miami-police-miami-gardens
Martin's blood was on Zimmerman, so you clearly skimmed the report or read the summaries. You should call the Sanford ME and offer your expertise.
Read the SYG law, shut the fuck up, and go back to your abode under the bridge.
The SYG law may well be irrelevant due to Zimmerman's negligence creating the situation. Negligent behaviour leading to death can make all kinds of things that would otherwise be legal essentially illegal.
In this situation the SYG law will supersede the manslaughter laws because there is a lack of evidence against Zimmerman, not necessarily because he's innocent or was "right" in what he did.
That doesn't really make any sense because manslaughter laws would be covering the entire event, not just the specific parts involving the scuffle and the killing.
In all your examples of the SYG law (in which I sincerely hope there were some extenuating circumstances) the person killed was still committing some sort of criminal act that initiated the situation. In this case, Zimmerman is the one who initiated the situation, not Martin. Otherwise, by the same defense you present for Zimmerman, Martin is also entitled to defense under the SYG law.
A "teenage boy" at 17 who is taller than Zimmerman. A 6' tall, 17 year old wearing a hoodie walking around a gated neighborhood in the middle of the night, in sweltering Florida, in a high crime area = totally normal.
Being a "...6' tall, 17 year old wearing a hoodie walking around a gated neighborhood in the middle of the night, in sweltering Florida, in a high crime area..." is not a crime.
If you think you see a crime, call the police. That's their business.
He was cleaned up, and stayed clean during the trip in without bleeding, but then apparently started bleeding freely again from multiple locations later on for another police picture. Maybe swelling sealed the wounds and then went down later and they opened back up? Not sure, but it seems like if they were bleeding that freely someone would have put on at least a band-aid.
As for corresponding bruising on Martin's knuckles, now that I've read the autopsy in full, that's clearly not exactly the case. There was one small abrasion found on one knuckle.
"That's not what the law says," said Steven Romine, a Tampa Bay lawyer who has invoked "stand your ground" successfully. "They might think that in their own heads, but it's just not true.
"If you're doing something legal, no matter what the act is, and you're attacked, it's in that moment that you have a right to stand your ground." Prosecutors, who are generally critical of the law, agree.
"The real issue is what happens around the 60 seconds prior to the shooting," said Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office, which brought the charges against Greyston Garcia. "Everything else has emotional content, but from a legal perspective, it all comes down to the 60 seconds before the incident." http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/stand-your-ground-law-protects-those-who-go-far-beyond-that-point/1222930 Martin was doing nothing illegal. Cops have already confirmed that 8 months ago. Quit pulling shit from your ass. It'll get red and chapped at your rate.
Neither is being a moron, but you insist on it.
Where do I insist on it? Apropos of nothing it might be time to point out that I'm not the OP in this thread.
Calling you a moron for not spotting that would just be gauche though; we'll just call it unfortunate instead.
"If you're doing something legal, no matter what the act is, and you're attacked, it's in that moment that you have a right to stand your ground." Prosecutors, who are generally critical of the law, agree.
For starters, plain old harassment isn't legal. But the overall manslaughter issue is still more significant. If you're behaving in a criminally negligent manner that leads to someone's death, then it's manslaughter, which, since death resulted, would make Zimmerman's actions illegal. All this is only provided that his story is completely true. His story may not even be true, and the jury may not believe it. We're discussing this as if everything Zimmerman is saying really is true, and I think he should be guilty of manslaughter even in that case.
Martin was doing nothing illegal. Cops have already confirmed that 8 months ago. Quit pulling shit from your ass. It'll get red and chapped at your rate.
I know Martin was doing nothing illegal. What's your point?
Not if it's fat. If it's muscle and increased bone mass it kind of is significant. 15 lbs of muscle contracting can move a thousand pounds or more. In any case, you're the one who was making a big deal about the fact that you could beat your dad even though he outweighed you by 15 pounds.
I thought that, since the source was from a mind exactly in line with yours and was not, by any stretch of the imagination, pro-Martin, you might respect it a bit more. In any case, the actual details of Martin's football career and its end have been repeated all over the place. The way it's reported often leaves the impression he was still a football player, but never explicitly says so. I doubt very much that you actually have any authoritative source saying that Martin was still a football player. It was probably vague, but you didn't read it that way and it stuck in your head. Your impression is, nevertheless wrong. Martin stopped playing football at age 14.
In reality, I think a better option than not having any social media is to be open about the culture of the company, departments, etc. I know I don't want to work somewhere where there's a clear cultural bias against any and all alcohol consumption or some other truly insignificant trait, and they wouldn't want me in a company if there were such a culture, but I'd never be able to find that out until getting the job and being there for a while.
By all reconstructions, testimony and other means available to the court, Martin was on top of Zimmerman.
Yes, it looks like he probably was at some point. The question is, was he still like that when he was shot right through the heart?
The example you gave in your last post was no different than the previous examples you gave. It involved a someone in the commission of a crime being confronted and attacking, then being killed. Martin was not committing a crime.
Yeah, because the autopsy report on Martin says anything at all about evidence found on Zimmerman. You know, I'm getting pretty sick of my intelligence repeatedly being insulted by a little toad such as yourself given that you're clearly a moron.
I'm saying that being an idiot and killing someone through your idiocy with no real justification for the situation you got yourself into is actually a crime, SYG law or no. I also haven't brought it up much, but none of the witness reports are particularly reliable, so it largely is just Zimmerman's word. There is no particular reason why a jury is going to implicitly believe hopped up bully who killed a minor.
Don't recall seeing that in the autopsy report.
Also, no the "police report, EMS report, autopsy, his doctor's report, and police photos" don't corroborate his side of the story. They imply that a fight did take place. They don't say anything about Zimmerman's claims as the exact circumstances.
But that's all we have. So what would you rather they do - release Zimmerman, drop the charges, and forget about it? Or investigate, and determine whether or not it's reasonable to believe a crime was (or wasn't) committed?
If there is not absolute proof, beyond any reasonable doubt, then in that situation, Zimmerman should be released.
Violence is never a legal response to a nonviolent provocation.
In most places, even those with "retreat" provisions, you are allowed to use violent response when you fear for your life and have no other choice. If you are hiding in your closet during a home invasion, and they burst into your room, they haven't done any "violence" against you personally, even if they broke the law to trespass. You are in almost all locations, allowed to use deadly force if you believe your discovery would likely lead to your death, even before any violence is done against you or explicit threat is made.
Also, direct threats allow a violent response in many cases as well.
Also, picking a fight (assault and battery) that turns into your victim trying to kill you allows for you to defend yourself against.
So it's "legal" to kill someone if you assault them first, so long as the justified homicide rules would have otherwise have been met?
Learn to love Alaska
There is nothing showing Martin touched Zimmerman. For all we know, when Zimmerman started patrolling armed, he had is "response" planned and deliberately fell backwards in an attempt to cause damage to justify the prior assassination. There's nothing that indicates otherwise. From what little was published of the autopsy, there was no damage to Martin's knuckles or Zimmerman blood on Martin.
Learn to love Alaska
The only thing that does matter is the outcome of laws. And right now, the outcome of Stand Your Ground Laws is that if you're ever in a confrontation with no witnesses (or very pliable witnesses), make sure to kill whoever is confronting you.That can't possibly work long term.
Objectively, that's just common sense. If you're ever in the position where you're seriously hurting someone or fighting for your life against an intruder or attacker, you're best off to finish the job, so to speak, so there is no witness/victim to contradict your lies, or to supply lies of their own. This outcome has nothing to do with stand your ground laws.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
I read a summary of it that indicated no bruising, but one small cut on one finger (on the second segment, not where it would be from a punch). Is the actual full report available? I haven't seen that yet.
Learn to love Alaska
yea, unfort the law isn't applied equally, http://www.salon.com/2012/04/11/when_stand_your_ground_fails/
If I were the prosecution, I'd leave the deceased out of it. Zimmerman has a history of following following blacks and only blacks. I'd set up a pattern of behavior that sets him up as a serial killer that just managed to get caught on his first kill. Then, in closing, after the defense set up Martin as the devil, harp on the point that the dead person is easy to attack, as he was dead, and the attacks on Martin are because Zimmerman thinks him less than human, a scourge to be wiped out, murdered and those like him murdered again.
Learn to love Alaska
but I'd never be able to find that out until getting the job and being there for a while
For that reason companies, starting at some size, all look the same. The cubicles are the same, the culture is the same... If you work in a garage alongside Jim, Bob and Dave, you can tell jokes of all kinds, from political to non-gender-neutral, and use any language you like amongst yourselves. But allowing that in a larger company is unthinkable. What if someone gets offended and sues for one billion trillion dollars? That happens. You can trust Bob because you know him and you are friends; but you cannot trust a random person even if s/he works for the same company as you do. This is triply so if big money is involved. Remember Herman Cain? His accuser got a bunch of money just to shut up and go away:
In October 2011, Politico reported that two female employees had complained about inappropriate behavior by Cain during his tenure at the National Restaurant Association. The women reportedly accepted financial settlements from the association which barred them from discussing their allegations further.
This is exactly what we are talking about here. Perhaps Cain made a joke, but that joke fell on gold digger's ears. Culture of openness and friendship collided with the culture of greed. You can't reconcile those; and the common denominator is your familiar featureless cubicles and the bland corporate-speak and corporate-think, all designed to not give anyone an excuse for a lawsuit.
And that is also the difference between a 3-person company and a 300-person department. A fourth man in a 3-person company would become a family member for all practical purposes. A 301'st man would be just another speck of dust on the vast landscape of a large company.
But returning to the problem at hand, applicants that are about to be hired are often given a tour of the facility, so that they can have a look at the culture of the company and decide for themselves if they are a good fit or not. Applicants are also expected to talk about that and ask about the company's culture. It is very important because an angry loner with violent tendencies may not fit well in a 10-man team where everyone is happy and is singing and talking. I, for example, wouldn't want to work at a company where formal clothes are required. I also wouldn't want to join company picnics, or gatherings at eateries. I can easily work with people who love these things - as long as I'm not expected to be there.
The thing is, you're not the prosecution, and neither are the defence. They have no idea where the prosecution is going to go so they have to be prepared..
Amazing that you apply that to Zimmerman but not to Martin. Also, I'm pretty willing to bet that if Zimmerman had been chasing a teenage girl around that way instead of a boy and had been arrested, you'd be calling him a moron rather than defending him.
Oh, I do apply that to Martin. If he was shot without trying to beat another person to death just because he was there I would be the first to call foul. But really, if he is stupid enough to attack someone whom he knows to have a gun he deserves to get shot.
In the end accordingly to the law it is irrelevant what Martin thought, even if he thought Zimmerman was going to pull a gun and attack him (which he should have taken as a clue to run away), if Zimmerman didn't really pull the gun first, legally he didn't initiate anything and was within his rights to defend himself when he was attacked.
Oh, and you can rest assured a teenage girl wouldn't try to beat a guy to death and therefore wouldn't ever create a similar situation of self-defense, but if one pulled a gun and got shot as consequence I wouldn't be defending her.
In most jurisdictions, the law says you have a right to defend yourself with reasonable force. You don't have a right to kill your attacker.
In most jurisdictions, you have a right to defend yourself and other people using force, and under certain conditions, where it is justified, force that could potentially be deadly.
You don't have a right to use force for the purpose of killing or inflicting injury upon anyone, but under the conditions where force is allowed, force may legally be used that has a risk of that.
If you are assaulted or attacked, and your attacker happens to die, as a result of wounds inflicted by your legal self-defense, then the attacker is responsible for their death or injuries.
Unless you had provoked/exacerbated the situation or applied force that was obviously not required. Force involving shooting an 'attacker' who had surrendered, or was already incapacitated or wounded, would be demonstrably unnecessary.
In any case, if you are ever put in a situation where you actually must use force to preserve your very survival. The ultimate legal ramifications might be the last thing on your mind; would you actually choose to potentially let an assailant kill you, over ensuring you survive and accepting the risk of being charged with a crime?
In your head only. There is nothing even remotely associated to murder here. He has every legal right to walk away from his car and to defend himself if his life was threatened, even if he knew for sure that his life would be threatened beforehand. "Choosing to escalate" is not a crime, and much less the equivalent to murder.
Being kicked by three much smaller guys here.
And yet you can still find time to post to Slashdot.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I leave these up there to ensure that I never get hired by the sort of tight-assed company which would judge me according to essentially-innocuous pictures on social media.
These photos are legal and you aren't doing anything out of the ordinary there. Bars are full of people like that. Alcohol is a drug, and I personally don't ingest it, but in this world about 100% of population take it from time to time. I am not entitled to my own facts or to my own planet; hence, I accept the inevitable.
But as blackraven14250 said, you will be judged by random people with random ideas about what is right and what is wrong. For example, HR is usually staffed with women. If the HR worker has (or had) an alcoholic husband who used to beat her, she may project her hatred toward the man and the habit onto you. Perhaps without intentionally wanting to harm you - but you will be harmed nevertheless. You will never know what you missed; a resume sent and ignored carries zero bits of information back.
That's why I say that one shouldn't post anything on social media. It only leads to you being judged by someone else's rules, and you not only cannot face your accusers - you do not even know that you were tried and found guilty. The best course of action is to give them nothing. If they want something from you, let them ask - and then you will decide, on case by case basis, what they can be given, if anything.
Can't speak for the anon, but I misread yours the first time as to saying 'call 911 if being assaulted instead of fighting back'. Took a second read to get it right.
I know mine was partially biased due to another thread on how 'your life isn't worth taking anothers' and such. Couple that with a narrative shift where 'response' refers to Martin to Zimmerman following, or Zimmerman's to 'Martin's attack', and I thought you were saying ZImmerman should have called 911.
I assume though, that the anon did the 'logical procession' where while you're calling 911 you get jumped..and so you 'lost initiative', so Martin's attack was the right choice. Would fit with the anon's 'pigs are the enemy' worldview.
Hey you're a moron in other parts of the thread as well! Leave your GED in law at home and save yourself some humiliation.
Who gives a damn who or what I sound like? Doesn't mean I agree with them. That's called an ad hominem.
I quite like the idea of a legal system that takes account of all the evidence before declaring someone guilty.
Search his home? For WHAT?
The shooting happened OUTSIDE, there is nothing INSIDE that would help determine what happened.
The latest Slashdot meme.
Obviously the statement says more about me than either of you, though one thing it doesn't say is that I didn't take your opinion at face value. If that had been the case, I wouldn't have bothered replying in the first place. The Internet is full of these people, so even sometimes tenuous reputations of a single account which cannot be followed off-site is worth more than it being absent. That shows a person is willing to stand behind what they say, and the manner in which they say it. Assuming you are the same AC, your response further underscores my point, especially given the continued lack of any attempt at civility.
Being offensive and patronizing is easy when you don't have to worry about knowledge of your behavior following you around. It must be an interesting world you live in where the adult thing to do is throw insults anonymously. I'm glad I don't live there.
Yes, it's perfectly normal for people to walk around like a thug in a gated community (especially one he didn't live in).
What the fuck does "normal" have to do with it?
It's a town you don't normally just walk around in.
Could you explain to me how you traverse the area without walking, if you lack an automobile?
Anyway, why didn't anybody shoot Zimmerman after he left his car and chased an unarmed man on foot? After all, he was acting aggressively while walking through the area carrying a firearm.
It's only arrogance when unwarranted, but I wouldn't trust someone such as yourself to make that judgment.
Actually, it's not.
Being arrogant and being right are not mutually exclusive positions.
If you think it is, I'm not sure you understand what arrogance actually means.
Hey you're a moron in other parts of the thread as well! Leave your GED in law at home and save yourself some humiliation.
Hah. Nice attempt to backpedal. You just managed the forum equivalent of tripping over your own feet while walking and then looking at your watch to try and cover it up saying "I meant to do that!"
I'll take that as a sign that you've lost the argument.
... not witnesses or victims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
There are many variables that you seem to be skipping over.
Shooting someone who is on top of you, beating your head into the ground, would likely result in getting some of that person's blood on you, don't you think?Shooting someone who is on top of you, beating your head into the ground, would likely result in getting some of that person's blood on you, don't you think?
As a paramedic of 16 years who has seen more that a few real gun shot wounds, I can say you don't even get bleeding sometimes. And sometimes you still only might get a trickle of blood. That could have easily been absorbed by clothing.
And with today's 9mm jacketed hollowpoitn ammunition, you won't even get an exit wound. The bullet enters leaving a small hole and then begins to expand as it encounters soft tissue, organs and bone thus dumping its kinetic energy within the body.
So it's entirely plausible that Zimmerman walkd away from the shooting withou as much as 1 drop of Martin's blood on him.
The problem is that Stand Your Ground laws extend the position of legitimate self-defense from fighting for your life to "someone is scaring you". Which is much, much, much more subjective.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I'm sorry, what process did you go through to make sure that you had the right guy? Was the John Smith you're interviewing really the John Smith on Facebook? Even if it is Quitzacohetl Habsburg the third, you know very little about how common certain names are.
You want to be really careful about those kinds of searches. I hope for your HR department that that level of incompetence doesn't spread elsewhere.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I have to admit, you have a point. If I were Martin and some guy was following me around in a truck, I'm not thinking he has good intentions. Martin trying to take the gun only means he was aware aware he had a gun at some point, not prior to this becoming a physical altercation. At that point it's only common sense that if you're in a fight with someone and they produce a gun, taking it away is a really good idea. Getting away without doing so is virtually impossible, as you're either at pont blank range with your back turned, or at point blank range backing away much slower than a run, in either case an easy to hit target.
It's arrogance whether it is "warranted" or not.
Like I said, it seems you don't understand what the word means. You also forgot to log in - try to be more careful next time.
Your facts seem to be a bit skewed (possibly to show bias?):
- The police knew that they had a shooting victim, not a homicide (that is determined in a court of law).
- How do you know he changed his story?
Where are you getting all this information? From what I have read, the only person who changed Zimmerman's story is the media.
Word!
I think you meant to say was from what little published of the autopsy, there WAS damage on Martins knuckles.
http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/autopsy-results-show-trayvon-martin-had-injuries-h/nN6gs/
I don't think anyone has claimed that Zimmerman was brandishing.
Well, of course. The only take on the situation so far has been from Zimmerman himself, because he's the only guy alive to tell the story. That's precisely why his story shouldn't be taken as gospel.
He didn't choose his parents. But because he was randomly chosen with the ones he has, he's fucked from ever using lethal force. Talk about living in a tainted well. One man's action of violence will either kill or land you in jail. Nice!
Life is not for the lazy.
You're an idiot.
Of course he should, because if there is no proof beyond any reasonable doubt, then he would (should) be declared not guilty of the charges, and set free. He will be convicted & sentenced only if the state makes the case beyond a reasonable doubt that what Zimmerman did was NOT self defense.
The investigation and trial is to determine if there was wrongdoing - if there wasn't any wrongdoing, the charges will be dismissed and Zimmerman will walk away free.
I saw a similarly editorialized statement that was exactly the opposite. To protect the integrety of the case, they are deliberately tainting the jury pool with lies, rather than the truth?
Learn to love Alaska
That's right. Florida is one of those jurisdictions where you have the right to use deadly force when you're in "reasonable" fear of death or great bodily harm. "Reasonable" is determined by the jury after the facts.
The jury might decide that Zimmerman had reasonable fear. Or they might not, and they might convict him of murder.
Based on my experience, the harm of getting beaten up like that isn't great enough to justify killing an opponent. If I were on the jury, I might decide that Zimmerman wasn't in "reasonable" fear.
It's like killing someone over a schoolyard fight. When you throw a gun into the situation, someone gets killed.
Bernie Goetz wasn't in danger of being killed. He was in danger of being robbed. While he does appeal to a vigilante sense of justice, one of his robbers wound up with a spine injury crippled for life. The robber was a thug and he deserved some punishment, but he didn't deserve that. Goetz wound up spending most of a year's sentence in jail.
So because Florida is a law-and-order state, Zimmerman might wind up getting sent to jail for 20 years with some kind of mandatory sentencing guidelines. He doesn't deserve that either.
But I think if Zimmerman had a choice, he would rather have taken the beating that night than have to go through what he's going through now.
If you are assaulted or attacked, and your attacker happens to die, as a result of wounds inflicted by your legal self-defense, then the attacker is responsible for their death or injuries.
That's the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. If your self-defense was legal, you're not responsible. If your self-defense wasn't legal, you are responsible. What's legal? Who decides? Being legal depends on acting "reasonably". What's reasonable? Who decides? Being legal depends on the facts. What are the facts? Who decides?
If you pull a gun and kill somebody, you're gambling that afterwards, you'll be able to establish in court that you were legally defending yourself and legally killed him. As the Zimmerman case shows, the circumstances are usually ambiguous.
In any case, if you are ever put in a situation where you actually must use force to preserve your very survival. The ultimate legal ramifications might be the last thing on your mind; would you actually choose to potentially let an assailant kill you, over ensuring you survive and accepting the risk of being charged with a crime?
It's rare for most middle-class people to be in a situation where they have to defend their life against an attacker. It's more likely for them to get into one of these fights like Zimmerman was in where they act in the heat of the moment, without thinking. I think Zimmerman would agree right now that he would have been better off taking the beating than taking the legal problems he's in right now.
Would you rather get beaten up by Martin, or would you rather serve 20 years in jail?
My point is that when you throw a gun into the situation, you're more likely to end up killing somebody illegally, and serving serious prison time, than you are to save your own life.
Your life is no more important than anyone else's
Importance is relative to the person making a decision about ordering. Most everyone will view their own life as more important than some unknown person.
But it's also irrelevent to this matter -- you have the right to defend your life, when necessary, with force, even force that might place your attacker's life in jeapordy.
If someone attempts to apply deadly force to you, there will be circumstances where you will definitely die, if you do not respond with force that has a risk of killing your attacker.
It is essentially a certainty that if you don't defend against the attacker, a minimum of one life will be lost; yours, and anyone else this attacker will go after next.
If you do defend, using deadly force there is a possibility that a life will be lost; either yours, despite your defense, or the attacker's.
There's also a chance, your deadly force will just incapacitate the attacker, and you will be able to get help, there might be no loss of life then, which is an improvement.
Not to dismiss the possibility that both the attacker and the defender suffer mortal wounds, and neither survives. But even that is a gain in the sense, that the attacker is out of commission, and not going to kill anymore people.
I'll retract some of the comments I've said, as you seem to be a lot less of a binary person than I originally thought. I also don't want to be seen as unreasonable of a person as how I'm currently posting.
I get your point about not hiring people who can be dangerous. It seems we disagree on something more subtle, whether it's "right" or not to let these things change how we see someone in an interview. I think it's wrong to judge someone based on their weekend stories, so I'll stick to my opinion about that. I'll retract my comments about your hiring process, I disagree with it, but it's not retarded. It makes sense in a way I disapprove of.
In the interest of full disclosure, I smoke weed, never have at work and hopefully never will. I tell friends not to put pictures up, but if it happened and I got refused a job due to that I would feel really uneasy about it (especially where I live).
Thankfully my resume shows my worth in a rather unique way. I won't disclose why because you could easily tell who I am. Who knows, maybe I'll work for you one day.
I'd rather the law not restrict me to those choices, which is why I am in favor of allowing the use of deadly force in self defense.
I guess you have never experience someone asking you what your fucking problem is and following it up with an immediate right hook. get out of your mum's basement.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
The fact that you can write that immediately after a post from yourself claiming that the autopsy report on Martin would say anything about blood found on Zimmerman does seem to suggest that I'm not the one who's an idiot.
I said nothing of the sort. I said if you don't follow somebody, they don't beat your ass for following them.
That's not your option. The law has to restrict people from shooting other people. Any law has to come down to allowing one person to kill another person only when the shooter had a "reasonable" belief that he was in danger of death or serious bodily injury.
You can never tell when you kill the other guy that the legal system is going to decide that your killing was "reasonable." In most of these killings, the shooter really wasn't in danger of death or serious bodily injury. The killing was usually motivated by fear, anger or stupidity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshihiro_Hattori . After the victim is dead, the shooter is facing a homicide charge.
People get into fights all the time. They seldom get killed in fistfights. Put a gun in the situation, and people will get killed.
You're looking at it from the perspective of the shooter.
I'm looking at it from the perspective of the innocent citizen who might get shot by mistake, or because some guy got mad at me. It won't do me much good to have you tearfully tell my survivors that you're sorry. I'll be dead.
You'll be facing criminal and civil charges (although thanks to the NRA, you may get off).
Zimmerman was with the neighborhood watch and was chasing Martin. According to Zimmerman's testimony, Martin confronted him about why he was chasing him and Zimmerman, instead of saying that he was with the neighborhood watch, lied, then turned his back to Martin and went for his cell phone. Since he was wearing a gun and, given his clothing, Martin must have seen it, Zimmerman's actions would have seemed pretty suspicious and threatening. Seriously, what is it with people treating this as if it were some random encounter between Zimmerman and an irrationally angry and violent Martin? Even if Zimmerman's account of the situation is exactly true, Martin had every reason in the world to think he was fighting for his life against a dangerous aggressor. The fact that Zimmerman ended up shooting him right through the heart seems to support that idea.
Zimmerman had a gun. It was legal to carry one, but gun ownership has certain responsibilities. Even more so when you're actually carrying it on you. Pro-gun advocates are always saying things like "an armed society is a polite society" insisting that the implicit threat of violence that comes with carrying a gun is a preventative. That's all well and good, but if you're going to follow that reasoning, you have to recognize that carrying a gun does in fact present the world with that implicit threat of violence. If someone is chasing you down, it's threatening enough. If they also have a gun, that threat is greatly increased.
Martin trying to take the gun only means he was aware aware he had a gun at some point, not prior to this becoming a physical altercation.
Given the clothing Zimmerman was wearing, it doesn't seem like it would have been that hard to spot the gun. Either way, his behaviour has to have seemed pretty bizarre and threatening to Martin. All in all, the whole thing was just a set of tragic mistakes, but the responsibility for it is clearly Zimmerman's
Oh, I do apply that to Martin. If he was shot without trying to beat another person to death just because he was there I would be the first to call foul. But really, if he is stupid enough to attack someone whom he knows to have a gun he deserves to get shot.
It's not clear exactly when Martin realized that Zimmerman had a gun, but it was probably after he approached him, at which point, retreat doesn't seem like a safe option, especially if you're a teenage kid who believes that handgun accuracy is similar to what you see in movies. Turning your back on someone with a gun who you think wants to hurt you is not something you can expect people to do.
Oh, and "trying to beat another person to death just because he was there"? Yeah, poor Zimmerman, on his way back from the store and this kid comes out of nowhere and... Oh wait, that's backwards. Martin was the one minding his own business and Zimmerman was the one who just came out of nowhere.
Also, saying that Martin deserved to die? What kind of sick, twisted person are you? We're talking about a real human being here.
As for my example with a teenage girl, I didn't, in my hypothetical example, say that the girl would attack Zimmerman. The example was if he had been arrested for being a creepy stalker. In that situation, with the exact same behaviour, he wouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt that so many people seem to be frothing at the mouth to give him.
Fine then, here's another example. Zimmerman chases down a teenage girl and her father catches him doing it, asks Zimmerman what he thinks he's doing, to which Zimmerman responds the way he did to Martin. The angry, protective father attacks him, thinking he's a threat to his daughter, and Zimmerman ends up shooting the father in the heart? Whose side are you on that scenario?
I don't walk in a bad neighborhood, I don't get shot/stabbed/robbed.
It doesn't mean we all hide in our homes for fear of going outside and it sure as fuck doesn't mean we place blame on someone who didn't initiate the violent act.
It is called racism. If both were the same color there would be no court. This will be railroaded like most things Jesse Jackson gets involved with.
Can you outrun a bullet? If they were at arm's length (if Zimmerman caught Martin for example), and Zimmerman pulled a gun and threatened to shoot, wouldn't the smart thing be to try to get the gun away from him? After all, bullets are pretty fast, and you're not all that hard to hit from 1m away if you don't have a running start.
Would you take the same stance if Martin was a white woman? Or would you say that she was in the right when she maced the guy who was following her?
Is it legal to stop random people and hold them prisoner 'until the police can talk to them'?
The speech (tweets, postings, etc.) in question is not related to a Miranda warning in any way because it was not made by the person charged with a crime. The speech is not being used against the defendant but is being used by the defendant to support his case. How on earth did this question ever make it on Slashdot? Commander Taco where are you?
1st degree murder...whaaaat? That's premeditated murder, like when you lie in wait for someone. Sorry, you have no business discussing this situation with adults.
If you pursue someone with a gun on your person and they end up shot dead with it, there is a prima facie case for premeditated murder. Your only sane way out is to call it self defence somehow, i.e. yes you happened to have a gun, but you only used it when the person turned psychotic and you thought he was going to kill you. Which is what Zimmerman is now saying.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Really? Many people have responded to a beating with a shooting without spending 20 years in jail.
No, actually; other standards are possible. Some have proposed a standard of "no deadly force in self defense no matter what". Going the other way, one could envision a standard of allowing deadly force in self defense against any assault.
If I'm getting seriously beaten up, I can never tell if the other guy is going to kill me.
Citation needed. One example doesn't make "most".
I don't.
If people who go around being other people with their fists get killed by those people, that's all right with me.
I'm looking it from the perspective of the guy who is being beaten up. I don't want the law to take the position that I should take a beating rather than use deadly force against the person beating me.
Deadly force should never be used, even in self defense.
There are times that deadly force MUST sometimes be used in self defense, if you intend to survive.
It just seems unlikely on the face of it that Zimmerman was in such mortal peril.
The fact that you're getting roughed up a little (or even quite a lot) does not mean you have the right to kill the person roughing you up. Self defence (at least here in the UK) has to be proportionate. If someone smacks you in the face, you can't go and get a sword and decapitate them or pull out your handy sawn-off shotgun and blast them in two. But you can certainly hit them back, and hard too.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Really? Many people have responded to a beating with a shooting without spending 20 years in jail.
Yes, but many people have. The legal system isn't perfect, and isn't even reliable. I've seen evidence that about 1/3 of civil cases are wrongly decided. Once you go into court, you're throwing the dice. Guilty people go free and innocent people are convicted.
In fact, once you shoot somebody, even if you think it's self-defense, you're throwing the dice.
And of course the costs of defending yourself in a criminal trial are enough to consume all the assets of most middle-class people.
Straw man. Nobody in the American political discourse has proposed a standard of "no deadly force in self defense no matter what". Name one. There are absolute pacifists, but they've never been elected to office.
If I'm getting seriously beaten up, I can never tell if the other guy is going to kill me.
That's right. If you're getting beaten up, you're not in a good position to tell whether deadly force is justified. If you use deadly force, you're liable to wind up with a 20-year sentence for homicide. Or you're liable to lose all your assets in a civil suit. That's my point.
I don't trust you to make a rational decision in the heat of the moment. You're going to kill someone who never would have killed you. I want to prevent you from carrying handguns around, if possible.
Citation needed. One example doesn't make "most".
I just gave you one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshihiro_Hattori There are many others. There are handgun-control web sites where law students have compiled long lists of such cases.
The Journal of the American Medical Association has had lots of articles on handguns, given lots of data, and refuted the books defending handguns. One of the statistics I remember from JAMA is that more people use a handgun to commit suicide than to defend themselves.
I don't.
If people who go around [beating] other people with their fists get killed by those people, that's all right with me.
People get into fights. It's hard to tell afterwards who was "responsible." Often the person who started the fight is the one with the gun, and kills the other person.
If you take the gun out of the situation, the victim doesn't get killed. If you put the gun back into the situation, the victim does get killed. I think that the victim gets killed more often than the aggressor. For that reason, I would restrict the possession of guns. Of course the NRA won't let that happen. So we have to accept innocent people getting killed.
I'm looking it from
The "appropriate" response to someone following and harassing you is to call the police, and report the incident, and ask for a police officer to come and assist you. Not to turn around and coldcock your harasser.
Yes, I can see that would be the natural response for a 17year old black kid being hassled by a mad white guy with a gun and a bad attitude.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Police didn't tell him shit, a 911 dispatcher did (hint, you are under no legal obligation to do a damn thing that a dispatcher tells you)
Legalism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If all you have is a pistol, then you go from fists to lethal force instantly when a certain threshold is crossed by the assailant. Since you can't be sure that the guy who smashed your skull into the concrete and is mounted on top of you will stop at any point, you pull the trigger and keep pulling until you're out of ammo or the threat is neutralized.
Only if you're a total fucking wuss. In most normal parts of the world, Zimmerman would have ended up with a few scratches and bruises and his pride hurt because he got beaten up by a teenager that he had provoked.. But because it's the US and this wuss has a gun, the kid is shot dead.
Yes, it's possible that Martin would have killed him with his bare hands, but it is extremely unlikely unless he had previous form as a genuine psycho (i.e. not just someone who listened to gangsta rap and wore a hoody)..
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
How delightfully lofty and optimistic of you. Next time you're being beaten to death by a murderer and you have a knife or a gun you can use to defend yourself, I hope you remember what you just said and lay back and die like a good boy instead of harming some innocent brute to save your own life.
Out of Martin and Zimmerman, there's only one who has demonstrably killed another human being, and only one who has the chance to do so again..
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Clearly I am a liar
Yes, you are. You claim you are here to "educate" people, yet when you make a factually incorrect statement about the law, when corrected you go into asshole mode.
Its called "paraphrasing"
You shouldn't use quotes in your "paraphrasing" if it can be confused with an actual quote.
No, he didn't start the fight. I've provided exactly as much evidence as you have. However, if you actually go searching for evidence, the evidence strongly favors Trayvon starting the fight, not Zimmerman. Following someone is NOT the start of a fight.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
That's actually a pretty strong reason to say that it should be excessive force for the police to shoot you when it's not for a member of the general public. They are the ones with all that training in other methods, they should actually use it.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Martin didn't know he had a gun until during the fight.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Have you actually read Zimmerman's version of events?
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
How exactly did Zimmerman lie to Martin about what he was doing? Here is the description of events: Zimmerman said that Martin asked, "You got a fucking problem, homie?" Zimmerman replied no, and then Martin said that he did now, and punched him.
You are the only one I've seen to claim Zimmerman was turning away and going for his phone. Do you have a source, or did you just invent that to justify asserting that Martin was really acting in self defense? Zimmerman's claims may be full of shit, but his story is consistent with what little physical evidence we have.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
I would suspect the prosecution tried to portray Trayvon as an innocent, leaving them open to character accusations. Beyond that, the defense has more leeway than the prosecution.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
What major flaws? Zimmerman hasn't significantly changed his story. out of the bushes vs out of nowhere vs from behind a car is not a significant change. They all indicate he didn't know where Trayvon came from.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
People accidentally die from friendly fist fights. Requiring that I assume you will be lucky enough not to kill me whille beating my face is not reasonable, no matter what your survivor bias tells you.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Stipulating that our lives are equally value, by attacking me, the attacker has declared both our lives to be worthless. he's given up any reasonable protection from me attacking him.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Posting pics & bragging about crimes committed > simple forum posts.
Posting pics & bragging about crimes committed from your personally identifiable account - just plain stupid.
It's one thing to be a poseur and sit at home and not commit any crimes, in which case you can BS all you want.
It's another thing altogether when you DO commit crimes and you DO post about them and you DO get caught.
See the difference?
Nowhere did I say it undermined your position. What undermined your position was the majority of my comment, the parts you conveniently did not quote or address.
The part you did quote was my statement regarding your lack of civility from the start, but nice strawman.
Once I'm being beaten up, it's worse than throwing the dice; I'm depending on a combination of luck and my attacker's mercy.
I know of no officeholders with those beliefs, but it's certainly been brought up in this very comment section. And the more mainstream view -- which you apparently share -- of prohibiting possession of the means of deadly force is tantamount to the same thing.
The standard is not whether the other guy is actually going to kill me. The standard is whether or not I believe he is going to kill me or inflict grave bodily harm upon me, and whether a reasonable person -- one in my position as victim, not a disinterested observer -- would believe that he was going to be killed or have grave bodily harm inflicted upon him.
You would take that decision from my hands and place it in the hands of my attacker. In order to save the life of a violent criminal, you would require me to accept being physically beaten by that criminal, beaten to any extent that criminal wishes, up to and including my own death. I don't find that to be a reasonable position.
And the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". You said that in "most" self defense killings, "the shooter really wasn't in danger of death or serious bodily injury". That requires two numbers, one being the number of justified self defense killings, and the other being the number of mistaken self defense killings. Anecdotes about mistaken ones don't cut it.
Have you ever been beat up? Gotten into a fight with a guy who seriously outclassed you and was looking to do you harm? Had your nose broken, your head bashed on the ground, and your attacker is on top of you and continuing to hit you and you can't physically stop him? Maybe you're a physically powerful person and don't get it, but the fact is in that situation, a reasonable person would in fact be in fear of great bodily harm if not death.
If you're not acting in the heat of the moment, it's probably not self defense.
No, he didn't start the fight.
You state this as if you know it to be a fact.
I never said he did, or didn't, start the fight. I said:
"if Zimmerman started the fight"
Unfortunately, only two people know who started the fight:
One is dead.
The other has a tremendous motivation to lie.
Most likely, not. I think you misunderstand what bullets do. For the size of the round that we're talking about, the bullet hole would be a hole. It wouldn't rip flesh on entry and certainly doesn't have the penetration to cause an exit wound. So what would happen with such a wound? Well, first the cavity created by the bullet would begin to fill with blood and the blood would the leak out of the wound with the majority of it being absorbed by the clothing of the victim. It would take a bit for blood to accumulate to the point where it would begin to drip and would also require that during the entire time, Martin was above Zimmerman or for Martin to have been laying across Zimmerman. For blood to splatter out onto Zimmerman, Martin would have almost certainly needed to be shot in a major artery.
If you consider what Martin probably did after being shot, there's a high probability that he got up to run away after being shot leaving only a second or two (insufficient for the blood to drip) where blood could have gotten on Zimmerman.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Zimmerman's jacket had four bloodstains containing Martin's DNA, so there's your blood.
I hadn't heard that. Thanks. I also would not be surprised for a small caliber bullet injury to have blood on the shooter either.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Damn. I completely missed the "if" when reading it the first time. I'm sorry. I have seen numerous people claim that GZ following TM was the start of a fight, and mistakenly assumed your post was another example of that.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Your point assumes many facts not yet in evidence.
1) That Martin was being "hassled";
2) That Zimmerman was "mad";
3) That Zimmerman had a "bad attitude";
4) That 17 year old black kids have some sort of "natural response" to the prior 3 baseless assertions;
Care to substantiate any of those? Or should we just assume you're an idiot who's pre-ordained Zimmerman's guilt from the moment you learned he was carrying a gun, and that no facts or evidence to the contrary will ever move you?
Those poor put upon white folks, will the discrimination ever end? First they had to give up their slaves, now this!
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Like when you arm yourself, pursue someone then kill them?
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Were you shot at some point in your life? Cuz, man, you seem to have this odd fetishist hatred of them, judging from some of your posts.
Like the stereotype of early man fears the gigantic statue they worship, which represents DEATH and DESTRUCTION.
Seriously, get over it.
They push metal very very fast. They go boom. They can kill or injure people. Society has them and they're not going away anytime soon. That is all.
You don't read signs very well then
Yeah the laws will apply
Not according to Florida law, which is the whole point of the discussion.
Wow. You are a pretty hard core racist. I have never met a single white person who owned a slave. You haven't either. Even if either of us had, you lumping all of the people from a race into a group, and attributing the actions of a few people to everyone in the race is the textbook definition of racist.
You are correct, but there is a heavier burden on the prosecutor to prove every element of the crime they accuse, which is second degree murder I believe. In the state of Florida that includes proving that the shooting was criminal in nature, which means disproving self defense.
I saw a man convicted of aggravated assault rather than attempted murder Monday because the state completely failed to try and make a case that the accused was trying to murder the other guy. They had one witness who had been shot himself and whose testimony varied in major ways from his sworn statement, say that the accused fired more shots at him and the other victim. But they presented no other evidence to support this, not even pictures of the car that by all rights should have had extra holes in it. The only reason he was convicted at all was that in court the accused admitted to having shot both men without warning because he felt his life was threatened. The Jury found that fear basically unreasonable because the accused was sitting behind the other two in a car where he was the only armed individual.
The point is that you simply don't know whether or not someone is going to cross that threshold from just a beating to severe bodily harm and/or death.
If you genuinely fear for your life, would it not make sense to pull the trigger? It may be cliche, but I'd rather "be tried by 12 than carried by 6"...YMMV.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
"That's the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. If your self-defense was legal, you're not responsible. If your self-defense wasn't legal, you are responsible. What's legal? Who decides? Being legal depends on acting "reasonably". What's reasonable? Who decides? Being legal depends on the facts. What are the facts? Who decides?'
I just finished jury duty so I can tell you exactly who decides that. The jury does. They are the finders of fact. That means they review all of the evidence presented to them and decide what the facts of the case are. And one of the most critical facts in our system is that the accused is always innocent until proven guilty. So while people often say you have to prove self defense in court it is actually the opposite. The prosecution has to prove exactly what they charge happened, and that usually includes proving that whatever defense is being used isn't valid because of the evidence.
I just sat on a case where a man was found guilty of aggravated assault rather than attempted murder. The prosecution did not make much of a case and in fact the only reason the accused was found guilty of anything was that he testified himself to having shot the two men and not giving them any warning while he was in a position of strength over them when there had only been verbal threats thus far.
Last time I heard when Zimmerman was asked he said he regretted what had happened but not his personal actions. He has claimed from the start that he was in fear of losing his life. I would rather risk ending my assailants life than gamble on losing my own when on the recieving end of a beating that is potentially fatal. Spending time in prison requires that you still be alive, and staying alive is on most people list of critical priorities.
Just to clarify:
We, the jury, did not find the accused person's actions reasonable for self defense because the threats were purely verbal and could not have been acted on at that time.
But we did not find the charge of attempted murder reasonable because the only evidence that the accused was attempting to kill one of the victims was testimony from the other victim. That evidence was not collaborated in any other way, they could have presented more bullet casings or testimony from other witnesses but such was not presented.
Honestly I was a bit surprised because I expected to have to point these things out to my fellow jurors in deliberation. Instead when we took the initial vote to see where were we all stood on the charges all but one or two people agreed on the two charges before us. It really has given me much more confidence in my fellow human beings and their capacity to sit as impartial jurors.
For that you learned to say 'I felt my life was in danger, so I fought back'?
No? Did you expect the judge to spell it out for you?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That can't even be an honest argument. The intermediate step is black kid knocks you down and starts to punch you.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If he was brandishing and TM still swung on him then TM was a moron and the whole case is a Darwin.
A person with a gun is called 'sir'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
TLDR: I carry a gun because carrying a police man would be too heavy.
I don't believe you.
Given I carry one every day and have no desire to kill anyone I'm sure you'll be surprised when I say your statement is incorrect. I acknowledge my bias, I believe in the right of self-defense and having the best tools at hand to exercise that right. You on the other hand clearly do not believe in self-defense and only see evil where I see being prepared. Perhaps you should check your prejudices and approach things with a bit more of an open mind. My beliefs impose nothing at all on anyone else, yours appear to impose defenselessness.
Would you say "the only sane reason to carry a loaded gun is so you can use it" to the 100 pound woman who carries or is your prejudice only reserved for men? Do you also believe that someone else should be responsible for your safety? If that is how you choose to live your life, that's your choice. Not everyone chooses to shirk the responsibility for keeping themselves and their family safe. Hundreds of thousands of people, or more, feel that it isn't necessary or even right to foist that responsibility on a police man who likely won't arrive in time to do the job anyway.
I could carry a gun every day. And I don't mean in the strictly theoretical sense of, guns exist and I could get one... I mean, I have the gun, I have the ammo, I have the holster, and I have the little piece of paper from the state police saying I can legally own and carry those things. But I generally don't.
The best tool for self defense is not a firearm; it is the brain. That applies to the 100 pound woman as much as to the 300 pound man. This case is a great example of that. Perhaps at that moment, the only way for Zimmerman to escape serious injury or death was to discharge his weapon. But it seems, even with the most favorable reading of the facts, there were many points when he could have made a different decision so as to not end up in a situation where the only way out was to kill a person.
My beliefs impose nothing at all on anyone else, yours appear to impose defenselessness.
If you shoot someone, your beliefs certainly are imposing something on someone else. I can't help but think of the studies that show safety features in cars--such as air bags and ABS--cause people to drive more recklessly. That sense of safety, knowing the machine will protect me from myself, causes people to act in ways they might not if not given the expectation of a safety net.
So that's where this case comes down in my mind. If Zimmerman did what he would have done, as the neighborhood watch, even if he didn't have the firearm, if events would have played out the same except with a different ending, then he can say he used the gun in self defense.
But if that is not the case, if he would not have pursued and made contact with Martin if he didn't have the protection of the gun, then in my mind that crosses over in to the 'he was looking for trouble' territory.
Back to your statement, atriusofbricia, really? You really feel threatened every day? You really have no choice but to go in to those situations where you need a firearm to assure your safety? I am skeptical.