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George Zimmerman Acquitted In Death of Trayvon Martin
theodp writes "Following nearly three weeks of testimony, a jury of six women in the George Zimmerman trial has found the former neighborhood watch volunteer not guilty of second-degree murder. He was also found not guilty of the lesser offense of manslaughter, which the jury also weighed."
People coming from different backgrounds bring different perspectives to the Trayvon Martin shooting. Everyone feels they are right, and everyone feels strongly. Is it possible for commenters to keep that in mind? I see an early post opportunity, so I figure I'll offer the proposal.
Does anyone know if the result was related to the "Stand Your Ground" law? I'm having trouble finding a good answer.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'll tell you what bothered me most about this trial. There's a reason that Zimmerman went free immediately, and no charges were pressed. The evidence backed his story. It was obvious to all those investigating and the DA, etc, that it was a case of self defense. It wasn't because of a bunch of racist law enforcement officers or prosecutors that tried to sweep it under the rug or somehow distort the facts that Zimmerman wasn't charged. The media and politicians decided to make it into something else. Pictures of a smiling 12 year old Martin were shown continuously by the media. Obama said it "could have been my son" that was killed. Special prosecutors were brought in to try and make something happen. When these prosecutors rested their case, then tried to get anything to stick (homicide, even "child abuse") the underlying desperation and total lack of a case was made even more apparent.
It ticks me off that Martin was exploited by news organizations and politicians to make some sort of cause to rally behind or push agendas.
Better known as 318230.
The NRA or Fox News could find a spot for him, I'd wager.
You talk about jobs, I talk about careers. He may be able to find a job here and there, but he'll never have a career again, except as a cruel joke.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Real life isn't the moivies; warning shots are generally illegal. You can only use lethal force if you have justification for killing someone; if you fire a warning shot, that's still lethal force (since a warning shot can kill someone, though it's less likely), but the fact that you fired it as a warning shows that you didn't believe killing was justified.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
oh, you were in Zimmerman's brain that day?
A murderer, no. Trayvon escalated; he jumped on the guy thinking he could take him. He was wrong.
I want *every* thug in this nation, white, black, latino, etc, wondering if the next guy they fuck with is packing. Most of us with CCW permits train our ass off, I did in the military and I do now. I will empty a mag into any asshole or group of assholes who try to do me harm so fast that they won't have hit the ground before I'm done (which is why I like training triple and quad taps instead of the Mozambique Drill. Deal with it, prick.
And if you think gun laws are going to tighten, wake the fuck up. We (the gun owners) won after Connecticut and we'll win again. Add in the fact that Obama is losing the support of his base (I'm actually a moderate Dem) and you've got nothing. No retreat law? Well kid, if a sixty year old man is waiting for the bus, no, he shouldn't have a 'duty to retreat'.
God made men; Sam Colt made them equal.
The "Stand your ground law" isn't really a factor when someone jumps you, pounds your head against the cement, is on top of you and reaches for a gun, even your gun. And if you're ever in that situation and waste time considering if it does, then you will likely not survive. This was clear cut self-defense, as the evidence showed.
Other evidence showed it was racially motivated. The guy's own girlfriend testified that he called Zimmerman a "cracker" before the attack. And the judge excluded evidence of his interest in violence and attacking people, but anyone paying attention outside the jury caught that.
The cops didn't even want to arrest Zimmerman, they investigated and knew enough about what happened to understand he shouldn't be charged with a crime. He was only charged after a lot of blacks fired up the black community to send a message to other black youths that it is alright to attack and try to kill a "cracker", and if he defends himself we can get him arrested.
Gotta go now and research just what that information was that the D.A. illegally hid from the defense. That alone pretty much should tell you this wasn't a attempt to get justice, it was an attempt to convict an innocent man who was attacked.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I think it has more to do with socio-economic status. Someone rich and famous, such as O.J. Simpson, is likely to be found not guilty, and poor people are likely to be found guilty regardless of race. Of course, race and socio-economic status are strongly correlated in the U.S. so the two effects are roughly the same.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Have you read the transcript of the trial? Or just one page from CBS on the matter?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
So if you are walking along the street and I run up behind you and follow you to where ever you are going you would be happy with that?
Because if you show any sign you are not I get to legally shoot you dead.
You Americans are all nuts.
That's not the way Greg Palast, who produced the story for the BBC, described it.
http://www.gregpalast.com/floridas-flawed-voter-cleansing-program-saloncoms-politics-story-of-the-year/
But most counties appear to have used the file as a resource to purge names from their voter rolls, with some counties making little -- or no -- effort at all to alert the "purged" voters.
Etta Rosado, spokeswoman for the Volusia County Department of Elections, said the county essentially accepted the file at face value, did nothing to confirm the accuracy of it and doesn't inform citizens ahead of time that they have been dropped from the voter rolls.
"I don't think that it's up to us to tell them they're a convicted felon," Rosado said. "If he's on our rolls, we make a notation on there. If they show up at a polling place, we'll say, 'Wait a minute, you're a convicted felon, you can't vote. Nine out of 10 times when we repeat that to the person, they say 'Thank you' and walk away.
They don't put up arguments." Rosado doesn't know how many people in Volusia were dropped from the list as a result of being identified as felons.
Many Orange County voters never got the chance to appeal in any form. Condrun noted that about one-third of the letters, which the county sent out by regular mail, were returned to the office marked undeliverable. She attributed the high rate of incorrect addresses to the age of the information sent by DBT, some of which was close to 20 years old, she said.
A Republican administration in Florida prevented enough black voters from voting to swing the election for Bush. ChoicePoint deliberately targeted blacks. Over half the purged voters were black. ChoicePoint didn't do a similar analysis of hispanic names, because the Cubans voted Republican. It is well known that the Republican state legislatures around the country have a strategy of Gerrymandering districts to prevent blacks from influencing elections.
Florida was a slave state and a Jim Crow state that didn't let blacks vote at all until they were forced to by the voting right act in the 1960s. They're still a racist, Jim Crow state.
Zimmerman was tried for the killing of a black man by an all-white jury, and as always happens in those cases, the jury found him innocent. When was the last time a white man was convicted of killing a black man in Florida?
P.S. My parents went to Florida in the 1940s. My mother told me that she was riding on a bus, and she saw a pregnant black woman standing. She got up to give the black woman her seat, and pandemonium ensued. The black woman got off the bus.
Do I really need to explain this to a 21st century American? Ok... Here goes: Try him. In a court of law. Some people aren't bothered by the apparent illegalities of the War on Terror, and if you are one of them, then you would not understand, what I'm talking about.
But if you did protest Bush's extrajudicial detentions of the accused terrorists in Gitmo, you should be even louder protesting Obama's extrajudicial killings of the same people.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.