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yes, the video is pretty grainy, so it's hard to tell; but that sure does not look anything like a fresh wound. And, looking over the video, I'm not seeing anything that looks like plastic gloves on the hands of the officers. That is very strange if cops were handling someone with blood and open wounds. Zimmerman's lawyer, and this friend - Joe Oliver, claimed he had a broken nose; and it looks plainly evident that this was a total lie.
The "Stand Your Ground" law is a hopelessly stupid law, since it can be so easily be abused. Martin, facing someone who was deliberately following him and who was wearing a holstered gun, almost certainly had a right to attack Zimmerman under that law. Zimmerman, under attack, would certainly have felt threatened by Martin. This law obliges the government to prove that any person accused of murder did not have a "reasonable belief", which usually means something different in America than elsewhere in the world.
Again, that is an extremely flawed law. It allows a defense attorney too much power to build a case on this kind of flimsy speculation, and one can argue equally well that the law justified Martin attacking Zimmerman, since Zimmerman was behaving toward him in a threatening manner and wearing a weapon.
Why are you accepting Zimmerman's story at face value? I don't get this. You seem to be rushing to judgment even when there is no concrete evidence to support Zimmerman's explanation. He does have an incentive to lie, if he was the primary aggressor. His story is the least credible piece of evidence for what happened.
We agree on your last sentence. The rest of it is speculative fantasy. This law is one of the most idiotic laws on the books. It was custom-made for paranoid, violence-prone individuals. When violence breaks out, both sides tend to feel a reasonable threat of bodily harm. Both sides are defending themselves. The law only encourages people to get into fights and shout "he started it!"
No, it doesn't contradict all of the accounts (not testimony--nobody was under oath) from all of the witnesses. This is not just a he-said-she-said situation. The main accounts contradicted so far are those favoring Zimmerman's side of the story. And the fact is that the police did not get around to talking to all the witnesses for days. I'm not sure whether they have actually interviewed his girlfriend, who claimed to have been talking to him on his cell phone at the time. There are a lot of loose ends here, and there has been very little actual testimony, because the investigation was hampered by the prosecutor's abrupt dismissal of the case before it really got started.
Again, we all seem in agreement now that the prosecutor screwed this whole thing up by not allowing the police to arrest Zimmerman and conduct a proper investigation. We disagree that the video contradicts all accounts of all reported witnesses. Eyewitnesses almost always remember some things about such incidents incorrectly, and some of them may even be lying. What is really needed here is a trial in which Zimmerman is allowed a jury of his peers and a presumption of innocence. We would not get that, unfortunately, without the media circus that happened in the last couple of weeks.
I'm not so sure. It has the advantage of reining in prosecutors who would go after legitimate self defenders by claiming that
True dat. And much of the info proffered serves only emotional needs, eg, Zimmerman & Martin had this or that personal
Funny! I don't recall you stepping in when the comment:"at least this is a black vs. hispanic and not a black vs. white issue" was mentioned.
Of course not. This law is relatively new, and it was passed by right wing ideologues and those they could drag along in their wake. The problem is that it encourages people who feel threatened to get into fights and then scream: "He started it, not me!" In every fight, both sides feel that they are the ones being threatened. It is tailor-made for paranoids, especially paranoids with guns.
The law could be more easily used to defend Martin's behavior, if he actually did attack Zimmerman.
Them's scary sounding people you describe there. Obviously then, the law is bad.
Black Pot....meet Kettle!
What garbage! Seriously, is Shelby Steele the latest house negro that the right is going to put up to bat?
I guess I'm lucky I'm a 55 year old white man then! Because when I go jogging in the winter time, I often wear a hoodie; and I often put it on when I have to step out to walk the dog or go to the store. And I put the hood up if it's cold outside, or if it's raining. If I'm wearing gloves and have my head down, I'm just glad I'm living in a place where few private citizens have special handgun permits, and policing hasn't been abandoned to local vigilantes looking for dark skin under my "costume of menace."
He declares once again that "dark" skin enhances that sense of menace. Just happens that he is light enough to pass for Latino himself for what it's worth. So maybe he sees the dark-skinned as something other than himself also. And he floats up that hint that maybe they are savages after all, since half of federal prisoners are black, although they only represent 12% of the population. That might be true in a fair, colour blind judicial system, but does the fact that blacks found in possession of marijuana are 3.5 times to be charged than whites, follow the theme that maybe racial bias was built into the laws, the enforcement, and the prosecution, as a means of population control since the days of slavery ended. That theory has more validity than one that the American judicial and penal system is racially unbiased!
Except that this fictional account offered up by Zimmerman's family and attorneys has been busted by two separate professional voice analysts, who have testified that their voice recognition technology indicates that the voice screaming on the tape does not match George Zimmerman's voice. Who else could it be? And oh yeah...the man with the gun prevailed! The man who had to run a significant distance after leaving his car, to get around the row housing so he could pursue the man with the hoodie and the bag of skittles had a gun, and fired that gun. The real crime here that Shelby Steele has been trying to divert attention from, is that this sort of incident shows the failure of vigilante justice. Armed vigilantes, even with good intentions, are going to target those they consider suspects. If someone on neighbourhood watch is allowed to carry a firearm, there should at least be an investigation, if the gun is fired, regardless of the results. The fact that local police gathered no forensic evidence or carried out interviews in the area, shows that they had no intentions of determining if the shooting was justified or not.
First, is it an anomaly: Bo Morrison Killing And 'Castle' Law In Wisconsin Compared To Trayvon Martin Case
