[dr2005]

Been away a while, but figured I'd come back to post my thoughts on this - after, inevitably, responding to some of Ben's comments. Wouldn't be the same otherwise.

Originally Posted by TigerTank77

Ignoring that whole fucking issue, if you've been following the presentation of evidence in the court case, and the manner in which the State handled the prosecution, it was obvious that this case wasn't based on anything even remotely solid.

The judge clearly felt otherwise, or else the matter wouldn't even have reached the jury for a verdict. The defence would have suceeded when submitting no case to answer, which they did not. Likewise, the jury took 16 hours to deliberate their verdict and felt it necessary to seek further directions from the judge - again, that doesn't point to it not being based on "anything even remotely solid". While your views on this matter have been both consistent and strong from the outset, please try not to skew the facts to suit them. Those of us with a more detailed understanding of the legal process know better and you are likely to be caught out.

Originally Posted by TigerTank77

An IT director was recently fired after revealing that the State had been withholding evidence from the defense, which is a major legal violation of a person's right to a fair trial. The media got ahold of the evidence, text messages from Trayvon's phone. The images show recent images of Trayvon, (as opposed to that one you're using as an avatar), who was larger and in better physical shape than Zimmerman physically. As well as a picture of him holding an illegal .380 handgun. The media also threw in pictures of him smoking weed, which I didn't like because I find the fact that he smoked weed irrelevant to the matter at hand, but they needed to make that "War on Drugs" plug.

The judge ended up throwing out the text messages because "any seven year old could have gotten through the dual passwords and sent the messages". She was referring to Trayvon's phone, which took the FBI some time to get into. I'm calling attention to all of this not to attack Martin's character, because who he is as a person is completely irrelevant. But there's blatant corruption and bias here at the hands of the Florida State Government, and it's not because they were trying to cover up Trayvon's wrongful death.

With all due respect, it does appear that you are in fact calling attention to this to attack his character - because otherwise, there is very little reason to bring this information to light as it is of no relevance to the events of the shooting itself. Whether he owned a gun or smoked weed makes no material difference to whether the shooting was justified if neither was present at the scene (and the investigation established that pretty quickly); instead, this does appear more of an exercise in seeking to discredit the character of the deceased in order to make the self-defence argument more credible. Not an exercise from yourself, I add, but from those who sought to disclose such information in the first place.

Originally Posted by TigerTank77

The accepted theory by police and forensic scientists is that after Z had gotten off the phone with giving his location to the 911 dispatcher, he was headed back to his vehicle when Trayvon confronted him. This, coupled with the fact that an eye witness reported seeing Trayvon on top of Zimmerman, raining blows down him; along with the grass stains on Trayvon's knees; the bullet wound suggesting that the pistol was away from his body but pointing upward during firing; and lack of defensive wounds, means that he was in control for most of, if not all of the fight, until Zimmerman got his gun out and shot him. If Zimmerman was hunting the kid down, he most likely would've had his pistol drawn instead of holstered, and the physical confrontation never would have happened.

Police initially accepted that theory, true, but evidently revised it in order to justify arresting Zimmerman and subsequently passing the file on to the DA's office. Likewise, forensic evidence was inconclusive, pointing to (among other things) a comparative lack of Zimmerman's DNA on Martin's hands and the angle at which the bullet was fired seeming inconsistent with Zimmerman's account. We can speculate as to what happened and the sequence of events, but only two people know for sure and one of them is dead.

Originally Posted by TigerTank77

If someone is following you, you have a right to confront them. If someone was following you, but starts to walk away, you have a legal obligation to retreat as well. "Shooting a man in the back" doesn't count as self defense, and neither does starting a fight with someone who was no longer a threat to you.

Which is what the jury believed happened.The prosecution couldn't convince them otherwise, even while withholding fucking evidence from the defense and giving the man an unfair trial.

With all due respect, I feel you are indulging in speculation there. What the jury believed happened is something we will not be privy to unless one of them decides to go public with their thought process; all we can be certain of is that they did not believe the prosecution had proven their case on the counts of second degree murder or manslaughter beyond reasonable doubt, on the basis that they did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that Zimmerman's claim of self-defence was not true. That is all we can be certain of, because that is the burden on the prosecution where self-defence is raised. Anything further is akin to speculating on what the jury had for breakfast, and about as meaningful.

Anyway...while I will admit the verdict was something of a surprise (mainly because I felt a manslaughter verdict would have been justified on the facts), having seen some of the issues which arose with prosecution witnesses and the tactics employed by the defence I can understand how the jury would find themselves in a position where they could not reach a verdict beyond reasonable doubt. As such, their verdict makes sense and I respect it - 16 hours of deliberation suggests it was hardly a spur of the moment decision, after all, and this will not have been an easy case.

That all being said, if a claim was brought in the civil courts on the basis of wrongful death (or whatever they call it nowadays in the US - my last awareness of it was in relation to OJ Simpson...), I would suggest the opposite outcome is very much possible.

As a final thought, ultimately no one wins with this. Martin's family will still be grieving their lost son, and Zimmerman will still carry the knowledge that he shot and killed a 17-year-old. I can't say I'd particularly want to be in either's shoes.