Zimmerman NOT Guilty??

ygtbk wrote:

@kropotkin: certainly the War on Drugs and NSA surveillance are troubling signs for the U.S., but are you suggesting a weaker burden of proof is appropriate for a murder charge?

If you gun down someone who is unarmed then it is murder.  The laws I am talking about are the stand your ground laws which are nothing but an invitation to commit murder.  The states with those laws have weakened every citizens rights. Saying I felt threatened and then shooting is not self defence it is aggression.

Its not just the war on drugs it is also the war on the planet and the war on every nation state in the world who disagrees with US policy.  It is the fact that the buying of elections is not even hidden anymore and the US billionaires club have replaced the democratic will of the people.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

ygtbk wrote:

@kropotkin: certainly the War on Drugs and NSA surveillance are troubling signs for the U.S., but are you suggesting a weaker burden of proof is appropriate for a murder charge?

If you gun down someone who is unarmed then it is murder

If your point is that self-defence is NOT a defence to a charge of murder, could you perhaps state it more clearly?

abnormal wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

If you gun down someone who is unarmed then it is murder.

The jury didn't agree with you - they concluded that GZ was not guilty of murder as a matter of law.  In short, there was no evidence to support a guilty verdict (reality is there never was enough evidence to take this to trial).

Let's see, a guy has a gun and another guy has been shot dead.

Unless you have total faith in the police and believe they could never mess up?

Aristotleded24 wrote:

abnormal wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

If you gun down someone who is unarmed then it is murder.

The jury didn't agree with you - they concluded that GZ was not guilty of murder as a matter of law.  In short, there was no evidence to support a guilty verdict (reality is there never was enough evidence to take this to trial).

Let's see, a guy has a gun and another guy has been shot dead.

Unless you have total faith in the police and believe they could never mess up?

Which doesn't mean it was "murder" - and the question of whether or not Zimmerman was "guilty" is a matter of law, not of morals, and not of opinion.  There simply wasn't evidence to allow a finding of guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt".

Quote:

So, if you believed the other person was an aggressor, but a reasonable person would not have believed this, you did not act in lawful self-defense.  Similarly if you believed that the threat was imminent but a reasonable person would not have, or that the force you used was proportional to the threat but a reasonable person would not have, or that you could not have avoided the threat but a reasonable person would have . . . in each case the claim to self defense fails.

It is within the contours of the principle of Reasonableness that the attacker’s prior acts and/or reputation might be made relevant at trial, even if they were unknown to you at the time.  The reasonableness of your perception that the attacker’s behavior was threatening would be buttressed if your attacker had a reputation in the community for behaving in threatening manner.  Similarly, the reasonableness of your perception that the attacker was acting in an irrational and frightening manner would be buttressed if your attacker habitually used intoxicants, and was in fact intoxicated at the time of the attack.

I think that Zimmerman was the aggressor and that the "reasonable" Florida resident is a racist who believes that a black teenager is always a threat to them no matter if they are packing heat and the kid isn't.

IMO Florida's self defence laws are just carry overs from Jim Crow laws. So this is not self defence these are bad laws. Bad laws are not justice they are injustice.

onlinediscountanvils wrote:

abnormal wrote:

the question of whether or not Zimmerman was "guilty" is a matter of law, not of morals, and not of opinion.

No, that's not true, and after this many rounds it's hard to believe that you don't understand what people are saying. The concept of guilt doesn't only exist within the legal domain. People can feel guilt, and can assign guilt onto others, based on all sorts of behaviours not even covered by the law. When people say that Zimmerman is guilty, we are saying that we consider him culpable for Trayvon Martin's death.

I fully understand what people are saying but the purpose of the trial was not to decide whether he'd behaved ethically, morally, or even if his actions were popular.  The entire purpose of the trial was to decide if there was sufficient evidence to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was guilty (as charged).

The jury considered the evidence and ruled accordingly.

ygtbk wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

IMO Florida's self defence laws are just carry overs from Jim Crow laws. So this is not self defence these are bad laws. Bad laws are not justice they are injustice.

You are obviously entitled to your opinion. But self-defence is not a Florida-specific or Jim Crow-specific concept. It's a little broader, which is why I gave you _two_links.

This article discusses the law in some depth 

http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/07/floridas-self-defense-immunity-law-how-it-really-works/

One thing that's important to note is that Stand Your Ground is an entirely different statute.

abnormal wrote:

onlinediscountanvils wrote:

abnormal wrote:

the question of whether or not Zimmerman was "guilty" is a matter of law, not of morals, and not of opinion.

No, that's not true, and after this many rounds it's hard to believe that you don't understand what people are saying. The concept of guilt doesn't only exist within the legal domain. People can feel guilt, and can assign guilt onto others, based on all sorts of behaviours not even covered by the law. When people say that Zimmerman is guilty, we are saying that we consider him culpable for Trayvon Martin's death.

I fully understand what people are saying but the purpose of the trial was not to decide whether he'd behaved ethically, morally, or even if his actions were popular.  The entire purpose of the trial was to decide if there was sufficient evidence to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was guilty (as charged).

The jury considered the evidence and ruled accordingly.

Right, but people are still entitled to consider him guilty, and we're not wrong for doing so. Even one of the jurors who acquitted him believes he got away with murder.

JKR wrote:

onlinediscountanvils wrote:

Even one of the jurors who acquitted him believes he got away with murder.

She also said there was no evidence available to find Zimmerman guilty and that the case should never have gone to trial and that it was a "publicity stunt."

JUROR: George Zimmerman 'Got Away With Murder' And Trial Was 'A Publicity Stunt'

Moreover, according to Slate (emphasis added)

www.tinyurl.com/nye4szg

Quote:

ABC News hasn’t posted a full unedited video or transcript of the interview. The video that has been broadcast—on World News Tonight, Nightline, and Good Morning America—has been cut and spliced in different ways, often so artfully that the transitions appear continuous. So beware what you’re seeing. But the video that’s available already shows, on closer inspection, that Maddy has been manipulated and misrepresented. Here are the key points.

[...]

The phrase “got away with murder” was put in her mouth. Nightline shows ABC interviewer Robin Roberts asking Maddy: “Some people have said, ‘George Zimmerman got away with murder. How do you respond to those people who say that?’ ” Maddy appears to reply promptly and confidently: “George Zimmerman got away with murder. But you can’t get away from God.” But that’s not quite how the exchange happened. In the unedited video, Roberts’ question is longer, with words that have been trimmed from the Nightline version, and Maddy pauses twice, for several seconds, as she struggles to answer it. “… George Zimmerman … That’s—George Zimmerman got away with murder. But you can’t get away from God.”

You have to watch her, not just read her words, to pick up her meaning. As she struggles to answer, she looks as though she’s trying to reconcile the sentiment that’s been quoted to her—that Zimmerman “got away with murder”—with her own perspective. So she repeats the quote and adds words of her own, to convey what she thinks: that there’s a justice higher than the law, which Zimmerman will have to face. She thinks he’s morally culpable, not legally guilty.

A few points from the article -

• She stands by the verdict

She thinks the case should have never gone to trial ... “I don’t think so. … I felt like this was a publicity stunt.”

• Race wasn’t discussed, and she didn’t focus on it: “When the verdict was announced and she was released from sequestration, she was dismayed to discover the national outrage. ‘I didn’t know how much importance’ was attached to the trial, she says, ‘because I never looked at color. And I still don’t look at color.’”

Saletan [the Slate writer] makes several other points on why he feels “Juror B29 is being framed.” To be clear, the Slate writer does not appear to take a position defending Zimmerman or supporting the anti-Zimmerman position in his analysis.

I know we're off topic but, in that killing on the video above, was there anybody else on the bus? If there wasn't, then I am appalled.

ETA: On a more positive note, I think cell phones are a good thing. Perhaps as people become more aware that it's increasingly likely their actions could be recorded, they might think twice.

Bec.De.Corbin wrote:

He said Zimmerman was relived and ecstatic there was video of the fight.  

I don't want to start a shitstorm here but that it is a very interesting piece of information.

Should he face federal charges is the question in this interesting piece.  My position has always been that if you stalk and profile someone and then confront them you are not acting in self defence. Apparently the Judge did not give that instruction to the jury. As well this article explains to me how Zimmerman could get of on the charges without having to testify.  Incompetence or did the state prosecution just not want to win?

Quote:

In a federal criminal prosecution Mr. Zimmerman would still be able to assert that he killed Martin in self-defense. However, under federal law (as under Florida law even today) Zimmerman’s self-defense argument would fail if a jury determined that Zimmerman’s stalking of Martin started the confrontation. (Florida prosecutors failed to vehemently protest Judge Nelson’s decision not to give that jury instruction.) And, as to that and a myriad of other issues in the state criminal case, it is unimaginable that seasoned federal criminal prosecutors would permit Mr. Zimmerman’s “dream team” defense attorneys to run circles around them the way Zimmerman’s counsel did Florida’s bumbling prosecutors. (Among the state prosecutors’ monumental errors was to introduce materials in which Zimmerman told his version of events without having to endure any cross-examination.)

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/29/why-justice-department-can-and-mu...

The problem is it's all about states’ rights, the states have jurisdiction over criminal law like murder and stalking. The federal government can only charge Zimmerman with some kind of civil rights violation and for that they would have to prove Zimmerman, is habitual racist. An FBI ivestigation failed to show such evidence.

Two Things That Could Prevent the DOJ from Bringing Civil Rights Case Against Zimmerman

Quote:

Here’s more from the Herald regarding some of the information included in the nearly 300 pages of the FBI’s report as it pertained to potential racial profiling:

After interviewing nearly three dozen people — including gun dealers, Zimmerman’s former fiancé, co-workers and neighbors — the FBI found no evidence that racial bias was a motivating factor in the shooting, the records show. It’s unclear whether more interview transcripts remain to be released.

The evidence released Thursday includes witness-statement summaries from co-workers. They described Zimmerman as a consummate professional who was exceedingly pleasant and didn’t fly off the handle, even when someone cut off the lock he had used to make sure no one moved a special ergonomic chair from his desk. An ex-girlfriend described him as someone who sometimes wanted to drive into a lake and was prone to road rage, but she said he had plenty of black friends and was the “last person” she would expect to get into the kind of confrontation that led to Trayvon’s death.

Apearently his date for his high school prom was a Balck girl as well. That's not very good proof of racism in a person is it?