In my foreign land, murder is OKFollow

I think I recall that Trayvon's 911 call was actually a misreport. I haven't heard anything about it, in any case. What we have are Zimmerman's call, and the call from a family nearby that occurred during the actual confrontation (which is what the forensics analysts were testing).

[EDIT]

This was just nit-picking, I agree with your point.

Also:


HA. No, we don't. The only argument you have for that is by assuming that he was acting in self defense. And that doesn't strike you as absurdly circular?

We cannot make ANY assumptions about who started the fight, nor can we assume who was fighting in self-defense. We can attach probabilities to them based on what little we know, but that's all.



Edited, Apr 10th 2012 9:24pm by idiggory

What kind of crazy logic is that? We simply don't know either way. We need not make any assumptions. And for that matter, those handling the case shouldn't, either. There is no justification for certainty.

To the rest: I'm not talking about the legal case. Never was. You need to learn how to follow a single person's comments when you debate them. I've been tallking about the certainty with which you assert that you know what happened that night.

You don't know. Nobody does. So stop purporting to.

And (at least) three eye witness reports all describing a situation which matches the legal requirement for self defense

What the hell? You keep ignoring this. It's kind of important though. Stop pretending that I have no reason to believe that it was self defense than my assumption that it was. You have yet to once address the issue of the eye witness statements, choosing instead to just pretend you didn't hear about them and continue arguing.

Makes you look kinda silly IMO.



Correct. But arguably irrelevant when determining if Zimmerman's act of firing his gun was self defense. As I've already argued multiple times by quoting the actual applicable legal statute. At some point, you really need to have more than just insistence to counter the facts I've been providing to support my argument. So far, you've failed to do this.




Yeah. We kinda can. I've explained repeatedly why we can do this. You just keep insisting on ignoring it.




Sure. Technically, it's always about probability. There's always the chance that between the time when the eye witnesses saw Martin beating Zimmerman with Zimmerman yelling for help, and Zimmerman firing his gun, Zimmerman might have gained the upper hand, pushed Martin off of him, pointed his gun at him, put him in a position of helplessness, during which Martin was the one yelling for help, and then shot him in cold blood. And it's possible that none of the eye witnesses happened to see of hear any of this. And it's possible that the ear witnesses who all heard just one person yelling for help right until the shot failed to hear the first part and only heard the final part. And it's possible that this somehow happened in a way that resulted in Martin still falling to the ground face first from the gunshot. And it's possible that all of this happened in the very brief time period between when one of the eye witnesses saw them in the first position, closed his door, picked up his phone and called 911 but *before* connecting fully (his call happens after the shot, so we're talking probably less than 10-15 seconds of time here).

I mean, it's possible. We have no evidence that this happened, but it is possible. Astronomically unlikely. But technically, it's still possible. Sadly, our law requires prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and I think this falls well outside that range. Don't you?


But if we're assessing probabilities, it's far more likely that the situation did not change in the brief period between when the eye witnesses saw Zimmerman pinned on the ground by Martin. It's most likely that after that one witness shut his door, Zimmerman realized that no one was going to come to his aid and realized that his only option was to fire his gun. This scenario does not require any additional assumptions to occur. It fits all the facts *except* the claims by some of those who heard the cries for help that they came from a younger man, so they must have been Martin's. But isn't it just more likely that the came to that assumption after the fact than that two separate voices were heard by two different sets of witnesses during such a short period of time?


Hell. If the guy who shut his door's statement is correct, then it *has* to be Zimmerman who was yelling for help. The one call in which we can hear the yelling in the background and then the shot lasts for like 30+ seconds (IIRC, please correct me if I'm wrong). That's too long a time period. The voice heard on that tape has to be the same one that man saw outside his door. And he very clearly described the person on the ground who was yelling for help as George Zimmerman.


I just keep going through the combination of all of those statements we've heard and all the bits of information we have from the media about this, and the only story that adds up is Zimmerman acting in self defense. There just isn't enough time for anything else to have happened here. There aren't any statements that could match up with any scenario I can come up with which can put Zimmerman in a position of control (or even the ability to escape) when he fired that gun. Again, this doesn't rule it out entirely. But IMO, the odds are incredibly high that this was self defense and incredibly low that it wasn't.

I certainly can't see how we can possibly go forward with legal charges unless there's a whole hell of a lot of evidence we're missing that could change that assessment. And if the police had such a thing, don't you think they would have filed charges weeks ago? The speculation of racism among the police, the DA, the state, etc can (or should) only carry you so far in this. IMO, we've gone well past that point.



Edited, Apr 10th 2012 9:24pm by idiggory [/quote]

On that note, rumor mill has it that Zimmerman has fled FL.

Since he has yet to be charged with a crime, that's not illegal, but it's certainly eyebrow raising. Wherever he's holed up, he has internet access at least, as his website posted an update earlier today.

Yes? Yes? Don't leave us in suspense.

Clearly you haven't been following the case if you think Zimmerman had the smell of a woman anywhere near him.

Well... hm. Chunky, sweaty... probably not. But there is the whole wanna be a butch cop thing, so....

Gah, now I'm conflicted.

You mean like the autopsy which, you, yourself mentioned is at yet unreleased?

I'll reiterate in case someone missed it:

per the autopsy:
Where was the entry wound? At what distance was the gun discharged from the victim?


ALSO: I'm unclear if you think this is a good law, gbaji. Can you clarify?


ALSO: ALSO: Don't just handwave away the possibility of a corrupt/racist law enforcement system in this case. Unless you are a complete fool, that is.

It's clear.

I honestly just think their incompetence gives the illusion of it. I do think Martin's race was a factor in ZImmerman's profiling of the teen as "suspicious", but they'll have a hard time proving that.

Zimmerman's lawyers are now pleading with him to get back in touch with them.

You know what I bet?

I bet they realize they're going to lose with SYG and are priming themselves for an insanity defense. I mean, he did fail the psych test for the police academy...

That's not a terse assertion.

Your loss.