Zimmerman TrialFollow

There's a difference between "looking" all over the place and "wandering" all over the place. It was the fact that Martin was not walking in a straight line down the street that drew Zimmerman's attention.

No. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there is evidence that what Martin was doing was sufficiently suspicious to justify Zimmerman placing a call to police. What *exactly* Martin was doing, or was going to do, or was planning to do, doesn't really matter. I keep explaining this to you, and you keep ignoring it.

Right. He was black in an upscale community. He failed to go to his destination by the straightest possible route. That would be the evidence you mean, because there is nothing else.

Whether he had a loaded gun or not is irrelevant to his justification though. I think that's a point many people fail to get about concealed carry. Your rights don't change because you're carrying a firearm. Zimmerman has exactly the same right to confront a suspicious person in his neighborhood whether he is carrying a gun or not. If you want to make the argument that Zimmerman was (legally) wrong (or lacked justification, although I find that to be too subjective a term) to do what he did, you have to leave the whole "carrying a loaded gun" part out of your argument.

We might call what Zimmerman did foolish because he ran the risk of getting into a physical confrontation with the person he was following, but he has every right to do so. In the same way we might call a woman walking alone down a dark alley late at night foolish for risking being assaulted or raped, but we'd never say that she somehow deserved to be assaulted because she made that choice. And no one would argue that she was guilty of a crime because she chose to carry a concealed weapon on her in order to protect herself on the off chance someone did attempt to assault/rape her. We correctly place the blame on the person who carried out the assault, not on the person who made the mistake of encountering that person.


And at the end of the day, Martin was not shot because he was walking in the rain. He was not shot because he was wearing a hoodie. He was not shot because he had skittles and tea on him. And he wasn't shot because he was black. Martin was shot because he was straddling Zimmerman, pinning him to the ground, and punching him in the face. He chose to do that. If we want to avoid outcomes like this in the future, the correct lesson to learn from this is to *not* do that. Blaming the guy who was on the ground getting his face punched in because he should have known better than to follow the suspicious teen running through his community is completely insane. Worse than that, it perpetuates the very problem that caused this in the first place because it increases the odds that the next young black man who thinks someone might be watching them or reporting them to police will resort to physical violence.

We need to teach people not to do this, not scare them into thinking that it's their only option.

Give him a break gbaji, English is a tough language.

Actually, you said that he perhaps was about to commit a crime. It wasn't until later that you said that he could have been doing anything after you were unable to provide any facts to support your claim.

So, with that being said, do you think Martin ran away in the same manner from every person sitting in a parked car on a cell phone?

Yea, it is. That's why I want to make sure EXACTLY what he is saying, so it's harder for him to back track like he did already. As I mentioned, you can't allude that someone was going to commit a crime in an argument and expect not to validate that claim.

Absolutely correct. And if there was even a shred of evidence that Zimmerman displayed his firearm or threatened Martin with it I would be firmly in the "Zimmerman guilty of Manslaughter" camp. But there isn't. Zip. Zero. Nada. Not one witness saw a gun until after the shooting. The girlfriend never reported Martin saying anything about a gun. There's no evidence that Martin had any clue that Zimmerman had a gun until the moment he was shot in the chest.

So yeah. I agree with you that *if* that were the case, this would be a whole different ball game. But it's not. Every bit of evidence we have suggests that Martin had no idea that Zimmerman was armed when he chose to straddle him and pin him to the ground, and that Zimmerman did not pull his gun out until after he was put in that position by Martin. And there's overwhelming forensic evidence that when Zimmerman pulled the trigger, Martin was still on top of him, further strengthening the claim of self defense.



Absolutely. Again though, there's no evidence that this happened. So great theory and all that, but we kinda have to stick with the evidence.

Seriously? Do you know what words like "might" and "perhaps" mean?



I don't know. I suspect he didn't. Which is why I speculated that he most likely believed that Zimmerman was a concerned citizen or member of the watch and was on the phone with the police reporting Martin's suspicious behavior. We know from Zimmerman's phone call that he thought Martin's behavior was suspicious. It's reasonable to assume that Martin might have realized that his behavior would look suspicious then, right? Thus, regardless of whether Martin was actually doing anything wrong, if he realized that Zimmerman might think he was doing something wrong and was calling the police, he might be inclined to run.

That's my theory anyway. I can't say for sure, but it makes the most sense given the facts that we know.


Why do you think Martin ran from Zimmerman? Keep in mind that Zimmerman had not followed him prior to that point. He had not spoken to him, or confronted him, nor was Martin even aware that Zimmerman was there until mere seconds before choosing to run. All he saw was a guy sitting in a car looking at him and talking on his phone. So if you think my theory is wrong, then why not propose a counter theory?

Why did Martin run?

I did. I explained it pages ago, but you picked parts of it and conveniently ignored all of the points that countered your theory. So, I'm "walking the dog", point by point.



Beside the fact that the usage of those words are irrelevant to my point, do you know what the word "allude" means? "Gbaji might have perhaps raped that girl on the way to work. I said 'might' and 'perhaps', I don't need any justification for my comment!"




That's good! So, if Martin didn't run away from random people on the phone sitting in parked cars, then that means Zimmerman must have been suspicious enough to Martin in order for him to run. Unless that is, you believe that Martin "just had a feeling"?




Edited, Jul 27th 2013 5:06am by Almalieque

From my understanding, the law doesn't discriminate the aggressor from the victim. Whoever, at any time, feels as if their life is threaten, then that individual has the right to use deadly force as a form of self-defense.

Why is it that it was ok for Zimmerman to kill Martin because he feared for his life, but Martin was supposed to run away. According to Zimmerman, Martin was going for his gun, So maybe Martin feared for his life because a guy was following him with a gun and he decided to defend himself (since we have no proof who threw the first punch).

Seems like different standards are being set, where the guy with the gun was encouraged to shoot and not get away, while the unarmed guy should have run and not protected himself.

Seems like different standards are being set

Did you mean "different standards exist"? Obviously being black in America means you're vastly less likely to have a successful self defense argument in court. It's not a mystery, these statistics are easily available. Possible, of course, that the cause is that black people commit far more violent crime per capita and attempt improbable defenses that fail because they should fail. Also possible that the legal system is prejudiced against black people.