Oh, Florida. Follow

I don't see where the two are mutually exclusive. Minimum sentences still require judges.

I understand that. Regardless, there's still places for people to be critical of the judge and of the system in general. It's not as though it's some zero-sum equation where thinking the judge made errors takes blame away from the sentencing guidelines.

I say this mainly in general. I don't have any particularly strong feelings about this case in specific.

Saying it over and over doesn't make it so. It really doesn't.



You're sugar coating the differences though, aren't you? Zimmerman had no idea who Martin was, or that Martin would react violently to him. Alexander did know Gray, and did know that he would likely react violently towards her.



You're muddling up the sequence though. The key question is what actions were taken *after* a violent encounter occurred. Zimmerman was not able to escape after Martin jumped him (as far as we know anyway). Alexander could have simply walked past the living room and out the front door, but choose to re-engage into a conflict, but this time with a loaded weapon.

As I stated earlier, to make these similar would require that Martin jumped Zimmerman and then let him go. Zimmerman then goes to his truck, gets his gun, and then comes back to confront Martin. Under those circumstances, Zimmerman also could not use any sort of self defense argument, stand your ground or otherwise.



You're still missing an absolutely key difference, which is what makes one legitimate self defense and the other not.



Except that she escaped him, then got a gun and came back and confronted him again. How the hell do you not see this massive difference? The question of self defense occurs in the action of confrontation. It's not determined based on events which lead up to that. You're trying to equate Zimmerman following Martin through the complex with Alexander coming back out of the garage with her gun. But those are *not* identical or even very similar situations. In one, the armed person had no reason to assume that the person he was following would assault him, in the other, she not only did, but by most accounts of events actually initiated the assault.



There's some serious irony, right there.





I think that if you stop looking at the skin colors of the people involved, and instead look at the actions and events, you'd see this more clearly. My assessment has nothing to do with skin color. Most of those insisting these cases are the same and that there's some sort of racial angle going on are themselves the ones judging based on skin color and not facts. Which is also amazingly ironic.

Not to mention that she's a survivor of domestic violence, perpetrated by the guy she shot the gun AT. I think that makes her more of a victim than Zimmerman. Way more.

You're doing the same thing BD was doing though. You're mixing up moving around with conflict. Those are two different things. Whether she is able to leave the house directly from the garage isn't the point from a self defense point of view. Whether she was continuing to be physically assaulted *is*. At the moment she was in the garage and he wasn't, she ceased to be in "imminent threat of loss of life or grave bodily harm". Period. From the laws perspective, that's what matters here.

Whatever happened as she attempted to leave the house is a second confrontation, and must be considered separately. You're muddling multiple things. Hell, it's the same thing people did/do with the Zimmerman case. They want to treat the following Martin through the complex and shooting him as though it's one event. But it's not. One event is following Martin. Another event is encountering Martin. Yet another event is choosing to shoot Martin. Each of those is separate. Each of those has its own potentials and legal ramifications. You have to look at just the confrontation that is occurring at the moment a self defense claim is being made, not one that happened previously.

That is why Zimmerman choosing to follow Martin has no bearing on the legality of his firing his weapon later in self defense. It's also why the altercation between Gray and Alexander which lead to her going into the garage has no legal bearing on her firing her weapon later either. What matters is what she intended to do when she got her gun out of her car, and what she did after that point. Did she deliberately create a conflict which she could have avoided (at that point)? Or was she unable to do so?

Now, when asking that question, if there was no way out of the house except through Gray, you might have a point. However, this is where accounts get really sketchy, vague, and inconsistent. Obviously, I don't have a map of the house in front of me. I'm going to guess that the layout of said house was shown to the jury though. I'm going to guess that the key question was whether the location she was standing and the direction she fired was something she had no choice but to do, or whether she choose to do it. And based on the jury's result, it looks like they didn't buy her story.

By all means though, show me a map of the house showing that there was no other door from the garage (most have the garage door and a side door, but I have no clue in this case).. Show me that there was no route from the door from the garage into the house that would have allowed her to leave without confronting Gray. Then show me that the accounts that she came out of the garage, walked into the living room, said something like "I've got something for you!" and fired at him were false. There are lots of different accounts of this case floating around. I've read at least three completely inconsistent accounts just in the 3 or 4 web pages I've checked. I can't possibly know what actually happened.

But a jury decided that her actions did not constitute self defense, and a judge decided that her actions did not meet the requirements for stand your ground. And in this case, I simply do not have enough facts to show differently. Nothing I've read so far, and nothing anyone has posted about this is sufficient.



Irrelevant. It's a concealed weapon. He's not allowed to brandish it or even reveal to anyone on the street that he has it on him. From a legal standpoint, the fact that he's armed has no meaning. His action is no more or less legal than if he had not been carrying it. It's not like he was waving it around chasing Martin through the complex yelling "I'm gonna get you sucka!". Martin (kinda obviously) had absolutely no clue Zimmerman was armed. So the fact of the weapons presence has zero legal weight with regard to Zimmerman's choice to follow Martin.

And the fact is that he had every freaking legal right to do so. Period. He broke no laws doing so. He has just as much right to pursue Martin as Martin had to walk through the complex. Those actions are irrelevant. What matters is what happened from the moment a physical confrontation occurred to the moment the shot was fired. Period.




It's radically different from what Alexander did. If you can't see that, then I just can't help you here. It's a night and day difference. Again, the equivalent action would have been Zimmerman going to his car *after* being attacked by Martin, getting his gun, and then going over, weapon out, and confronting Martin. Because that's exactly what she did.



Which is also irrelevant when considering whether the weapon was fired in self defense or not. Guess what? If Zimmerman's shooting is ruled to not be self defense then he'll also get hit with the same stiff sentencing. Um... Which kinda brings up another key difference. She has actually already been through a jury trial. Two, I believe. He has not yet. You have no idea whether his case will come out differently, but you're willing to speculate that it might, and that this would be some kind of travesty of justice.

How'd that work out for ya?

Shadowcat 4evah!

She also has the squarest breasts of all time.

Is the "as far as we know anyway" to Zimmerman not being able to escape, or to Martin jumping him? The way you wrote it sounds like the former, but as far as I've heard it applies equally to the latter. While people saw Martin on top of Zimmerman right before he was shot, nothing I've read has said there were witnesses to who started the fight, much less seeing Martin "jump him." That's Zimmerman's account alone, right?

That's Zimmerman's account alone, right?

I hear Martin refuses to answers questions about that night. As they say about Freud "he's rather slow to update his work in light of new evidence".

Everyone should hate those costumes.

Welcome to the X-men Kitty Pryde. Hope you survive the experience.

Frankly I'm surprised we don't have more "Oh, Arizona" threads. They're way worse than Florida.