Too bad we don't have the other side of the story, but he's dead.
If a 6-foot person is sitting on your chest, beating in your face with his fists and you have a gun in your holster, are you going to let him kill you OR are you going to save your life?
The police made a determination based on evidence at the scene, on 911 calls and eye-witness accounts.
I suspect this whole tragedy could have been avoided if Mr.Martin had used common sense, stopped, and chatted with Mr.Zimmerman. Mr.Zimmerman has, as a member of community watch, a history of informing the Sanford police of questionable or suspicious activity in that gated community. He does not, as far as I can ascertain, have a history of violent confrontations, something community watch folks are warned against doing.
If you go to the City of Sanford’s online site, the telephone calls are all there as well as a report from the City Manager, Norton Bonaparte
http://www.sanfordfl.gov/index.html
http://www.sanfordfl.gov/investigation/docs/Zimmerman_Martin_shooting.pdf
“None of those are facts. Those are statements from Zimmerman.”
Actually, a lot of them (e.g., the Hispanic being on his back with a broken nose, the Black on top of him beating him senseless, the confrontation occuring back near the SUV) are known because of 3 eyewitnesses and clear physcial evidence.
The only thing that relies on Zimmerman’s direct evidence is how the fight started.
The defense would have the burden to prove an on-going assault to prove self-defense -— this is easy to do.
As a result, to defeat the self-defense claim, the prosecution would have the burden to prove “illegal provocation” by the Hispanic started the fight.
The only evidence is that the Black came up on the Hispanic and cold-cocked him. (Also partially confirmed by the fact that the ultimate fight was back by the SUV.)
The Hispanic seems credible. All attempts by race-baiters to show racila bias (he said “coon”!) have been disproven.
Instead, what we now know about the Black is he’s been suspended from school repeatedly, beat up a bus driver, sold drugs, and was caught with burglary tools and stolen jewlery.
Indeed, it sounds like the Hispanic did a great thing ventallating this thug before he committed more serious crimes.