Yaelle: I always love reading your posts so I’m pretty shocked that you are coming to this story from this strange angle. As I said to you on a previous thread, if Zimmerman said anything at all (debatable), he said “goon” not “coon.” Now I could be wrong about this but you don’t know the facts either.
If everything that is being printed is true, Zimmerman read Martin’s body language pretty accurately and decided to follow him in his capacity as a volunteer watch. He may very well have stopped this kid from committing a crime. We don’t know that, of course, but it is a possibility.
Thanks for the compliment. Sorry for the double post earlier- it looked like the post had not been sent yet.
Seriously, I see the zimmerman as victim side. I see no evidence for anything else.
But when I heard that nasty slur, and I was trying to be very objective and I was biased in FAVOR of Zimmerman, I did see a huge complication in this incident.
This is a recording, not just someone saying they heard it, so it’s pretty damning. It also really sounds like “coon” and since I guess that is a racist term for blacks and this guy was black, it fits Better than the word goon.
Does this recording mean Zimmerman called trayvon something nasty to get attacked? No. Does Zimmerman still look like he shot in self defense? Yes. But will this recording hurt his defense? Hell yes.
If my son were called a dirty k-word, I hate that word so much, I would not blame him if he struck the person. However, I would hope he would just give him one slug and not pummel his brain into the street.
But juries will have bias about a guy hitting someone who called him a racial slur. That can be seen in our world as “asking for it.”. Who knows if the prosecutor will use this argument, but probably. “the shooter was already racially inflamed as he took off after this poor boy...” can’t you see it?
I read this morning that the CNN sound engineers enhanced the quality of the tape looking for the “racist comment” but all agreed it was not there.