Right white people?
Hello?
Anyone there?
Yeah, we're here.
It won't be the first time I've fought in city streets.
Posted on 05/22/2012 12:44:59 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The new evidence released by prosecutors makes clear that if the case even reaches trial, which is highly unlikely, Florida’s Stand Your Ground law means Zimmerman is sure to get acquitted, writes David R. Dow.
With last week's release of a trove of information about the Trayvon Martin killing, three things are now apparent.
First, special prosecutor Angela Corey's statement last month that public pressure had nothing to do with the decision to bring charges against George Zimmerman is exposed for the bunk that it always was. Two weeks after the shooting, well before the story went national, a principal investigating officer recommended arresting Zimmerman on manslaughter charges. His recommendation was ignored. In announcing an about-face in April, Corey attributed the decision to charge Zimmerman with new facts uncovered during the investigation, but the recently disclosed documents reveal that the case against Zimmerman was as strong in mid-March as it was in mid-April. Facts have indeed come to light since March, and for every fact that makes the case against Zimmerman stronger, there's another that makes it weaker. I'm not sure if bowing to public pressure in deciding to prosecute is a bad thing, but I do think dishonesty about one's motives is bad.
Second, if the case against Zimmerman ever reaches a jury (which it probably won't), there is no chance he will be convicted. Of course, Corey is an experienced prosecutor who must know this, which only further reveals the role public pressure played in her decision to indict.
Why won’t Zimmerman be convicted? Because we now know everything the jury is going to know. We've read the reports, seen the photos, heard the tapes. The only way the jury could learn something not contained in the documents, photographs, and medical reports released last week would be if witnesses with personal knowledge were to testify. But that will not happen, because Martin is dead, and Zimmerman won't speak.
So here is what the jury will learn: Zimmerman called police frequently to report supposedly suspicious characters, and every time he called he was suspicious about someone black. It will learn that a 911 tape records someone shouting "Help!” right before Zimmerman fired the single fatal shot from point-blank range. Some witnesses say the person screaming was Martin, some say it was Zimmerman, and the FBI's analyst says the recording is too distorted to tell. (Notably, the newly released documents reveal that when an investigator spoke with Martin’s father, Tracy, and asked whether the screaming on the tape was his son’s, he responded, “No.”)
The jury will also learn that the back of Zimmerman's shirt was wet, as if he had been lying on his back in the wet grass; that he had apparently been struck in the face, and that he was bleeding from a gash on the back of his head. It will learn that police officers asked him at least three times whether he wanted to go to the hospital—confirming contemporaneously that he had visible physical injuries.
(VIDEO AT LINK)
A second-year law student could identify enough doubt here to preclude a criminal conviction. A superstar lawyer, which is what Zimmerman now has, could get an acquittal in his sleep. Zimmerman's defense will be that he felt threatened by Martin, that his fear was reasonable because Martin was hitting him, and that he was therefore justified in firing. Florida’s lenient Stand Your Ground law makes all of this close to a slam-dunk.
But wait, you might say—Zimmerman started it by following Martin! Martin's girlfriend told police at the time that Martin was scared of the guy following him, that Martin described him as “creepy.” He was a kid being shadowed by an adult. Even if he turned around and asked Zimmerman what he was doing, even if that question led to an altercation, Zimmerman started it all, right?
Of course he did. Which brings us to the third thing we know: the tragedy of this case—and there is no other word to describe the killing of a young man who has done nothing wrong and nothing to arouse any reasonable suspicion that he had—is a product of the interaction between two insidious factors: racism and state-sanctioned aggression.
As for the racism, my black friends with children have used the Martin killing as a “teaching moment,” but what kind of teaching moment is it when you have to tell your teenagers not to wear a hoodie at night in their own middle-class neighborhoods? Or that they should leave the hoods off even if it starts to rain? What kind of teaching moment is it when you have to tell them they cannot behave in those neighborhoods—their own neighborhoods—the same way their white friends do? You can call it a teaching moment if you want to, but the fact that I don't have to have the same conversation with our 11-year-old makes it a teaching moment we should be ashamed of.
Zimmerman may be a racist; I don’t know what is in his mind. But he'd hardly be unique in that regard, and besides, racism alone isn't what got Martin killed. The fault for the homicide here lies more fully with the NRA-backed Stand Your Ground law that will probably prevent this case from ever reaching a jury.
As I have written here before, Florida's law permits people to shoot to kill not only if their lives are in danger, but if even their property is threatened; beyond that, it permits them to shoot to kill if they reasonably believe it is necessary to prevent a felony. A law like that serves one purpose and one purpose only: to unleash armed vigilantes who roam through neighborhoods with a license to kill someone they reasonably believe might be doing something wrong.
When you mix a license to kill with deep and embedded racial distrust, you have a recipe that is certain to produce tragedies like the Martin killing. Obviously there are times when walking away is not an option, and if states want to enact laws to insure that people who kill as a last resort never even have to face a jury, that’s fine with me. But Trayvon Martin was not killed as a last resort.
How do I know? The police officer who recommended arresting Zimmerman in March identified the central relevant fact in this case: Zimmerman could have sat in his car, with no danger whatsoever to his own safety, and awaited the arrival of police—in fact, he was told by the 911 dispatcher to do just that. But he didn’t.
The documents revealed last week make it clear beyond dispute that Zimmerman set in motion the chain of events that led to the death of a young, scared kid who had every right to be exactly where he was. But under Florida law, that doesn't matter. So Zimmerman will get off, and the only good thing that can come from this case is for Florida to repair what its legislature has wrought.
It will, however, serve to further inflame the Flying Monkey Brigade. Much of what we're reading is intended to do that.
Here’s another teaching moment for the affected community.
Take off the GD hoodies, quiet skulking around every place you go, bristling with barely contained malevolence, and stop victimizing the well-armed and now, very much awake majority population.
Even whacko lefties obsessed with race understand now that Zimmerman will be found innocent. The only things they have left are race-baiting and their continuing attempt to disarm the populace.
Yeah, we're here.
It won't be the first time I've fought in city streets.
No. He went to law school instead.
Let’s assume that it’s true. Suppose there were a lot of suspicious-looking people who happened to be black, and not so many suspicious-looking people who happened to be white. Is he supposed to call about some white people who aren’t suspicious-looking, or not call about some black people who are? Did he call about every black person he saw, regardless of their demeanor? Did he ever call about a black person in a three-piece Armani suit with a Phi Beta Capa tie clip while he was talking to Donald Trump and Billy Gates at a downtown restaurant? This is taking affirmative action to the edge of the cliff and jumping off with it.
Spin much, Dave? The shaft on my router doesn't spin like that. OK, if Zimmerman was the initial aggressor, SYG doesn't shield him. If OTOH Zimmerman is found not to have been doing anything improper before he was attacked by Martin, shooting him was already legal even without SYG (he couldn't very well flee with Martin kneeling on him, could he?). "Useful idiots", bah; "oxygen thieves" is closer to an accurate description.
I'm going with option two.
And...
Good research!
Is it for certain that Martin was carrying jewelry? I’ve read this alot, but have not seen a source cited. If true it would indicate that Ziimerman’s “profile” was accurate.
Oh, it will go to trial. The powers to be MUST appease the Jackson and Sharpton crowd. No matter how weak the case, it will go to trial.. . . if the case even reaches trial. . .
That depends on a critical assumption - the continued active support of “the MSM” for Sharpton and his thugs. Delete that critical support, and the equation is totally different. You will of course say that it is extremely naive to believe that “the MSM” will get religion and stop promoting civil unrest. And I agree - unless “the MSM” (i.e., the Associated Press and its members individually) are sued under the Sherman Act and under RICO for triple the damages caused by any riots which they and their friends have provoked.”The MSM” is a single entity because all major journalism outlets are joined at the hip - and the thing that joins them is the AP “wire."A class action lawsuit, with all journalists listed as defendants, and all Republicans - and any Democrats who volunteer to be part of the class - as plaintiffs, should complain that monopoly journalism is a public nuisance which threatens the public peace, that monopoly journalism profits by unrest and bad news, and that journalism is using Sharpton and the Black Panthers to promote harm to peaceable citizens for its own profit. They are crying “Fire” in a crowded theater.
You present some thought-provoking points. We can all only hope.
What do you expect from a guilt-ridden white liberal professor who has written a book called “America’s Prophets-How Judicial Activism Makes America Great” and another called “Executed on a Technicality”?
“Why won’t Zimmerman be convicted?”
Uh cause he didn’t do anything wrong?
He didn’t have the jewelry on him, at the time of the shooting. It was a previous event:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/26/2714778/thousands-expected-at-trayvon.html
He did have $40 in his pocket. Maybe a thrice suspended 17 y/o gets an allowance...or maybe he’s an small businessman, of the street variety.
This guy is just pissed about the precedence it sets for his business of defending death row inmates.
If’n they are already dead at the crime scene, he makes no money.
Zimmerman should fry. Not only did he gun down Trayvon in cold blood, first he viciously beat Trayvon’s knuckles with his nose, leaving them bloodied and skinned.
Heck, he probably even put the THC in Trayvon’s blood, for all we know.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.