No Limit Nigga was at the location of his demise because he had been repeatedly suspended from school for possession of burglary tools, possession of stolen property, possession and sale of pot, and finally assault on a bus driver.
The heat was on Tray, and he fled to his daddy's crib in a ripe community where he was not known.
Now it was easier to shop at the local convenience store exercising his legal right to purchase the fixin's of Purple Drank, the thug culture's current narcotic of choice.
Unfortunately on the way back to the crib, while looking in residential windows, he ran into Zimmerman, the off duty Neighborhood Watch senior officer, in his watch neighborhood.
Who be in the right, again, girl?
It’s pretty clear kristinn, you’ve never spent any time in the senseless murder districts and or around people like Martin.
In addition, you intentionally left out a whole lot of facts.
[[Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman: Both were in the right—-and both were deadly wrong]]
Yep- blindsiding someoen and CRIMINALLY ASSAULTING THEM WITH INTENT TO MURDER (and even announcign the intended murder) is ‘right’ only if you are a yougn black liberal I guess-
a person has a right ot follow someone- even gettign an inch away fro m,their face if they so choose to- a person does NOT have a right to assault another person-
How was martin ‘right’ i nwhat he did? He was bashing george’s head agaisnt cement in an attempt to murder him AFTER the intitial CRIMINAL ASSAULT occured when he blindsided george- How does his actiosn be seen as ‘right’?
interesting summary, most likely closest to the truth.
[[It is quite likely that the unarmed Trayvon Martin died believing he was fighting for his life ]]
BS- unarmed? He was using a qweapon agaisnt george- the sidewalk- And, so the hell what if he died thinking he was in afight he might die in? He STARTED the fight- anb HE was theo ne tryign to murder george- too freakin bad if he died ‘thinking he might die’- Boo fricken hoo
Well, based on your title, since one is dead, it only makes sense to punish the one left alive.
Nice try Kristinn but no, everything is not everything. And no, we can’t all just get along!
Why don't you wait until we see what comes out in court, Kristinn??? So far only one view has been shown to be correct -- the other has been caught in lie and after lie.
This is not a 50/50 self defense case
Trayvon Martin assaulted George Zimmerman. Martin was straddling GZ....grabbed his head.....and slammed it into the sidewalk. This is definitely excessive force used by Martin...and no longer self defense. In fact....in most legitimate cases....Martin would be charged w assault and battery IAW Florida law
Also...I do not think the state will put Witness 8 on the stand....she is disaster for the state.....and she may not even be the same DeeDee that was first interviewed
You need a different self defense instructor if yours is telling you to launch into attempted murder to keep the upper hand when talking to someone in a gated community.
That’s a plausible scenario, kristinn, if you make certain assumptions about George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin.
Personally, though, I doubt many of the assumptions.
You assume, for example, that both parties were acting in a reasonable, responsible, adult manner.
I doubt that is the case.
Trayvon Martin was 17 years old and appears to have been a fairly tall kid. Around 6 feet. He had played football, so he was used to some physical engagement.
Martin was probably around 4 inches taller than Zimmerman. He was also 17 years old. 17 year old males are not known for their good judgment.
Martin is also known to have gotten into some trouble at school. Those types of issues can usually be categorized as including a lack of respect for authority.
He also appears to have been a gangsta wannabe.
In other words, Martin was 4 inches taller than Zimmerman, and he had an attitude.
We also know from the 911 call that Martin appears to have turned and approached Zimmerman, and then run away. His behavior, as described by Zimmerman, was rather strange and rather suspicious.
It looks likely to me that he was baiting Zimmerman, that he was itching for a confrontation.
Zimmerman, on his part, had gotten into a little bit of trouble as well: a mild scuffle with a police officer (which nonetheless seems to show a tendency towards scrappiness) and a restraining order alleging domestic violence.
So here you have a collision of two individuals, neither of whom appears to have been the type to shy away from a confrontation.
On the other hand, there is testimony that seems to indicate that Zimmerman, on the whole, is a pretty normal and generally decent guy.
I also find Zimmerman’s behavior after the incident to be interesting. As his lawyer noted, days went by and Zimmerman did not request a lawyer. An interesting case in which witnesses lawyered up, and the (eventually) accused did not.
All in all, there is no physical evidence at all that Zimmerman ever threw a punch at Martin. There is plenty of evidence that Martin assaulted Zimmerman. True, one does not find obvious blood or obvious dna evidence on Martin’s hands. But smashing someone’s nose with your fist isn’t likely to get blood on your hands. And Martin’s hands do not appear to have been handled properly to preserve any such evidence, which would likely have been minimal if detectable at all.
What seems certain in any event is that George Zimmerman did not smash his own nose and repeatedly slam his own head against the concrete. That is not a plausible scenario, and no one, including the prosecution, has suggested any party who might have done the damage to Zimmerman’s face and head other than Trayvon Martin.
So we can reasonably conclude that Trayvon Martin repeatedly punched George Zimmerman, but there is no evidence that Zimmerman ever hit Martin. There certainly is no evidence of Zimmerman throwing the first punch.
That also does not seem in Zimmerman’s character.
Zimmerman was also packing. I think it is safe to say that when someone is carrying a firearm, that significantly reduces the likelihood they are ever going to throw a first punch.
So we are back to the moment at which Zimmerman fumbles for his cell phone. Does Martin sincerely believe Zimmerman is looking for a gun to shoot him with? Possibly.
But that seems very doubtful to me.
Based on all I know of the case, including what we know of both Zimmerman and Martin, it seems more likely that what happened was along the lines of the characterization by “E. Pluribus Unum” in post 3.
So is George Zimmerman guilty of anything? If so, it appears to me that the worst thing that Zimmerman might be guilty of would be a bit of overzealousness and aggressiveness in confronting someone who he thought might be a troublemaker.
And that, friends, is not a crime.
Is it possible that Zimmerman failed to identify himself as a Neighborhood Watch captain? It’s possible.
But whatever Zimmerman said to Martin, if anything, it must have been along the lines of, “What are you doing?”
Such a comment would have been a clear indication that the person confronting Martin was not a thug trying to kill him, but someone wanting to know what Martin himself was doing, and whether he was up to no good.
Even if such a person WERE pulling a firearm, it would be clear that he was pulling a firearm NOT for the purpose of shooting you, but for the purpose of holding you until police could arrive and sort things out.
Given the circumstances and what we know of the players involved, I really can’t think of anything Zimmerman might have said to Martin that would have given him the reasonable expectation that Zimmerman was going to attack him.
And if the story is that Zimmerman erred by following Martin, then surely that works two ways. Surely Martin erred by apparently turning to confront Zimmerman.
Even if Zimmerman pursued Martin and said, “You there! What are you doing here?” - a scenario that we have no evidence for - all Martin had to do was say, “I’m visiting here and I have a right to be here,” and keep walking.
To sum up: I would repeat what E. Pluribus Unum said earlier.
“The only thing Little Trayvon had to do that night to not die was to not physically assault George Zimmerman, or anyone else.”
From M’s POV, Z would have had to have pulled a weapon and not just a cell phone to justify a punch in self defense.
Otherwise, a lot of folks would be running around breaking other folks’ noses just because the other folks pulled out cell phones during a conversation. Carried to the extreme, the use of cell phones would need to be tempered with the warning that pulling one out of one’s pocket is inciting other folks to punch the cell phone user in the nose.
Also I am not yet clear on what possible good motivation could be for slamming someone’s head into the ground while on top that person. If the person being (..ahem..) mounted has a deadly weapon, then it seems most logical that the person on top should grab the weapon to attempt to neutralize it, otherwise one risks being injured by the weapon. On TV fiction crime shows at least, a close combat struggle between two people with a weapon always has the weapon as the center of the struggle, and no one ever to my recollection ever goes for the armed person’s extremity over the armed person’s weapon. Those struggles are always depicted as ending either in one person being injured or killed by the weapon, or in the weapon being taken or tossed away by the other person.
What is at issue is whether Z is guilty, not M’s guilt or innocence. While I think your physical scenario is plausible, and usable by the defense, I would not spend much bandwidth trying to let M off the hook for escalating. To me, the possibility of unjustified escalation to physical violence by M upon seeing Z reach for a cell phone would suffice for reasonable doubt of the prosecution’s scenario.
What is the MMA version of the “use of force continuum”? I imagine that the MMA fighting style does *not* take into consideration the possibility that one combatant may be armed with a deadly weapon. Perhaps also the MMA fighting style presupposes that the fight occur on a soft martial arts mats such as made with 1” thick closed cell high density EVA foam rubber here:
http://www.rubberflooringinc.com/interlocking-tile/foam/1-jumbo-soft-tile.htmlwAqQ
Imaginably, as a 17yo, M not only was not totally aware of his own strength, but also less than fully aware of the lethality of his MMA fighting technique when performed outside of a professional MMA ring of the type that he probably had opportunity to see used only on TV. He was obviously not counting on Z being armed.
This might be part of what the public who is sympathetic to Z is enraged about at the core: the unrealized mismatch of intentions and mismatched levels of maturity, leading to fundamentally different potential POVs by M and Z during the incident. M might have wanted to hurt Z severely, and attempted to do so unjustifiably, using immature judgment (assualt, escalating to assault using deadly force). This view emotionally does not take into consideration Z’s POV, that of an immediate need to respond with deadly force to an apparently adult assailant using potentially deadly martial arts skills to inflict mortal damage. However, in the ‘continuum of force’ model, that view may be considered reasonable, and permitted. Admittedly, Z is not an LEO, so the continuum of force model does not apply in totality, but what may be needed for these types of situations is a SYG analog to the continuum of force model. With such a model, the police, DA, and public can understand similar incidents better when they occur (and perhaps help avoid yellow journalism defamation, show trials, malicious persecution, and street riots in the future).
It is important that we have Freepers — including leading Freepers like you — willing to consider both sides of the case.
This is not a black vs. white case, no matter how much some may want to make it that. Also, because intent is critical and we have no living witnesses besides Zimmerman to key actions done by both Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, we may never be able to have enough evidence that we would have need to be able to convict Martin of anything, even if he had lived. Maybe he thought he was acting in self defense; maybe he wasn't. We don't know and probably have no way to know for sure since he is dead.
Let's change the facts of this case slightly. (Keep the races unchanged; it should be irrelevant.) If this were an unarmed black woman who said she went to the store to get Skittles and said she was walking close to houses to keep out of the rain, and had an altercation with an armed Hispanic man who she thought was stalking her, and she thought he was pulling a gun when he was actually pulling out his cell phone, and when she saw the gun she punched the man in the face, knocked his head into the pavement, but managed to stun him and run away before he was able to get hold of the gun and shoot her, how many of us would be presuming the woman was the victim?
Before that sounds silly, go take a look at some of the advice given to women in some rape-prevention self-defense classes. A woman probably won't win a sustained fight with a comparable male opponent, let alone a stronger and larger man, but she may well be able to get in a first blow, and if she is experienced in martial arts she may be able to knock a man out, so attacking first to disable an opponent is part of the training.
That's not the same as saying Zimmerman did something wrong. A good case, maybe even an excellent case, can be made that he acted in self-defense. The jury will see and hear things that all but the most dedicated trial-watchers will neither see nor hear, and likewise, some evidence reported by the media has been tainted and won't be seen by the jury.
All the jury will do is determine whether enough evidence exists to say beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman committed a crime.
My personal guess is that when this is all over, the jury will find that standard of proof has not been met.
The bottom line, however, is that when we pull a gun out and pull the trigger, even if there are excellent reasons to do so, we need to know that our lives will radically change from that moment forward. Taking someone’s life, even in legitimate self-defense, is a critically serious act and we need to know the law and be sure things are the way they seem before the trigger gets pulled.
Once that trigger is pulled, there's no turning back. The bullet won't return to the gun.
Straightening things like this out is why we have courts and judges and juries, and an appeal system when the local judges and juries make bad decisions.