Once Zimmerman left his truck to follow Martin, he became the aggressor. If he stopped Martin and said anything, he cannot reasonably claim self-defense for initiating the contact, and then begin losing the scuffle, and shooting Martin.
Was Martin in fear for his safety and decide that the best defense is a good offense and attack Zimmerman?
The prosecutor has to have something more that we haven't seen,it could be the forensics. Those are factual based, not supposition.
You are so right in your post 98...I have been called so much worse than a DU plant. Gird your loins for battle if you are going to continue to go by the facts and common sense. Good luck to you. Nice to see someone like you on the board. We have no idea what the prosecutor has..but we do know she has enough to charge him with 2nd degree murder which surprised me. I was thinking aggravated manslaughter. Sorry to do this in mail. I still feel like I have been rode hard and put up wet after yesterday’s insults.
You do not become an "aggressor" simply for following a suspicious person to try to ascertain his location for the police -- which is exactly what Zimmerman was doing. This is abundantly clear from his recorded 911 call.
If he stopped Martin and said anything, he cannot reasonably claim self-defense for initiating the contact, and then begin losing the scuffle, and shooting Martin.
You appear to be purporting that "saying anything" to a suspicious person will negate any possible self-defense claim later on.
Do you realize how absurd that sounds? That if I say "what are you doing here" to a suspicious person, that person is now free to attack me, and I can no longer have any claim to self-defense, if I hurt my attacker while defending myself ????
(And as a sidenote, you appear to be assuming that Zim made the first verbal contact. No one, on either side, has yet suggested this scenario as far as I know.)
Back that up with some actual Florida law or bit of jurisprudence, please.
Here you go, start digging.
Really? I would think that Zimmerman would have to have been in a position to impede Martin's safe progress toward his intended destination before you could term his actions "aggressive." We don't know that he did.
Nonsense. If this was so I could beat you down in the street for walking behind me or for telling me my cigar smoke was disgusting. But I can't because I would be guilty of assault. In fact Florida law permits deadly force even to an aggressor who feels his life is seriously in danger after he gets beat down.
I don't know who the aggressor was but the eyewitness I listened to was pretty clear about who was getting his head beat on the sidewalk and who was doing the beating. This, of course, is not evidence of who got physical first but if the prosecutor can not prove that it was Zimmerman then this entire exercise is futile, political and a miscarriage of justice.
I'll wait to see her evidence proving Zimmerman was the physical aggressor beyond a reasonable doubt but if she doesn't have it then she should never have gone forward.
Maybe. There are ways that aggressor role can switch back and forth. Why did Z leave his vehicle? To chase TM, or to get his bearings for the 911 dispatcher? If he initates a conversation with TM, but then clearly stands down, and communicates the stand-down, and TM launches on him anyway, then TM becomes the aggressor. Then there's escalation. Who took the confrontation to the level of lethal threat? A heated conversation, in which A confronts B, but B takes it up to lethal, self-defense still has play. It's common law. Everyone has a right to use lethal force to defend their own life against the aggressor who creates the initial threat against that life, but not against everyone with whom one has a mere argument or "scuffle."