Manslaughter—The Next Iteration of the Narrative?I highly recommend that those who are interested in the legal analysis of this trial read all of the articles at Legal Insurrection about it.
Why charge murder 2 on such little evidence of a “depraved mind”? Perhaps the prosecution believed more damning evidence would be found, or they hoped that the murder charge would lead to a plea bargain or compromise jury verdict on manslaughter. In Florida manslaughter is a lesser included offense to murder 2, and the jury will certainly have the manslaughter instruction to consider in their deliberations.Indeed, unless new and revelatory evidence emerges of Zimmerman’s “depraved mind”, I anticipate the prosecution’s narrative to re-center on manslaughter as their most likely “win” in this case.
Conviction on Manslaughter can get him 30 years, right?
Disclaimer here I in no way want GZ convicted!
And with the above mention of depraved mind would not the prosecution have need to ask for a psychiatrist to do an interview to know the state of GM’s mind at that time and date, as in he saw TM and stalked TM for weeks before the altercation?
From what I've read, a jury is supposed to receive instruction for manslaughter if the evidence would be consistent with such a verdict. From my understanding, that would essentially require finding that GZ pulled the trigger recklessly but without intending to shoot TM. I have seen no evidence by either side to support such a claim; if the defense were to stipulate that GZ was trying to aim at TM when he pulled the trigger, and state that it did not want the jury to be offered manslaughter as an option, I would see no basis on which Judge Nelson could a find a manslaughter verdict to be consistent with the evidence.