Judge's comments to Zimmerman--any lawyers care to comment?

[Benko]

I think the above discussion is important because what Moda is saying is what a whopping large number of people in this country believe.  I suspect these beliefs have to some extent their origins in things which predate this case i.e. biases, and that this is like the Duke Lacross players rape case and probably others. 

[Pointedstick]

Martin's bubble is his privacy... if someone charges me yelling at me and gets within a certain distance, I have the right to aggressively defend myself, and that maybe would have included Martin actually having SHOT Zimmerman.

He killed a kid that HE pursued aggressively.  It really shouldn't be that easy to simply claim self-defense and be released a few hours later.

And his life may be ruined, but so is Martin's and is family's to a much more severe degree.

I want to get more specific here. Moda, this theory here that Zimmerman was chasing Martin, and that Martin saw him and was running, or that Zimmerman was charging toward Martin who was just standing there or walking around minding his own business--these things didn't happen. You made them up. I'm sorry, but you're just wrong. Nothing like this was introduced in court.

I mean, if Zimmerman had done either of of these things, don't you think it would be a slam dunk case against him? If that's what had happened, none of us would be having this discussion. Zimmerman would be just another schlub rotting in prison.

Martin's cellphone recording shows that he saw Zimmerman and hid from him. He was not being actively chased. In fact, after a few minutes, the recording shows that in fact Martin confronted Zimmerman by asking him "Why are you following me?"

To which Zimmerman responded, "What are you doing here?" Hardly an aggressive response that indicates Zimmerman wanted to start a fight. Not to mention that there's no physical evidence of Zimmerman actually throwing any blows.

The prosecution all but admitted this by not seriously challenging this narrative. It's a total 180 degree flip from the notion that Zimmerman chased down a scared kid who was just defending himself.

Rather, what the prosecution has been trying to do is convince the jury that Zimmerman racially profiled Martin, that he was angry, and that he was a wannabe cop. All of those may be true, but even if they all are, none of them allow for Zimmerman to be the aggressor if Martin is the one who confronted him and started beating him up, regardless of the reason. The prosecution is trying to make the case that Zimmerman is a very bad racist man, not that he committed a crime. That's what's so sad here.

[MediumTex]

There's plenty of evidence that Zimmerman approached Martin.

When you say "approached", do you mean he walked in Martin's general direction 100 or more feet away?  There is evidence to possibly believe that he approached him at a distance.  Note, however, that walking near someone or even toward them in public is hardly illegal.

I don't have time for this now... sorry... but there's plenty of evidence that Zimmerman tried to chase after Martin and Martin defended himself.

There simply isn't any evidence that Zimmerman chased Martin.  The "girlfriend" was shown to be a liar and even her testimony if believed didn't definitively state that Martin was being "chased".  As I recall, Martin talked to her about being "followed".  I am told that when people have smoked pot, sometimes it can make them a bit paranoid, and I can easily imagine a person in the distance might be perceived to be following you when he is, in fact, just walking in a public place. 

All of the girlfriend's testimony should be taken with a grain of salt for two reasons: First, it is hearsay--she is telling you what Martin supposedly told her; and second, her credibility was damaged by the fact that she had clearly lied about other matters related to the case.

Martin's phone call with his girlfriend... Zimmerman's phone call with the police.  Zimmerman's past aggression.

Martin's past "aggression" had occurred 8 years prior to the incident with Martin and resulted in no charges or convictions in either case.  When you were 28, how helpful would something you had done when you were 20 have been in determining what kind of person you were at 28? 

Martin's bubble is his privacy... if someone charges me yelling at me and gets within a certain distance, I have the right to aggressively defend myself, and that maybe would have included Martin actually having SHOT Zimmerman.

If there was evidence that Zimmerman charged Martin, yelled at him and got in his face, then Martin might have been justified in defending himself, but only after Zimmerman had either severely injured him, or threatened to severely injure him, either verbally or through his actions.  There was no evidence that any of this happened.

In public places people can walk behind you, they can stand beside you and they can look at you and it doesn't justify you punching them in the nose and beating their head on concrete.

If Martin had lived, there would be a very good case that Martin committed a hate crime against Zimmerman.  Martin referred to Zimmerman using a racial slur on the phone with his girlfriend, then proceeded to attack him, even though Zimmerman never fought back in any way.  How is attacking someone after using a racial slur to refer to them not a hate crime?  Isn't that a textbook hate crime?

He killed a kid that HE pursued aggressively.

I'm sorry, but I never saw any evidence that Zimmerman pursued Martin aggressively, or even pursued him at all.  Walking in the general direction of someone is not pursuing them.  If there is evidence that this occurred I hope someone will post it.

It really shouldn't be that easy to simply claim self-defense and be released a few hours later.

I also don't see how anyone can say that it has been "easy" for Zimmerman to claim self-defense in this case.  Zimmerman's life has been completely ruined.  What's "easy" about what Zimmerman has been through?

And his life may be ruined, but so is Martin's and is family's to a much more severe degree.

I don't disagree that Martin's life was ruined, but who ruined it?  If you look at the last year of Martin's life, he was clearly on a downward spiral.  He had been doing drugs every day, he had adopted a total thug persona on his Twitter account, he was caught with burglary tools and stolen property at school, he had been thrown out of school for drugs, and he had no real parent figures in his life to help him get back on track.

It's sad that his life ended the way it did, but if he hadn't attacked a person who happened to be armed, he would be alive today.

If you were attacked by someone in your neighborhood and you were armed and he was pounding your head on the sidewalk and no one was coming to help you despite your cries for help, would you shoot him?  I would.

[MediumTex]

The idea that Zimmerman confronted Martin in any kind of aggressive way or started the fight is absurd.

Did anyone see the testimony of the fighting instructor who coached Zimmerman?  He said on a scale of 1 to 10, Zimmerman started at a .5 and ended at a 1.

He said that he was concerned about even letting Zimmerman shadow box because he was concerned that he might get beaten up by his shadow.

Zimmerman seems like a mild mannered guy in general, but a person who was concerned about crime in his community.  Home invasion burglaries are terrifying, and of the 7 burglaries in the 11 months preceding the Martin incident at least one of them had involved a home invasion.  I don't blame Zimmerman for wanting to help prevent another burglary by simply keeping an eye on someone who was inside a gated community who didn't live there and who appeared to be (and was) on drugs.

[MediumTex]

If Zimmerman had not been armed and Martin had killed him through a few more blows to his head on the concrete, I think it would be safe to assume that the prosecution would have sought to try Martin as an adult for murder and would have possibly sought the death penalty due to the randomness of the crime, its brutality, and the lack of provocation. 

The lack of any wounds on Martin would be cited as evidence that his victim never even had a chance to fight back because Martin had hit him so hard with the first sucker punch that the victim had fallen to the ground and Martin had then jumped on top of him and pounded his head onto the sidewalk for several minutes until the victim lost consciousness and died shortly thereafter from head trauma.

When talking about the case, people would say things like the following:

That poor, poor man.  All he did was call the police to report a suspicious person and that doped up thug beat him to death for it, and the really sad thing is he did it right in front of the man's neighbors.  Why didn't any of them help him?  When I found out that the kid had been caught with stolen property, burglary tools and drugs at school I thought to myself 'Good heavens, why wasn't that boy in jail rather than roaming around that man's community at night looking for some unsuspecting resident to kill simply because the kid was apparently high, had gotten bored with the basketball game he was watching, and wanted to show all of his thug friends down in Miami what a badass he was.  So sad."

[Note: Martin apparently had gone to the store for snacks after watching a portion of a basketball game on TV.]

This is the picture that the media would probably latch onto of the killer, which would have been taken by a surveillance camera minutes before the murder:



This is the picture that some media outlets might have run of Zimmerman back when he was 12 years old:



Obama might have gone on TV and said: "If Michelle was Mexican and we had a son, I'll bet he would look just like George Zimmerman."

Isn't it amazing how differently this case could have turned out if Zimmerman hadn't been armed (and how differently it could have been spun by the media)?

Here's a really weird thing think about: If Zimmerman hadn't been armed, he and Martin might have both ended up dead, Zimmerman at the hands of Martin, and Martin at the hands of the State of Florida after being convicted of capital murder in Zimmerman's brutal slaying.

[RuralEngineer]

Martin's bubble is his privacy... if someone charges me yelling at me and gets within a certain distance, I have the right to aggressively defend myself, and that maybe would have included Martin actually having SHOT Zimmerman.

The bolded part is utter crap.  That will absolutely get you sent to prison, particularly if you use deadly force as you suggest.  Somebody charging you and yelling (which there is no evidence to support happened, btw) is not going to get you the thumbs up for lethal force.  GZ had his nose broken and head smashed against the concrete and look at how many people are questioning his right to use lethal force.  You're so far off base here I don't even know what to say.

[MediumTex]

Martin's bubble is his privacy... if someone charges me yelling at me and gets within a certain distance, I have the right to aggressively defend myself, and that maybe would have included Martin actually having SHOT Zimmerman.

The bolded part is utter crap.  That will absolutely get you sent to prison, particularly if you use deadly force as you suggest.  Somebody charging you and yelling (which there is no evidence to support happened, btw) is not going to get you the thumbs up for lethal force.  GZ had his nose broken and head smashed against the concrete and look at how many people are questioning his right to use lethal force.  You're so far off base here I don't even know what to say.

I love moda, but I haven't understood his position on this case since day one.

It's like he has simply swallowed the liberal media's narrative hook, line and sinker without even bothering to check the facts himself.

I would normally never talk about the "liberal media" because I think that all members of the media are basically dishonest entertainers, but in the Zimmerman case the Fox News coverage makes vastly more sense to me than anything I am hearing anywhere else. 

Maybe I am more conservative than I realize and I am somehow missing a big part of this story, but I am also an attorney and I can't help but see this case through that lens, and I simply don't see any evidence of any kind that would have made me want to charge Zimmerman with murder, and that doesn't mean that I don't think it is very sad and unfortunate that a young man was killed (and I think Zimmerman probably feels the same way).

I also want to make one comment about the prosecutors in this case.  As some of you may know, a prosecutor's ethical duty is to pursue truth and justice in each case.  I just don't see how these prosecutors aren't engaging in patently unethical behavior by participating in this politically motivated show trial that has nothing to do with truth or justice, but rather is a response to the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton element of society that uses violence as a tool to influence government policy (sort of like what the government does, except in reverse).  They all know it's a stupid case that should never have been brought.  I guess they are professionally just dishonest cowards when it comes to their ethical obligations, which would make them hypocrites as well when they accuse Zimmerman of being a liar and a coward.

If I was Zimmerman, I would have had such a hard time staying in my seat during this trial.  I would have wanted so badly to stand up when that arrogant fool of a judge was overruling yet another valid objection by my attorneys and say "You look like Chris Farley used to when he dressed up as a woman and I think you are being very unfair to me if I am supposed to have a presumption of innocence."

When the prosecutors called me a "wanna be cop" I would have wanted to stand up and say "Well, you're apparently a wanna be prosecutor, so why don't you shut up and stop trashing me simply because I didn't want to be beaten to death."

[Pointedstick]

The basic argument seems to boil down to being that George Zimmerman deserved to get beaten up, or that his getting beaten up was justified. What would make that justified? If he had attacked Zimmerman, or made him imminently fear for his life.

There's no indication that either of these things happened. We know this because Martin was the one who confronted Zimmerman, indicating both that Zimmerman did not initiate the deadly confrontation, and furthermore that Martin was not frightened of Zimmerman at the moment of the initiation of the confrontation.



If you ask me, what makes this case different and remarkable is that it's a case of mistaken identity where the identities turned out not to actually be mistaken, only dormant, waiting for the right opportunity to emerge.

Zimmerman thought Martin was up to no good when he wasn't, while Martin thought Zimmerman was dangerous when he had no intention of harming him. But the thing is, each one subtly sensed something about the other that turned out to be true, given the right circumstances. Zimmerman could feel that Martin was at least a thug-in-training (true), which is what caused him to call the police and follow him. And Martin could feel that Zimmerman was dangerous (true), which is what caused him to hide.

In my mind, the turning point was when Martin's sense that Zimmerman was dangerous frightened him and caused him to hide. In Martin's thug-in-training mind, he had been humiliated. Not only that, he had been humiliated in front of his girlfriend, who he was on the phone with when he reported his decision to hide from Zimmerman. He felt weak and emasculated, ashamed of his fear.

Martin felt he needed to prove his manhood and regain his pride. He did this by ambushing Zimmerman, verbally confronting him, and eventually attacking him--thereby fulfilling Zimmerman's fear by making him suddenly up to no good. This triggered Zimmerman to shoot him--thereby fulfilling Martin's fear that Zimmerman was dangerous. Each one of them ended up playing the part that the other suspected them of being able to play.

[moda0306]

Holy shit you guys.

I feel like an Austrian walking into an MR trap.

I obviously have my homework to do.  I guess the news I heard (including fox) led me to believe there was a huge let-go of Zimmerman.  And the stand your ground law I thought had to do with why he was let go with modest questioning.

I'm not convinced yet, but I'll bring myself to a more educated spot before commenting. 

Peace.

[Greg]

This is very interesting/entertaining to read, I've got nothing to add except when I heard an MR trap I thought of this:

[MediumTex]

If you ask me, what makes this case different and remarkable is that it's a case of mistaken identity where the identities turned out not to actually be mistaken, only dormant, waiting for the right opportunity to emerge.

Well, I don't know if Zimmerman actually made a mistake.  Zimmerman believed that he was observing a burglar who may have been on drugs.  Several months before the incident, Martin had been caught with burglary tools, stolen property and drugs, which might lead to the reasonable conclusion that Martin was a burglar who was on drugs, which would mean that Zimmerman's perception was 100% correct.

Zimmerman could feel that Martin was at least a thug-in-training (true), which is what caused him to call the police and follow him. And Martin could feel that Zimmerman was dangerous (true), which is what caused him to hide.

To me, if Martin really feared Zimmerman he would have just gone back to his dad's girlfriend's place.  Martin was a high school football player, and I suspect that he could have run fast enough to get back to his place in a matter of seconds if he was already inside the gated community.  My sense is that Martin was hiding to get a better angle of attack on Zimmerman (especially given that it was raining, which is another reason that running home would have made more sense--I run to get out of the rain even when no one is following me).

Martin felt he needed to prove his manhood and regain his pride. He did this by ambushing Zimmerman, verbally confronting him, and eventually attacking him--thereby fulfilling Zimmerman's fear by making him suddenly up to no good. This triggered Zimmerman to shoot him--thereby fulfilling Martin's fear that Zimmerman was dangerous.

Do you think that Zimmerman shot him because his fear that Martin was up to no good had been validated, or do you think he shot him because he thought to himself "If I don't do something now, this guy might kill me and apparently no one is going to help me."  In other words, if someone is on top of me beating my head on the concrete sidewalk I don't know if I am going to be thinking in terms of whether the person has or has not validated my suspicions about them--a much more primitive and instinctive set of responses are likely to have taken over at that point.

Each one of them ended up playing the part that the other suspected them of being able to play.

I don't know about that.  When Martin began his attack and Zimmerman wasn't fighting back at all (as evidenced by the lack of any marks on Martin), I would say that Zimmerman was NOT playing the part that Martin may have suspected him of playing. 

Putting myself in Martin's shoes, if I got a clean shot on someone from the side and landed a hard punch to the side of his nose near his eyes (which is just about perfect for a sucker punch because it will basically blind and disorient the person) and he went down and then didn't fight back in any way, I might have just said "That's for walking near me you creepy ass cracker. Don't do it again or I might give you a more serious beatdown."

If there were more evidence that Zimmerman had fought back I would probably feel differently, but by all accounts Zimmerman simply wasn't an aggressive person at all, and the way I am visualizing it Zimmerman was likely trying to get away from Martin after Martin punched him.  I don't think I've ever seen a fight that went on as long as this one apparently did in which the guy losing the fight never even got in one shot on any part of the other guy's body. 

I was once jumped by a guy who was a lot bigger than me and when the fear and adrenaline kicked in my only desire was to get away.  I didn't want to fight back at all because I felt that fighting back would only make the outcome worse for me because it would give the attacker a reason to keep beating on me.  The only way that I would have seriously considered fighting back would be if retreat wasn't an option at all, as would be the case if the guy was on top of me banging my head on the sidewalk.  At that point, I would resist and fight back as much as I could, which is what Zimmerman apparently did once he was pinned down and the attack continued and retreat was no longer an option.

[MediumTex]

The Zimmerman prosecutors heading out of the locker room:



What is ironic is that if Martin had succeeded in killing Zimmerman, these same people would be just as excited about sending Martin to prison.

[Pointedstick]

If you ask me, what makes this case different and remarkable is that it's a case of mistaken identity where the identities turned out not to actually be mistaken, only dormant, waiting for the right opportunity to emerge.

Well, I don't know if Zimmerman actually made a mistake.  Zimmerman believed that he was observing a burglar who may have been on drugs.  Several months before the incident, Martin had been caught with burglary tools, stolen property and drugs, which might lead to the reasonable conclusion that Martin was a burglar who was on drugs, which would mean that Zimmerman's perception was 100% correct.

But in this case, Martin wasn't going to burglarize anyone's home during his walk. He may have been a thug-in-training, but Zimmerman's mistake was not in noticing this, but in assuming that Martin was targeting Zimmerman's neighborhood for criminal mischief when in fact he was just going home.

Zimmerman could feel that Martin was at least a thug-in-training (true), which is what caused him to call the police and follow him. And Martin could feel that Zimmerman was dangerous (true), which is what caused him to hide.

To me, if Martin really feared Zimmerman he would have just gone back to his dad's girlfriend's place.  Martin was a high school football player, and I suspect that he could have run fast enough to get back to his place in a matter of seconds if he was already inside the gated community.  My sense is that Martin was hiding to get a better angle of attack on Zimmerman (especially given that it was raining, which is another reason that running home would have made more sense--I run to get out of the rain even when no one is following me).

That's what a reasonable person would have done. But Martin was entering thug culture, where fear is supposed to be met with aggression against the object of fear. Also, he was on drugs. Finally, he was a stupid 17-year old boy with a poorly-developed brain. I think his fear initially caused him to flee and hide, but then he got a hold of himself and said, "I don't need to hide from this guy. I'm gonna show this cracker I'm not afraid of him!"

Martin felt he needed to prove his manhood and regain his pride. He did this by ambushing Zimmerman, verbally confronting him, and eventually attacking him--thereby fulfilling Zimmerman's fear by making him suddenly up to no good. This triggered Zimmerman to shoot him--thereby fulfilling Martin's fear that Zimmerman was dangerous.

Do you think that Zimmerman shot him because his fear that Martin was up to no good had been validated, or do you think he shot him because he thought to himself "If I don't do something now, this guy might kill me and apparently no one is going to help me."  In other words, if someone is on top of me beating my head on the concrete sidewalk I don't know if I am going to be thinking in terms of whether the person has or has not validated my suspicions about them--a much more primitive and instinctive set of responses are likely to have taken over at that point.

No, I agree that Zimmerman shot him because he didn't want to be beaten to death. All I'm saying is that I think Martin initially perceived Zimmerman as dangerous and his fear response set in and triggered the confrontation. I also can't imagine any other reason why Martin would have attacked Zimmerman. If not that, then it seems like it's just a totally random assault, which doesn't make sense to me. There's no indication that martin was a psychpath.

I mean, imagine the scene. You're Trayvon Martin, a black teenager walking around at night in thug clothing. You want respect from strangers and the admiration of your woman. It's raining, and it's dark. Nobody would be out of doors at a time like this. Then you see a man get out of his car and clearly try to follow you. Nobody does that who's a helpless lamb. Zimmerman's confidence was probably showing, and it would be freaking you out. He doesn't respect you. He doesn't fear you. He's coming for you. You'd be thinking, "hey, this creepy-ass dude is comin' at me." And the back of your dumb, drug-addled teenage brain is saying, "run, you moron. Get away from him!"

Each one of them ended up playing the part that the other suspected them of being able to play.

I don't know about that.  When Martin began his attack and Zimmerman wasn't fighting back at all (as evidenced by the lack of any marks on Martin), I would say that Zimmerman was NOT playing the part that Martin may have suspected him of playing.

I'll admit that my version doesn't account for why Zimmerman didn't appear to fight back until he fired the fatal shot. That's a little bit strange to me.

[dualstow]

I was once jumped by a guy who was a lot bigger than me and when the fear and adrenaline kicked in my only desire was to get away.

One quick off-topic question: Is this when you drove a truck?

[MediumTex]

I was once jumped by a guy who was a lot bigger than me and when the fear and adrenaline kicked in my only desire was to get away.

One quick off-topic question: Is this when you drove a truck?

No.  I was in the seventh grade back when bullying was a varsity sport at most schools and I was on the bad end of it that day.

I was beaten up purely for entertainment.

[You can probably tell that I don't have any hard feelings about it. ]

[dualstow]

That's the weird thing about all these shootings -- I mean school shootings, not the Zimmerman case. They don't put a dent in the bully population. We keep cranking out the bullies.

Back on topic: Learning a lot from this thread. Is there a good online source that talks about what Martin was caught with in the past (eg the possible burglarly tools)? And Zimmerman's previous 911 calls? I may have missed a partial page of this thread. I'll check there first.

[MediumTex]

If you ask me, what makes this case different and remarkable is that it's a case of mistaken identity where the identities turned out not to actually be mistaken, only dormant, waiting for the right opportunity to emerge.

Well, I don't know if Zimmerman actually made a mistake.  Zimmerman believed that he was observing a burglar who may have been on drugs.  Several months before the incident, Martin had been caught with burglary tools, stolen property and drugs, which might lead to the reasonable conclusion that Martin was a burglar who was on drugs, which would mean that Zimmerman's perception was 100% correct.

But in this case, Martin wasn't going to burglarize anyone's home during his walk. He may have been a thug-in-training, but Zimmerman's mistake was not in noticing this, but in assuming that his target was Zimmerman's neighborhood.

If Zimmerman had been preternaturally perceptive, he would have understood that while Martin was a thug, a dopehead and a burglar, he was actually just in his neighborhood because he was taking a little vacation during his 10 day expulsion from school for thug-like behavior.

Martin was entering thug culture, where fear is supposed to be met with aggression against the object of fear. Also, he was on drugs. Finally, he was a stupid 17-year old boy with a poorly-developed brain. I think his fear initially caused him to flee and hide, but then he got a hold of himself and said, "I don't need to hide from this guy. I'm gonna show this cracker I'm not afraid of him!"

One point I think you are touching on is that some of the most reckless and violent people you will ever meet are 17 year old thugs.  They are more dangerous than they will be when they get older because they usually haven't run into any really heavy consequences for their actions.  By the time a thug gets to his early 20s, however, and after he begins to realize that the threat from rival thugs and the government is more serious than he may have appreciated during his larval thug period, he may still be very violent and dangerous, but he will often become less reckless than he might have been when he was  younger--e.g., he might be more circumspect about attacking a complete stranger for no reason, even though it might have been something he would have done just for fun when he was a teenager.

I used to see groups of teenage skinheads on the street and it was really scary because I sensed that they really didn't give a fuck about anything, including prison.  I remember one story about 20 years ago where a group of these teenage skinheads shot an adult black man just for fun, and it was obvious that they really did do it just do it for fun--they were that immature and sadistic.  They just didn't care about anything.  When they started getting sentences ranging from 40 years to life in prison they looked bewildered and not so tough any more.

I also can't imagine any other reason why Martin would have attacked Zimmerman. If not that, then it seems like it's just a totally random assault, which doesn't make sense to me. There's no indication that martin was a psychpath.

I have seen plenty of thugs who will fight you for looking at them for too long.  Remember, Martin learned about life in Miami, and Zimmerman was definitely watching him.  In fact, it's probably not possible to be a neighborhood watch person if you aren't willing to watch someone.

I'll admit that my version doesn't account for why Zimmerman didn't appear to fight back until he fired the fatal shot. That's a little bit strange to me.

That's really not strange to me at all.  I just don't think Zimmerman is a violent person.  Two incidents eight years earlier hardly show that he is a person who reacts violently when in a stressful situation.  I am more inclined to believe his fighting instructor who said that he simply wasn't a good fighter and had no instinct for it at all.  I think that he really didn't want any trouble and that's probably part of the reason that he apparently didn't draw his weapon after being punched in the face, which would have been a reasonable thing to do, not with the intent to shoot the attacker, but just to cause the attacker to step back and stop the attack.  But Zimmerman didn't even do that.  He just kept submitting to the attack, presumably hoping that the police would arrive or that a neighbor would come out to help him.

[MediumTex]

Back on topic: Learning a lot from this thread. Is there a good online source that talks about what Martin was caught with in the past (eg the possible burglarly tools)? And Zimmerman's previous 911 calls? I may have missed a partial page of this thread. I'll check there first.

Here is a story about the burglary tool, stolen property and drug-related school expulsion.

Note, too, that the information about the school expulsions, drug use, and stolen property weren't supposed to have ever been made public or even provided to the defense.  The information was leaked, probably by someone who was disgusted that the state was trying so hard to railroad Zimmerman.

Martin's brother (or maybe his cousin) sent a Tweet to Martin after his 10 day expulsion had started and prior to the Zimmerman encounter which suggested that Martin had attacked a bus driver, which may have played a part in the 10 day suspension (the details around the 10 day suspension have not been made public).



If I was on the jury, I would certainly want to know if Martin had attacked another total stranger in the weeks leading up to the attack on Zimmerman, but of course the defense wasn't allowed to introduce that as evidence, just like they weren't allowed to introduce evidence of Martin being caught with burglary tools and stolen property, which would be relevant to the reasonableness of Zimmerman's initial suspicion that Martin may have been a burglar.

I don't know what was in Zimmerman's prior 911 calls that would shed any light on his behavior the night Martin attacked him.

[MediumTex]

This may be delving into more detail than some of you are interested in, but if you were watching the prosecution's closing statements you may have seen the prosecutor ridiculing Zimmerman's claim that at one point Martin seemed to be sort of "skipping" away from him.

I thought about what Zimmerman might have meant by "skipping", and then it occurred to me that if Martin was wearing his pants in the "sagging" style it might have simply been the way he would need to run if he was trying to keep his pants from falling down with only one hand because the other one had the bag with the snacks in it.

Try pulling your pants down to the top of your thighs, then hold a bag in one hand and try to run.  I haven't tried this myself, but I am visualizing a gait that would be very different from what normal running would look like.

Why was Martin running or "skipping"?  It could have been for a number of reasons, but the fact that he wasn't running to his dad's girlfriend's house suggests that he may have been trying to get out of Zimmerman's sight line so that when he attacked him it would be a surprise.  (That's not the only reason he might have been running, but if he was running to get away from Zimmerman I have no idea why wouldn't have just kept running until he got home, which wasn't very far away.)

Anyway, so below is a link to all angles of the convenience store surveillance video and you will see Martin pulling up his pants repeatedly as they start to slide down--i.e., he was definitely sagging.  To me, this makes the "skipping" thing much more plausible, and it doesn't seem nearly as absurd as the prosecutor made it sound during closing arguments.  (At one point the prosecutor started skipping around the courtroom to demonstrate how unbelievable Zimmerman's story was.)

http://youtu.be/3WScO9r5INU

[Dieter]

And it gets curiouser.... http://m.jacksonville.com/news/metro/20 ... rector-who

[Reub]

So would anyone care to guess how the jury decides?

I'll guess manslaughter.

[dualstow]

So would anyone care to guess how the jury decides?

I'll guess manslaughter.

Two days ago, I was thinking manslaughter, but I'm getting irrational and hopeful.
I'll guess not guilty.

[MediumTex]

So would anyone care to guess how the jury decides?

I'll guess manslaughter.

Verdict is in.

Not guilty.

[Pointedstick]

Well I have to say, that's a surprise to me. But good. It sounds like the state's case seemed as shaky to them as it did to us.

[Ad Orientem]

It seemed like a rather weak case.