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

[moda0306]

There's a law professor on the radio discussing how it's possible to respect the jury's decision and still feel that Zimmerman got away with something. I think I fall into that category. I absolutely agree with the 'not guilty' verdict, but I'm tempted by feelings that both Martin and Zimmerman were on trajectories to mishap. Martin with his thuggish behavior and Zimmerman with his overzealous paramilitary mindset. Not just on that fateful day, but repeatedly throughout their lives.

I'm not saying either of them deserves it. But, each of them definitely had a hand in his own doom.

+1

[Pointedstick]

To me this touches on a deeper issue which is who should protect our communities? Us, or outside experts (the police)?

Those who believe that Zimmerman acted totally in the wrong by getting out of his vehicle, or following Zimmerman, or becoming the neighborhood watch coordinator, or carrying a gun, need to explain to me why it would be superior to rely 100% on the police, because that's the only other option.

The fact of the matter is that when predators emerge, communities need to be protected or they will be destroyed. And they need to be protected by those with the capacity to inflict violence. That's just a fact. When criminals start targeting a neighborhood--like they did in Zimmerman's neighborhood--somebody needs to step up to the plate, whether that's the police or people in the neighborhood. In this case, the police were apparently not stepping up to the plate and most people were too scared to do anything themselves, which is why the HOA created a neighborhood watch and elected Zimmerman to be the coordinator.

Was this a bad thing? Should that community have continued to reply 100% on the police and simply hoped that their performance improved?

Who should protect the community?

[MediumTex]

You can't hang back and watch a bear as easily, but in a gated community, I would feel safe watching a suspicious individual from a car to see if he breaks into a house.

Does that make sense?

It would make sense if you could actually watch him, but in this case he got out of the car because he wasn't able to continue watching him from inside his vehicle.

[MediumTex]

And now that this is all over, let's imagine that it wasn't Martin but someone else that GZ had been following. What if GZ had found a real burglar who was about to burgle a home or rape someone? And what if he had backed off and let it happen? Come to think of it, maybe this will happen more often now as a direct reaction to the outrage caused by this very case.

Are you suggesting that this would be a good or bad thing?

I assume that you are saying this would be a bad thing, which is probably what Zimmerman thought as well (especially considering there had already been one recent home invasion robbery in his neighborhood).

If I had been Zimmerman, I might have followed him just to make sure he wasn't going to my house.

[MediumTex]

PS & MT: Is it fair to say that your stance, both of your stances, is that Zimmerman was just at the wrong place at the wrong time?

He was walking around inside the gated community where he lived.  How could that ever be the wrong place to walk around?  It's not like he was at a dope house at 3:00am.

That's how I would feel if he was just walking to the gate, on foot. But once he got out of his car, this was no chance encounter with a bear. Once he got out of the car, he was on patrol. That's why I have an objection to the bear metaphor.

Getting out of your car and walking around your neighborhood is not what I would call "on patrol." 

A few weeks ago I saw a couple of young black guys I didn't recognize in my neighborhood carrying boxes and standing by the side of the road and every time a car would pass they would jump up and down and wave their arms at the car.  I called the police and told them that this overall situation seemed suspicious to me.  I walked around a little bit to get a better angle on the situation.  It never occurred to me that I was "on patrol" even though I am an HOA board member and even though I was thinking in terms of the safety of the whole neighborhood.

[MediumTex]

To me this touches on a deeper issue which is who should protect our communities? Us, or outside experts (the police)?

Those who believe that Zimmerman acted totally in the wrong by getting out of his vehicle, or following Zimmerman, or becoming the neighborhood watch coordinator, or carrying a gun, need to explain to me why it would be superior to rely 100% on the police, because that's the only other option.

The fact of the matter is that when predators emerge, communities need to be protected or they will be destroyed. And they need to be protected by those with the capacity to inflict violence. That's just a fact. When criminals start targeting a neighborhood--like they did in Zimmerman's neighborhood--somebody needs to step up to the plate, whether that's the police or people in the neighborhood. In this case, the police were apparently not stepping up to the plate and most people were too scared to do anything themselves, which is why the HOA created a neighborhood watch and elected Zimmerman to be the coordinator.

Was this a bad thing? Should that community have continued to reply 100% on the police and simply hoped that their performance improved?

Who should protect the community?

It's sort of comical to me that many of the African-American supporters of Martin are passionately arguing that Zimmerman was clearly in the wrong by failing to rely on the police 100% for the protection of his neighborhood.  I would like to ask some of these people "How is the approach of relying on the police for protection working out in predominantly African-American neighborhoods across the U.S.?"

One of my 10 year old son's best friends is black and he was over at our house last night.  My wife and I had gone out, but apparently coverage of the Zimmerman case was on TV and my son's friend asked my son if he had heard about this case in which a kid was just trying to walk home when this guy chased him down and just shot him for no reason.  I think that's where a lot of people are at, and it's sort of sad because there are so many legitimately tragic things happening in this country every day that don't seem to bother people at all.

[MediumTex]

There's a law professor on the radio discussing how it's possible to respect the jury's decision and still feel that Zimmerman got away with something. I think I fall into that category. I absolutely agree with the 'not guilty' verdict, but I'm tempted by feelings that both Martin and Zimmerman were on trajectories to mishap. Martin with his thuggish behavior and Zimmerman with his overzealous paramilitary mindset. Not just on that fateful day, but repeatedly throughout their lives.

I'm not saying either of them deserves it. But, each of them definitely had a hand in his own doom.

+1

If walking around your neighborhood in the early evening constitutes a "trajectory of mishap" I place myself on such a trajectory on a regular basis.

What evidence is there that Zimmerman exhibited an "overzealous paramilitary mindset throughout his life"?  Simply carrying a concealed handgun in accordance with state law is NOT evidence of such a mindset, and neither is being interested in a career in law enforcement.

[Pointedstick]

In the nuance of our discussion here, what we are seeing I think is a classic question of sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves.

Most people are sheep and find violence of any sort distasteful (this is good!). A very small number of people are wolves and will prey on the sheep when given the chance. And a probably equally small number of people are "sheepdogs" who will live among the sheep and attempt to protect them from the wolves. Now ideally the police are perfect sheepdogs but unfortunately many will wind up being wolves in sheepdogs' clothing, as evidenced by many recent threads here.

In the Martin-Zimmerman situation, most of the members of the gated community were sheep, George Zimmerman was a reluctant sheepdog, and Martin was on the path to becoming a wolf. What I think this whole sorry episode reinforces to me is that many of the sheep hate the sheepdogs more than they hate the wolves. The idea of a person who voluntarily decides to take up the path of arms and violence--even in defense--is something they cannot imagine or understand, whereas at least the wolf is comprehensible because he's a wolf.

Of course, outside of this forum, the deeper problem is people who view Martin as a sheep killed by a wolf in sheepdog's clothing--a point of view which is sadly incorrect by all possible methods of viewing it.

[dualstow]

To me this touches on a deeper issue which is who should protect our communities? Us, or outside experts (the police)?

Both, in my opinion. Some things I don't know about the case, though:
- Was it well known that there is a regular patrol in the community?
- Did Zimmerman have a uniform on or at least a town watch banner? They had something like that in my neighborhood. Also, they always traveled in pairs.
- Did Zimmerman announce himself as Town Watch? It is often said that Martin should have just run home. I agree, but by the same token,  GZ should have identified himself. Did he?

... What if GZ had found a real burglar who was about to burgle a home or rape someone? And what if he had backed off and let it happen? Come to think of it, maybe this will happen more often now as a direct reaction to the outrage caused by this very case.

Are you suggesting that this would be a good or bad thing?

I assume that you are saying this would be a bad thing

It would be a bad thing, for the most part. But maybe we can take advantage of a sad situation and make town watch procedures more well known. Also, some places may want to review and revise those procedures.


Oversimplification §

My wife and I had gone out, but apparently coverage of the Zimmerman case was on TV and my son's friend asked my son if he had heard about this case in which a kid was just trying to walk home when this guy chased him down and just shot him for no reason.

I hate that. It reminds me of a conversation I had with some mainland Chinese about the spy plane incident between China and the U.S. in the early 2000s. Their viewpoint was just the same as that of any Chinese national interviewed on the street, whether in China or in the west. Oversimplified into something like a children's story.

Following §

Getting out of your car and walking around your neighborhood is not what I would call "on patrol." 
...
I walked around a little bit to get a better angle on the situation.  It never occurred to me that I was "on patrol" even though I am an HOA board member

One thing I'm not clear on: how close did GZ get to Martin before Martin acknowledged his presence and the altercation began?
How close did you get to the guys in your neighborhood, MT?

[Pointedstick]

One thing I'm not clear on: how close did GZ get to Martin before Martin acknowledged his presence and the altercation began?

My sense was that it was at least like 100 feet away. It was so far that apparently Zimmerman lost sight of Martin, which he reported to the dispatcher he was still on the phone with, and started walking back to his truck. The physical altercation began when Martin confronted Zimmerman, which he did by in fact following Zimmerman and hiding in the bushes along his predicted path.

[MediumTex]

In the nuance of our discussion here, what we are seeing I think is a classic question of sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves.

Most people are sheep and find violence of any sort distasteful (this is good!). A very small number of people are wolves and will prey on the sheep when given the chance. And a probably equally small number of people are "sheepdogs" who will live among the sheep and attempt to protect them from the wolves. Now ideally the police are perfect sheepdogs but unfortunately many will wind up being wolves in sheepdogs' clothing, as evidenced by many recent threads here.

In the Martin-Zimmerman situation, most of the members of the gated community were sheep, George Zimmerman was a reluctant sheepdog, and Martin was on the path to becoming a wolf. What I think this whole sorry episode reinforces to me is that many of the sheep hate the sheepdogs more than they hate the wolves. The idea of a person who voluntarily decides to take up the path of arms and violence--even in defense--is something they cannot imagine or understand, whereas at least the wolf is comprehensible because he's a wolf.

Of course, outside of this forum, the deeper problem is people who view Martin as a sheep killed by a wolf in sheepdog's clothing--a point of view which is sadly incorrect by all possible methods of viewing it.

I have also found that people with a sheep orientation seem more likely to simply believe what authority figures tell them, often to their detriment.

[MediumTex]

To me this touches on a deeper issue which is who should protect our communities? Us, or outside experts (the police)?

Both, in my opinion. Some things I don't know about the case, though:
- Was it well known that there is a regular patrol in the community?
- Did Zimmerman have a uniform on or at least a town watch banner? They had something like that in my neighborhood. Also, they always traveled in pairs.
- Did Zimmerman announce himself as Town Watch? It is often said that Martin should have just run home. I agree, but by the same token,  GZ should have identified himself. Did he?

I would guess the answers are no, no and don't know.

... What if GZ had found a real burglar who was about to burgle a home or rape someone? And what if he had backed off and let it happen? Come to think of it, maybe this will happen more often now as a direct reaction to the outrage caused by this very case.

Are you suggesting that this would be a good or bad thing?

I assume that you are saying this would be a bad thing

It would be a bad thing, for the most part. But maybe we can take advantage of a sad situation and make town watch procedures more well known. Also, some places may want to review and revise those procedures.

This sounds like a great idea, but it wasn't necessary to destroy Zimmerman's life to do it.

Following §

Getting out of your car and walking around your neighborhood is not what I would call "on patrol." 
...
I walked around a little bit to get a better angle on the situation.  It never occurred to me that I was "on patrol" even though I am an HOA board member

One thing I'm not clear on: how close did GZ get to Martin before Martin acknowledged his presence and the altercation began?
How close did you get to the guys in your neighborhood, MT?

Well, I was probably within a few feet of them when I drove by them.  After I got home and walked to where I could see them I was perhaps 300 feet away from them, but then they moved and when I saw them again they were walking between houses in another position that might have been 200 feet from me.  I think that they were probably these pushy door to door junk salesmen that get dropped off by vans in the morning and picked up in the evening.  I don't know why they were waving at cars like they were.  Maybe that's what they like to do while they're on break.

[dualstow]

If walking around your neighborhood in the early evening constitutes a "trajectory of mishap" I place myself on such a trajectory on a regular basis.

I doubt I can quantify this, but my gut feeling is that you're not giving yourself enough credit while you're giving Zimmerman too much. I think that when it comes down to the fine details of a situation like this, you probably would have left unscathed, and so would have Mr Martin.

Even as I type this, I see a new reply has come in and you were 200-300 feet from the suspicious looking men while out of your car. Good.

What evidence is there that Zimmerman exhibited an "overzealous paramilitary mindset throughout his life"?  Simply carrying a concealed handgun in accordance with state law is NOT evidence of such a mindset, and neither is being interested in a career in law enforcement.

The language that he used. In no way it is evidence, but I think all the "punks" stuff -- he did say f'n punks, right? Was that the final determination of the forensics audio guy? -- all the punks stuff could be interpreted as Hank Hill type frustation, a good guy in a world gone bad. Or it could be interpreted as someone who's getting a little too (uh oh, I can feel the wrong choice of words coming to mind) trigger happy. Ok, wrong choice of words, because I'm fine with the acquittal on the shooting. Let's stick with 'overzealous'.

And referring back to your situation, MT: maybe you think I'm giving you too much credit, but I think your mindset might be a little more 'uh oh, might have a situation here. must be careful' and a lot less 'f'n' punks'. That's not to say that a lot of us don't sit and stew at home in our armchairs about thugs and f'n punks, but that's different.

PointedStick: sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves.

Ha. My gun instructor sent me that sometime ago. Certainly a valid point. As something of a sheep, or at least someone not quite built for shepherding or wolf-guarding (high strung, slow reaction, lack of athletic ability), I am certainly grateful for both the police and the voluntary sheepdogs in this world.

Yes, it's easy for me to sit back and let other people shoot probable thugs and let *them* face prosecution while I eat ice cream and read it in the news. I do watch out for my neighbors, though, and I have convinced one of them to install a burglar alarm. I have also called 911. I'm a righteous sheep.

(Edit is last sentence only).

[MediumTex]

That the dispatcher told GZ, "We don't need you to do that," is a standard line.  They tell that to everyone because if they don't, it opens the police dept. up to liability.

Any time a government bureaucrat whose job is answering the phone tells me that he doesn't need me to do something, I would never interpret that as a command NOT to do that thing.

If I had been Zimmerman and the dispatcher had told me he didn't need me to do something, I might have said:

"I understand you don't need me to do it.  The thing is, whether you need me to do something or not is completely irrelevant to what I'm actually going to do, but you can rest assured that I will act 100% within the law as I decide what my next steps will be as I wait for the police to arrive, and once they arrive I will follow all lawful instructions that they give to me.  I'm not calling you because I think YOU need ME to do something.  I'm calling you because I need YOU to do something."

[dualstow]

One thing I'm not clear on: how close did GZ get to Martin before Martin acknowledged his presence and the altercation began?

My sense was that it was at least like 100 feet away. It was so far that apparently Zimmerman lost sight of Martin, which he reported to the dispatcher he was still on the phone with, and started walking back to his truck. The physical altercation began when Martin confronted Zimmerman, which he did by in fact following Zimmerman and hiding in the bushes along his predicted path.

This could be a game changer for me, not on the acquittal obviously as I already support it, but on a lot of my criticism of Zimmerman. However, I'm still not clear: did he follow him or run ahead and hide on his predicted path? You can't do both.

If it was really 100 feet away, that does sound like a safe distance. You said it was your sense, though. I'll do some googling tomorrow perhaps, because I'm really curious about the distance.

If I had been Zimmerman and the dispatcher had told me he didn't need me to do something, I might have said:
...

Sounds good, but they need to shorten that to something like, "I invoke citizen's right #33". Otherwise you're going to get hurt while you recite all that. ;-)

[MediumTex]

If walking around your neighborhood in the early evening constitutes a "trajectory of mishap" I place myself on such a trajectory on a regular basis.

I doubt I can quantify this, but my gut feeling is that you're not giving yourself enough credit while you're giving Zimmerman too much. I think that when it comes down to the fine details of a situation like this, you probably would have left unscathed, and so would have Mr Martin.

Zimmerman was a 28 year old man who had taken a few community college-level criminal justice course and who was living in a neighborhood that had experienced 7 burglaries in 11 months.

I am a 42 year old man who is a licensed attorney and who has handled quite a few criminal cases and who lives in a neighborhood with very little crime.

My point is that I am far less likely to encounter a criminal in my neighborhood to begin with, and if I did encounter one I would probably have a better intuitive sense of all of the legal issues that would be unfolding at each moment of the confrontation.  However, if I was attacked and having my dome repeatedly slammed into the sidewalk and I was armed I am certain if I could get to my weapon before losing consciousness I would and I would fire it at the attacker.

[MediumTex]

If I had been Zimmerman and the dispatcher had told me he didn't need me to do something, I might have said:
...

Sounds good, but they need to shorten that to something like, "I invoke citizen's right #33". Otherwise you're going to get hurt while you recite all that. ;-)

Yeah, I know.  I probably would have just said "I understand you don't NEED me to do anything, and I hope I won't NEED to do anything either."

[MediumTex]

This could be a game changer for me, not on the acquittal obviously as I already support it, but on a lot of my criticism of Zimmerman. However, I'm still not clear: did he follow him or run ahead and hide on his predicted path? You can't do both.

Are you suggesting that Zimmerman may have run ahead of Martin and then hidden to ambush him as he walked by?

How could Zimmerman have run ahead of Martin if he didn't know where Martin was going?  How would Zimmerman have been able to run ahead of Martin without Martin seeing him?  Do we think that Zimmerman ran by Martin and then once he was far enough ahead of him he hid and waited for him?

Or are you saying that Martin ran ahead (or circled back) and hid in Zimmerman's predicted path back to his vehicle?

If it was really 100 feet away, that does sound like a safe distance. You said it was your sense, though. I'll do some googling tomorrow perhaps, because I'm really curious about the distance.

I am sure no one will ever know how close he got to Martin.

[MediumTex]

Here is what an opinion piece in the Washington Post had to say about the case today, along with my comments:

Trayvon Martin never had a chance

By Eugene Robinson

WASHINGTON -- Justice failed Trayvon Martin the night he was killed. We should be appalled and outraged, but perhaps not surprised, that it failed him again Saturday night with a verdict setting his killer free.

Our society considers young black men to be dangerous, interchangeable, expendable, guilty until proven innocent. This is the conversation about race that we desperately need to have -- but probably, as in the past, will try our best to avoid.

I don't see anyone avoiding the conversation about race.  In fact, that seems to be the only conversation anyone is having, even though a conversation about self-defense and Florida law would also be nice to hear.

George Zimmerman’s acquittal was set in motion on Feb. 26, 2012, before Martin’s body was cold. When Sanford, Fla., police arrived on the scene, they encountered a grown man who acknowledged killing an unarmed 17-year-old boy. They did not arrest the man or test him for drug or alcohol use. They conducted a less-than-energetic search for forensic evidence. They hardly bothered to look for witnesses.

Really?  They interviewed basically every single resident in the area where the shooting occurred and collected many statements, including four separate interviews with Zimmerman. They appear to have collected as much forensic evidence as they could given that it was raining.  Later, they went back to the scene and videotaped Zimmerman's description of what happened.

Only a national outcry forced authorities to investigate the killing seriously. Even after six weeks, evidence was found to justify arresting Zimmerman, charging him with second-degree murder and putting him on trial. But the chance of dispassionately and definitively establishing what happened that night was probably lost. The only complete narrative of what transpired was Zimmerman’s.

This is simply false.  The only evidence that was found after six weeks to arrest Zimmerman was in the minds of Florida politicians who saw this case as an opportunity to grandstand, which is exactly what they did, including that ridiculous post-verdict press conference with Angela Corey where she sounded like Jim Harbaugh whining about not getting a pass interference call after losing the Super Bowl.

Jurors knew that Zimmerman was an overeager would-be cop, a self-appointed guardian of the neighborhood who carried a loaded gun. They were told that he profiled Martin -- young, black, hooded sweatshirt -- as a criminal. They heard that he stalked Martin despite the advice of a 911 operator; that the stalking led to a confrontation; and that, in the confrontation, Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.

Something tells me that the jurors would disagree with the statement above.

The jurors also knew that Martin was carrying only a bag of candy and a soft drink. They knew that Martin was walking from a 7-Eleven to the home of his father’s girlfriend when he noticed a strange man in an SUV following him.

Martin was carrying two fists and had a concrete sidewalk available to him for head pounding.  The "Skittles and Tea" narrative is just plan cynical and stupid.

To me, and to many who watched the trial, the fact that Zimmerman recklessly initiated the tragic encounter was enough to establish, at a minimum, guilt of manslaughter. The six women on the jury disagreed.

There was no evidence that Zimmerman recklessly initiated the encounter.  The term "reckless" has a precise legal definition and Zimmerman simply didn't act recklessly, in part because it wouldn't have been reasonable for him to conclude the Martin would attack him and try to kill him just for walking near him.

Those jurors also knew that Martin, at the time of his death, was just three weeks past his 17th birthday. But black boys in this country are not allowed to be children. They are assumed to be men, and to be full of menace.

Nonsense.  This is just an inflammatory remark intended to stir people up. 

I don’t know if the jury, which included no African-Americans, consciously or unconsciously bought into this racist way of thinking -- there’s really no other word. But it hardly matters, because police and prosecutors initially did.

Honestly, the writer of the article sounds more racist than anyone else he is talking about.  What evidence is there that the police, prosecutors or jury used "racist ways of thinking"?  None that I can see.

The assumption underlying their ho-hum approach to the case was that Zimmerman had the right to self-defense but Martin -- young, male, black -- did not. The assumption was that Zimmerman would fear for his life in a hand-to-hand struggle but Martin -- young, male, black -- would not.

There was no hand to hand struggle.  It was an attack.  There was no ho-hum approach to the investigation--it seemed very thorough.  The assumption was not that Zimmerman would fear for his life in a hand to hand struggle; rather, the conclusion was that Zimmerman DID fear for his life as his head was being pounded on the sidewalk by his attacker.

If anyone wonders why African-Americans feel so passionately about this case, it’s because we know that our 17-year-old sons are boys, not men. It’s because we know their adolescent bravura is just that -- an imitation of manhood, not the real thing.

Yes, but a skull that is cracked by a demonstration of this bravura IS the real thing.

We know how frightened our sons would be, walking home alone on a rainy night and realizing they were being followed. We know how torn they would be between a child’s fear and a child’s immature idea of manly behavior. We know how they would struggle to decide the right course of action, flight or fight.

I don't presume to know what anyone else is thinking, much less an entire segment of society.  Martin actually had more than two options: one of them was to attack, which he did.

And we know that a skinny boy armed only with candy, no matter how big and bad he tries to seem, does not pose a mortal threat to a healthy adult man who outweighs him by 50 pounds and has had martial arts training (even if the lessons were mostly a waste of money). We know that the boy may well have threatened the man’s pride, but likely not his life. How many murders-by-sidewalk have you heard of recently? Or ever?

Armed with candy?  Really? 

Anyone pounding my head on a sidewalk after breaking my nose IS a mortal threat to me.

I have heard of many murders that involved hitting someone and knocking them to ground and when their head hit the ground it led to a fatal head injury.  This sort of thing happens often.

The conversation we need to have is about how black men, even black boys, are denied the right to be young, to be vulnerable, to make mistakes. We need to talk about why, for example, black men are no more likely than white men to smoke marijuana but nearly four times as likely to be arrested for it -- and condemned to a dead-end cycle of incarceration and unemployment. I call this racism. What do you call it?

I could not agree more with this sentiment.  Blacks are clearly targeted by law enforcement FAR more often than other groups are targeted, and I think that this is sad and very unfair, and it's one more example of the government using the threat of force to intimidate certain segments of society.

Trayvon Martin was fighting more than George Zimmerman that night. He was up against prejudices as old as American history, and he never had a chance.

That's just a stupid comment.  Martin clearly had a chance.  All he needed to do was walk home and not attack anyone.

***

Anyway, the piece above is a fair representation of what many people seem to be thinking about this case right now.

[Pointedstick]

That article strongly implies that young black boys can't help but attack people when they feel frightened, which sounds about a hundred times more racist to me than anything the author points to.

[dualstow]

This could be a game changer for me, not on the acquittal obviously as I already support it, but on a lot of my criticism of Zimmerman. However, I'm still not clear: did he follow him or run ahead and hide on his predicted path? You can't do both.

Are you suggesting that Zimmerman may have run ahead of Martin and then hidden to ambush him as he walked by?

How could Zimmerman have run ahead of Martin if he didn't know where Martin was going?  How would Zimmerman have been able to run ahead of Martin without Martin seeing him?  Do we think that Zimmerman ran by Martin and then once he was far enough ahead of him he hid and waited for him?

Or are you saying that Martin ran ahead (or circled back) and hid in Zimmerman's predicted path back to his vehicle?

Closer to the latter: Martin. I was asking PS to clarify his statement. See his post above.
As for the rest, I have the most wonderful of reasons to take a break: I have a green light to buy more gold for my dad's pp.

[moda0306]

MT,

Your assertion that trayvon "sucker punched" Zimmerman is hogwash.  According to zimmermans initial telling of the story, this is how it happened, but it's obvious that at the very least there was a verbal altercation before it got physical. This means there was no punch from behind.

Also, as Ad pointed out, the standard with self defense is that you have to have the preponderance of evidence on your side regarding self defense.  "Stand your ground" laws change this because people who had killed others justifiably were getting arrested.  There obviously should be exceptions to murder convictions for self-defense, but making it an automatic before a killing is even thoroughly investigated (with cross referencing accounts of what happened and timelines for inconsistencies) is too much.

Zimmerman wasn't just taking a stroll... He was looking for and/or following Martin as he said he would in the 911 call.  He then lied (or forgot :/) the facts of the event, stating he Martin jumped out of the bushes at him, before later changing his story.

This is not as simple as you're making it out to be.

Are some in the liberal media completely skewing this?  As always, yes.  I'm much more interested in what happened, what the legal response should be and what the discrepancies are than if liberals are doing what they always do.

Eugene Robinson is an utter buffoon, so we're in agreement there.

[annieB]

Where is Johnny Cochran when we need to know?

[MediumTex]

That article strongly implies that young black boys can't help but attack people when they feel frightened, which sounds about a hundred times more racist to me than anything the author points to.

Yep.

When I read a piece like the one I posted above, it just seems to be brimming with racially-driven animosity toward non-blacks, and whites in particular (though Zimmerman was not quite white).  It's always jolting to me to encounter things like that, because I think that our country has made amazing strides in recent decades in overcoming many racist attitudes that were very common earlier in our history.

When I hear commentary from people whose livelihoods depend upon the continuation of racial strife, I am reminded of Crispin Gover's "Jingle Dell" character in Wild At Heart. 

Jingle Dell believed that Christmas should last all year long, and that it was only because of a plot by evil aliens that we only celebrated Christmas one day a year.  After Jingle Dell had engaged in much bizarre behavior for a long period in his desire to foil the plots of these evil anti-Christmas aliens, the people around him reluctantly concluded that the alien was Jingle Dell himself, and him alone.

[Pointedstick]

Zimmerman wasn't just taking a stroll... He was looking for and/or following Martin as he said he would in the 911 call.  He then lied (or forgot :/) the facts of the event, stating he Martin jumped out of the bushes at him, before later changing his story.

This is not as simple as you're making it out to be.

1. George Zimmerman followed Trayvon martin.
2. George Zimmerman lost Trayvon Martin.
3. George Zimmerman went back to his truck.
4. Trayvon Martin confronted George Zimmerman and asked "Why are you following me?"
5. George Zimmerman responded, "What are you doing here?"
6. ? ? ?
7. Trayvon Martin was on top of George Zimmerman, administering lethal attacks.
8. George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin.


The big question is, "what happened at step #6?" If it's not "George Zimmerman laid hands on Trayvon Martin", then the shooting was legit.

To date, I have yet to see any evidence for George Zimmerman initiating that physical confrontation. Martin's body and clothes had no marks on them save for the gunshot wound. By contrast, Zimmerman was bloodied and injured, and the back of his shirt was full of grass stains. It appears that he did not lay a hand on Martin during the physical fight but before he shot him. This is a guy 9 years older and 50 lbs heavier.

Does that sound like the behavior of a person who started the fight? That he would start a fight with some kind of physical contact but then completely stop his physical attacks until the moment when he pulls out a gun and shoots the guy he started the fight with? That doesn't make any sense to me.