apparently she was talked out of her book deal as well. so that happened.
This doesn’t seem like much of a surprise. Who would think that a group of people specifically selected for not having heard of Martin, Zimmerman, or the killing would be too stupid to understand the laws they would have to decide on? This is basically a group of people that admitted to not watching a current events program or hearing any news whatsoever for a year. If I was Zimmerman at the beginning of this, I would have been shitting myself wondering what type of verdict they were going to come up with given that you would have to be willfully misinformed to not have heard of this in America. I guess it worked out for him though… Damn.
This doesn’t exactly seem like breaking news. They deliberated for 16 hours. Of course the jury started out split and of course they had to debate their positions to reach a consensus. That’s how the jury system works. It’s certainly not evidence that Zimmerman got an unfair advantage. It means that they deliberated over the evidence, heard both sides even in the jury’s room, and reached a conclusion.
I like the Illustrated Law Guide’s take on it. In fact I haven’t come across a law blogger who thought the prosecution had any chance.
Given the self-defense and Stand Your Ground background, I totally believe the prosecution wasn’t even planning to bring a case because they knew they would lose. The main thing to come out of the case is that these laws are basically nuts and should be changed.
…wasn’t even relevant in this situation
I beg to differ.
…the fact that [stand your ground] is cited in the instructions to the jury.
This is how juries are supposed to work. I’d be more alarmed if the entire jury agreed at the beginning. In the same interview, the juror also said that the people who wanted to convict were divided between Murder and Manslaughter.
Well, I see the paper did their best to slant that article as much as they could to pander to those who claim to feel outrage over the verdict. In the same paragraph they refer to Zimmerman as a “man” and Martin as a “schoolboy,” to try to make readers feel like it was a case of a full grown adult killing a little grammar school kid. The headline itself is misleading crp - half a jury wanting to convict and half wanting to acquit is a hung jury, and if they had stayed that way Zimmerman would have been released anyway. But they want the readers to think that somehow, convincing the ones who wanted to convict was somehow wrong. Well for as short a time as they deliberated, they sure were dmn easy to convince to change their minds, so they couldn’t have been very strongly committed to conviction to begin with. This newspaper article is a travesty and a bad parody of journalistic “fairness” or “balance.”
No “claims”, genuine, justified outrage over an incident that illustrates the role of white supremacy in this country.
Jury nulification. . . look it up
As usual, The Onion nails it: http://www.theonion.com/articles/in-our-defense-these-were-some-pretty-fuckedup-law,33126/
A jury’s job isn’t to judge the person being convicted. Ironically that appears to be what everyone thinks is happening. Their job is to determine if the prosecution has presented enough evidence to eliminate (or the defense has presented enough to maintain) a reasonable doubt that the accused person/party is innocent/not guilty.
Innocent until proven guilty, not guilty cause you think he did it.
It’s at times like this that I remember two particular quotations that my old legal studies teacher was particularly fond of.
The first being Voltaire, “It is better to risk saving a Guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.”
The second being from the ever popular “Anonymous” - the original one, not 4chan - who said “Thank god the court of law and the court of public opinion are not the same thing, or else we’d all be hanging by the end of the week.”
I don’t think the jury nullified any law here, if that’s what you mean. And jury nullification absolutely cannot be used to convict someone who has not technically broken any law.
It’s a tricky case, I think it revolves around who initiated the contact: If Zimmerman initiated physical contact, maybe by trying to grab or restrain Martin, then that’s got to be at least manslaughter - you can’t start a fight and then shoot the other guy when you start losing. However if Martin jumped Zimmerman then, well, you can’t really blame Zimmerman for shooting. If you can’t prove either way then you have to give the defence the benefit of doubt, that’s how the law works.
Of course putting yourself in a dangerous situation with a loaded gun is pretty stupid, perhaps reckless endangerment would have been a more appropriate charge?
It seems pretty clear that whichever party is still around to tell the story after the fight, is the one who will control the narrative. If it is impossible to prove who initiated the physical encounter, then the survivor’s story is the dominant one.
Conclusion…don’t leave the other party alive to tell their side.
I’m not convinced that this is how the law works in Florida. Besides, if you are the only one who leaves the situation alive, how can the prosecution prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you started the fight?
What you may be missing is that people do realize that the system works. It’s just that it works to the advantage of whites and people above a certain pay grade. It works exactly as it’s supposed to, and THAT is why people are so damn sick of this. I will also remind you that Zimmerman almost didn’t even have to face a jury but only had to because of widespread outrage and people taking it to the streets. The system works: Zimmerman murders a kid and gets a way with, while under the same laws that other black woman is facing 20 years for firing a warning shot at an abusive husband. The racist, classist system works just great! Oscar Grant and all the rest. The system works and that’s why people are so angry…
