I was trying to point out that we don’t have just Zimmerman’s word on what happened. We should also look at the physical evidence. If Martin grabbed Zimmerman’s head and repeatedly slammed it against the concrete, shouldn’t there some of Zimmerman’s skin cells underneath Martin’s fingernails? Or some of Zimmerman’s blood on Martin’s hands? Or maybe injuries on or near Zimmerman’s ears? What about when Martin held his hands over Zimmerman’s mouth? If Martin punched Zimmerman, shouldn’t there signs of injuries to his hands? And how did Zimmerman have his hand free enough to grab his gun (despite Martin apparently going for it first), but not free enough to hit Martin or push him off?
Are you really arguing that following someone is not an aggressive act?
Yes, lots of people are murdered every year and a lot of those cases remain unsolved … that is a big problem. For this case, however, the cops knew that Zimmerman killed Martin, but released him after only five hours and decided after only two weeks that there was no reason charge Zimmerman with anything.
Why is this upsetting? It is really disturbing to think that the person who lives is the one who gets to claim self-defense. It is really disturbing to think that a person can respond to a fist fight with lethal force and the law will apparently see nothing wrong that.
I’m sorry you’re disturbed by it, but a fist fight may indeed be a life threatening situation. I promise that I am strong enough to kill someone by slamming their head into concrete, and I’d be surprised if you weren’t.
Yes. In terms of the law, I absolutely am. You don’t get to hit someone because they follow you. You don’t even get to hit someone if they throw every nasty word in the world at you. You only get to hit them if they verbally or physically threaten you (ie they “assault” you). That’s the law, and it creeps me out to no end that everyone thinks that hasn’t always been the case, or that we should overturn that standard because a kid without a gun got killed.
Again, you can insist that we don’t know that Zimmerman didn’t assault Martin, and start the fight – but tossing up a possible alternative is a valid tactic for defense, not prosecution.
I might have missed that episode of CSI, but my understanding is that fights are sort of chaotic. It’s not crucial to Zimmerman’s case that he pull off the rather incredible feat of describing exactly how he was beat up, blow by blow. I don’t think it makes sense for me to argue the technical aspects, which the prosecution didn’t see as strong enough to highlight in their case, but as some suggestions:
Having your head slammed into the ground can happen lots of ways, without injuring your ears. If you’re on top, you can do a perfectly serviceable job by grabbing only clothing – incidentally, are you asserting that he made these injuries to the back of his own head to cover up a murder? I don’t think Zimmerman was appreciably cleaned off in the photos I’ve seen, and relatively little blood is visible. 2) If you’ve ever watched MMA, you know that blows from the your back are virtually worthless, and easily dodged. 3) You can hit someone on the nose without hurting your hand. You run a risk of hurting your hand when you hit someone in the head, but it’s not a given. I’m not the sort to get in fights, but I’ve punched someone in the head before, and didn’t hurt my hand. (or the guy I hit, to be honest)
That’s disturbing fact of reality, and doesn’t really relate to this case more than others. (Incidentally, the response to that disturbing fact of reality is to have public prosecutors, who try these cases)
(edit: this last section belongs more in response to arguments about whether he was right to shoot, rather than about physical evidence, etc. Middle paragraph added as well)
Can you put yourself in the shoes of Zimmerman on his back in a position where he’s having his head hit against concrete, and could at any moment be rendered unconscious and therefore completely defenseless? The physical evidence seems to suggest that this happened. What are you expecting him to do at this point?
Even if he started the fight himself, I would have plenty of sympathy with him pulling the trigger in this instant, and I would consider him guilty of manslaughter (though I’m uncertain of the law there), but certainly not of some voluntary form of murder. Until you start making assumptions intended to establish guilt, his mistake was confronting a stranger in his gated community – which, even if it was inspired by racist feelings, is not unreasonable, especially for a member of the neighborhood watch. It is not a crime to suspect someone of a crime and ask them about it.
“Law is based on what society can reasonably expect of its members. It should not set intractable standards of behavior which require mankind to perform acts of martyrdom, and brand as criminal any behavior falling below those standards.” ICTY
I feel like you want to restrict conversation on a message board to the rules of evidence in a court room, but even more than that you want to restrict our interpretation of events to the interpretation that fits the jury verdict. The only evidence we have of what happened in the few minutes before the shooting is Zimmerman’s word for what happened - that is not the same as saying that we have to believe Zimmerman’s account.
Florida law puts an outrageous burden on the prosecution to convict anyone of murder, and the bizarre nature of Florida law is definitely an issue here whether it is “Stand your ground” or not. The idea that the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the killer was not afraid is terrifying. It is basically a licence for anyone to kill anyone (though in practice only a licence for non-black people to kill black people).
I am not questioning the verdict at all, so the case “as it was presented to the jury” is not relevant. The problem is with the law, not how the law was put in this case. We can believe that what Zimmerman did was very wrong while at the same time accepting that he is not guilty.
And yes, if you punch a cop and they shoot you then they have done something wrong (and so have you). Right now in Toronto everyone is very angry that a cop shot someone who was threatening them with a knife!
We’re right under the wire here, so I just wanna say thanks for the discussion.
This seems to suggest that you feel, like I do, that there are undoubtedly better examples out there of the issues that many claim this case personifies. That applies both to racism and to the legal reform positions that have sprung up around the case.
I like the idea of America getting excited about the meaning of self-defense, and gun ownership, and all sorts of other ideas surrounding this case now. I just wish these issues were coming up concerning a case that wasn’t so cut-and-dried from a legal perspective.
What’s more galling is what a political litmus test this case seems to be. Except unlike evolution, and global warming, and Terry Schiavo and so many other cases over the last couple decades, the emotion-over-expert-opinion side is “my team”. (I realize you personally don’t question the verdict, but the protests and the media certainly do)
A lot of people think that the right verdict is the one that aligns with their sense of justice, and that’s very hard to get over.
But I don’t really think this is a bad example of how race affects the legal system. I really, honestly believe that if Martin was white and Zimmerman was black he would have been held by police from day one, put on trial speedily, and convicted. When you look at the stats on convictions for murder on white-on-black vs. black-on-white killings, that is what they tell you.
The jury wouldn’t have believed his account of what happened, they would have had a hard time getting their head around why he thought a white kid with a hoodie was dangerous in a way that they didn’t with a black kid. It would have been hard for them to swallow the idea that a grown black man needed to use a gun to defend himself from a 17-year-old white kid.
I can’t prove any of that, but I think this case is a very good example of what’s wrong with race in the courtroom specifically because the facts are so ambiguous. It is in that ambiguity that we can convict a black man and acquit a white man.
