Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Yes

No

This is another experiment isn't it

[Loud Whispers]

I honestly cannot think of anything I could say that would be more damning than praise from PatriotSaint.

I think it's slightly worrying that a great deal of people would still rather judge someone off of someone else's opinions. I'm not quite sure what PatiotSaint has done that I'm now being deemed praised by the devil, but I'm going off on a ledge and saying that Patriot is right wing or something?
In which case it is horrid when the conservatives are somehow being more liberal than you! No offence intended to the right wing of America, but you don't have a good reputation for actually being morally concerned with people these days.

So yeah. Presentation is everything. Set 1: a child and, thanks to color, a convict-looking middle-aged kinda-fugly dude. Set 2: gangbanger-looking teen and a smiling man in a suit.

This has been debunked like ten billion times.  The commonly used photograph of Martin was taken 6 months before his death, and the ones of an OH MY GOD SCARY BLACK MAN SHOOT HIM NOW are of a completely unrelated man who happens to be named Trayvon Martin.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/martin.asp

Actually the ones Scrdest brought up were from Trayvon Martin's phone, you are talking about an unrelated case from a photo spread around by Klankannon, a supremacist hacker.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

These were released by the defence and were just some of the things on Trayvon Martin's phone.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But we weren't arguing about the start of the fight.  We were arguing over whether Zimmerman was a murderer according to his own story.  Stalking someone and then killing them when they defend themselves is murder, it doesn't matter who threw the first punch.  What does matter is that Florida has laws that make murder legal in this context.

The great irony is that the people with a massive hardon for self defense when it means killing the right people get all butthurt that Martin might have actually defended himself with non-lethal force.

I'd recommend the link I just posted;

What began as annoying 911 operators with pointless complaints escalated to notifying the authorities any time he saw a black male he didn’t know. The argument that he’s not racist and wasn’t profiling is based on the fact that he “mentored black children” and “had black friends” and is entirely beside the point, because it presumes that he’s an overt and deliberate racist. Those who make it claim victory when they demonstrate that he never wore a white hood or bedecked his body in Nazi ink.

I’ll grant that that Zimmerman didn’t pine for the days of short ropes and sturdy limbs.

I’ll grant that he didn’t dream of goose-stepping down the Champs-Élysées in his dress browns.

But I won’t grant that race didn’t color his judgment when it came to young black men with whom he wasn’t personally acquainted. From 3 August 2011 forward he’s increasingly — and almost exclusively — concerned with unfamiliar black males in his apartment complex. Maybe confirmation bias is more the problem here than racism, but the fact remains that the bias being confirmed is that young black males are suspects until proven otherwise. You can’t look at the 911 calls in the months immediately prior to the shooting and argue otherwise. (At least not honestly.) He transformed from a harmless nudnik into someone very concerned with the presence of unfamiliar black males, which at the very least means that by 11 August 2011 his worldview contained the category “Unfamiliar Black Male” and that the presence of people belonging to it warranted calling 911.

That’s indisputable.

He doesn't have to have been some sort of secret Klan styled racist to have had racial biases that coloured his treatment of Martin.

Again, the Cobb piece on how this type of racial bias is not called out as racism, mostly because it's so common lots of people whose identity tells them they can't be racist (they have black friends!) hold such views. And if non-racists believe it it can't be racism. It's just the way the world works.

And beyond all that, even if Zimmerman is a complete anti-racist it doesn't change the fact that a great deal of his support has been tinged with racist defences of profiling and racist attacks on Martin.

If someone stalks you on a dark street at night then you have the right to defend youself with lethal force.  Trayvon Martin wasn't going to get anyone killed.

Race doesn't even enter into something.  If you provoke a fight with someone and then kill them you are a murderer.  If someone else provokes a fight with you and then you kill them, you are not (although you may or may not be over reacting.)  Zimmerman is a murderer by his own account and it's a shocking oversight in our laws that what he did was legal.

Are you guys all pretending to be Bill O'Reilly or something? Because I'm trying to maintain a standard of quality for all of my posts but you just keep on repeating your opinions whenever the validity of your opinions are questioned. And if my posts are just repeats of information I've already said or opinions brought up to counter opinions, the quality is very soon going to go from thoughtful to unreadable.

[GlyphGryph]

Like what? Justifiable homicide is as old as laws. Zimmerman's case didn't even involve any of the new edgy laws like Stand your Ground. It was regular old self-defense that's legal basically everywhere in the world.

Just as a note, and this is the only problem I personally had with the whole thing other than it being stupid that it's national news - the police didn't charge him, because of the Stand Your Ground laws. They didn't hold him, they didn't charge him, and they had no intention of actually doing so. The problem isn't Stand Your Ground laws - it is Florida's law in particular, which definitely played a major role here.

Florida's Stand Your Ground law isn't the reason he got off - he got off because there was reasonable doubt, and good reason for it. But they are the reason this turned into the national wankfest that it is.

You know those two stories in the OP? I think they serve as good reference points. Despite being on his own property, the one guy was arrested and charged. Despite following someone else in public, Zimmerman was not. The first guy got off, rightly, shortly thereafter. Zimmerman's trial took it's sweet-ass fucking time and only seemed to progress when national rage pushed it forward. At least from what I got talking to people early on, this was what was really infuriating - that instead of letting the law handle it, it felt like Florida was just trying to sweep it under the rug (and from what I understand the provisions of Stand Your Ground saying that the police aren't allowed to hold or charge someone who might have been acting in self defense are a big part of that).

Instead, they waited 45 days to charge him. He wasn't taken into custody. They did not do any drug tests. They did not investigate, and seemed to have no intent on ever actually doing so. Can you blame people for suspecting racism and being furious? Roderick was immediately brought into custody! They investigated! Here, the police refused to do so, and in circumstances that were, let us be honest, a bit more questionable and a lot less clear cut (Roderick case: Crime in progress, own property, multiple witnesses, criminal gets shot, come on, it doesn't even really compare on that front).

This set the theme for the entire shitfest that followed. If the law had responded the way it did in the Roderick case, no one would have given a flying fuck.

I think Travyon's death is tragic. I think the whole situation is sad. I think the only bad guys here are the ones who passed fucked up legislation in Florida that seems to primarily serve the purpose of making everyone look at them and causing people to rage while scoring ideological points among assholes.

My final verdict: Fuck Florida

Here, let me find the reference to what set this whole thing off...
"Police Chief Bill Lee cited the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law and stated publicly there was no probable cause to arrest Zimmerman based on the statute. This sparked outrage and cries for justice across the nation."
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/03/28/sanford-police-originally-wanted-to-charge-zimmerman/

[MonkeyHead]

Relevant link is relevant. Obama seems to be trying to point out that Trayvon might not have been seen as "intimidating" if he were not black. Is this a genuine issue in relation both to this trial and to the wider USA?

[stabbymcstabstab]

Don't listen to Obama, he's is not a person you want to listen to actually you don't want to listen to any American politician on how laws should be anymore, every thing to them is, National Security, Racial, or something that some how is even dumber and more corrupt then the last two.

[GreatJustice]

But we weren't arguing about the start of the fight.  We were arguing over whether Zimmerman was a murderer according to his own story.  Stalking someone and then killing them when they defend themselves is murder, it doesn't matter who threw the first punch.  What does matter is that Florida has laws that make murder legal in this context.

The great irony is that the people with a massive hardon for self defense when it means killing the right people get all butthurt that Martin might have actually defended himself with non-lethal force.

WHAT IS STALKING?!

I also like how you obviously didn't even read the post or anything, you just totally ignored it and posted your distinctly uninformed opinion instead of addressing any of the legitimate points offered.

[DWC]

Like what? Justifiable homicide is as old as laws. Zimmerman's case didn't even involve any of the new edgy laws like Stand your Ground. It was regular old self-defense that's legal basically everywhere in the world.

Just as a note, and this is the only problem I personally had with the whole thing other than it being stupid that it's national news - the police didn't charge him, because of the Stand Your Ground laws. They didn't hold him, they didn't charge him, and they had no intention of actually doing so. The problem isn't Stand Your Ground laws - it is Florida's law in particular, which definitely played a major role here.

Florida's Stand Your Ground law isn't the reason he got off - he got off because there was reasonable doubt, and good reason for it. But they are the reason this turned into the national wankfest that it is.

You know those two stories in the OP? I think they serve as good reference points. Despite being on his own property, the one guy was arrested and charged. Despite following someone else in public, Zimmerman was not. The first guy got off, rightly, shortly thereafter. Zimmerman's trial took it's sweet-ass fucking time and only seemed to progress when national rage pushed it forward. At least from what I got talking to people early on, this was what was really infuriating - that instead of letting the law handle it, it felt like Florida was just trying to sweep it under the rug (and from what I understand the provisions of Stand Your Ground saying that the police aren't allowed to hold or charge someone who might have been acting in self defense are a big part of that).

Instead, they waited 45 days to charge him. He wasn't taken into custody. They did not do any drug tests. They did not investigate, and seemed to have no intent on ever actually doing so. Can you blame people for suspecting racism and being furious? Roderick was immediately brought into custody! They investigated! Here, the police refused to do so, and in circumstances that were, let us be honest, a bit more questionable and a lot less clear cut (Roderick case: Crime in progress, own property, multiple witnesses, criminal gets shot, come on, it doesn't even really compare on that front).

This set the theme for the entire shitfest that followed. If the law had responded the way it did in the Roderick case, no one would have given a flying fuck.

I think Travyon's death is tragic. I think the whole situation is sad. I think the only bad guys here are the ones who passed fucked up legislation in Florida that seems to primarily serve the purpose of making everyone look at them and causing people to rage while scoring ideological points among assholes.

My final verdict: Fuck Florida

Here, let me find the reference to what set this whole thing off...
"Police Chief Bill Lee cited the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law and stated publicly there was no probable cause to arrest Zimmerman based on the statute. This sparked outrage and cries for justice across the nation."
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/03/28/sanford-police-originally-wanted-to-charge-zimmerman/

Yeah I actually agree with you, police should poke around in cases of self-defense. There does seem like there could be some room for abuse in self-defense laws where criminal acts could be disguised as legitimate self-defense. They do this already to an extent. The police did not show up to the scene and say "Oh, ok, good job, you are free to go". They detained him, took his clothes, took photos, prints, his gun and other evidence on the scene. Held him for 5 hours. The next day Zimmerman volunteered, without counsel to re-enact the events to the police at the scene for their investigation.

Apparently nothing seemed weird about his story and no laws were broken, so they let him go.

The evidence correlated with his story, so they let him go. So, maybe Zimmerman shoved Martin or talked shit or something?  I don't see how it really matters. Zimmerman was unlawfully attacked and was forced to shoot in self-defense. Plenty of unwise decisions led up to that, but nothing he did was particularly negligent or over-the-top either. Retrospection is always clearer then in the moment.

The media is blowing this up into something it isn't. The president and everyone else is using this to harp on his anti-gun and anti-self defense agenda, with the typical emotionally-fueled tripe aimed at the lowest common denominator. Politics and media representation have polluted this case and elevated it to some pop-culture travesty and it really doesn't deserve it. The misrepresentation of what this case is, really gets to me.

[Bdthemag]

The police did handle this somewhat oddly, but isn't it likely that Zimmerman had a relationship with the police department prior? He was the person behind defending the homeless man who was beaten, and from what I read it caused quite some controversy within the local department. He's also neighborhood watch, meaning he's likely collaborated with the police before.

Not saying that excuses it at all, it's just likely that the police knew him beforehand, and decided not to instantly imprison him due to past events.

[DWC]

The police did handle this somewhat oddly, but isn't it likely that Zimmerman had a relationship with the police department prior? He was the person behind defending the homeless man who was beaten, and from what I read it caused quite some controversy within the local department. He's also neighborhood watch, meaning he's likely collaborated with the police before.

Not saying that excuses it at all, it's just likely that the police knew him beforehand, and decided not to instantly imprison him due to past events.

Uh, if anything the police would not like Zimmerman because he apparently got into a fist-fight with an off-duty police officer. He was sticking up for some friend of his and the cop didn't announce himself as such, so he got let off on charges of 'assaulting a police officer' so charged but never brought to court.

He might have had some credibility with neighbors he helped, but police don't care. Sanford is part of Orlando, it's a big city. It's not some small-town dump where everyone knows each other since elementary. Nobody knows anybody there. The police only know him by his record.

[misko27]

QUESTION.


If both parties are armed in Florida, say Trayvon was also armed, could they have engaged in a perfectly legal lethal gunfight?

[GlyphGryph]

Yeah I actually agree with you, police should poke around in cases of self-defense. There does seem like there could be some room for abuse in self-defense laws where criminal acts could be disguised as legitimate self-defense. They do this already to an extent. The police did not show up to the scene and say "Oh, ok, good job, you are free to go". They detained him, took his clothes, took photos, prints, his gun and other evidence on the scene. Held him for 5 hours. The next day Zimmerman volunteered, without counsel to re-enact the events to the police at the scene for their investigation.

Apparently the police even wanted to press charges, from what I hear, and investigate quite a bit further than they did. But they couldn't, because of stand your ground. The media was the only reason charges were pressed at all.

I think that was just a bad idea. Again, if he'd had his days in court, this would have been a pretty open and shut case most likely. He probably would have got off (again, despite the fact that I think executed some bad judgement). And this wouldn't have become a huge issue.

Instead, we get this. It's just frustrating.

[Andrew425]

So after reading this whole thread I have to the conclusion that Loud Whispers is in the right.

When I first heard of this story I was quite outraged at the fact that he wasn't charged, but after hearing more and more pieces of evidence as to why that was my mind was slowly changed.

If what Loud Whispers says is true, then I don't believe that George Zimmerman was guilty of a charge of homicide. What does anger me though is the news that distorted the facts.

QUESTION.


If both parties are armed in Florida, say Trayvon was also armed, could they have engaged in a perfectly legal lethal gunfight?

The first one to fire would be charged, the second would be defending himself. Unless of course one was to draw a weapon and point and the other thinking that he was about to be shot quickly drew and shot him, in which case it could be self defence.

[Rolepgeek]

I have a question. I read the OP, and find that if it's true, then the verdict is (probably) correct. But I feel he should cite his sources. From what I'm seeing, it seems to be just as much opinion and fact-inventing as everyone else. It probably isn't, but without citations...

My other question is this. Did anyone consider that Trayvon may have considered his own life in danger, seeing a person following him, and he may have seen the gun? And as, apparently, THC was found in his blood, perhaps his perception was altered by the drugs to believe that his life was in danger? In such a case, would him stopping and waiting to see if the man kept following him, or trying to see what the man was doing, and then feeling once again that his life was in danger, constitute a lawful assault on Zimmerman's persons?

Keep in mind I don't necessarily believe the above is true. I can barely follow what I typed, as I was in a lawyer-speech induced haze at the time of writing. But it is an interesting point that I am surprised was not brought up. I don't know if it would change anything, as even if Trayvon fought in perceived self-defense, it doesn't change whether Zimmerman fought in perceived self-defense.

[Lectorog]

I have a question. I read the OP, and find that if it's true, then the verdict is (probably) correct. But I feel he should cite his sources. From what I'm seeing, it seems to be just as much opinion and fact-inventing as everyone else. It probably isn't, but without citations...

Most of it came from Loud Whispers watching the trial.

[mainiac]

The police did handle this somewhat oddly, but isn't it likely that Zimmerman had a relationship with the police department prior?

His father was a judge IIRC.

[DWC]

Yeah I actually agree with you, police should poke around in cases of self-defense. There does seem like there could be some room for abuse in self-defense laws where criminal acts could be disguised as legitimate self-defense. They do this already to an extent. The police did not show up to the scene and say "Oh, ok, good job, you are free to go". They detained him, took his clothes, took photos, prints, his gun and other evidence on the scene. Held him for 5 hours. The next day Zimmerman volunteered, without counsel to re-enact the events to the police at the scene for their investigation.

Apparently the police even wanted to press charges, from what I hear, and investigate quite a bit further than they did. But they couldn't, because of stand your ground. The media was the only reason charges were pressed at all.

I think that was just a bad idea. Again, if he'd had his days in court, this would have been a pretty open and shut case most likely. He probably would have got off (again, despite the fact that I think executed some bad judgement). And this wouldn't have become a huge issue.

Instead, we get this. It's just frustrating.

AFAIK, Zimmerman never claimed 'Stand your ground' because he was pinned under Mr. Martin while being attacked and unable to retreat, even if the law required him to, making it a regular self-defense case, like you'd see anywhere in the world where people have the rights to their own life.

Zimmerman might have made some dumb decisions, but... he did nothing illegal. Law in the USA is built on precedence of court cases... Zimmerman didn't do anything illegal... but if he was considered guilty, despite everything. It would blow up the entire legal concept of self-defense.

So, a guy that got yelled at by some frail old grandmother for going on her lawn, would have reason to attack her, as proper
provocation' and then forth the old lady would be absolved of her right to defend herself against lethal force, because she instigated and provoked the guy on her lawn. The guy on the lawn could brain her with a rock, because he was provoked and discriminated against. The old lady would be legally required to take whatever she deserved for her hateful actions.

The USA has universal application of the law. Meaning, the same standard for everyone. It's a democracy, but it doesn't mean mob rule. Just because everyone wants to see Zimmerman die for what he did, doesn't mean he deserves it, nor will he.

The law doesn't make 'special exceptions' it doesn't follow 'common sense' or 'popular opinion'.