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This is another experiment isn't it

[shadenight123]

All trials should be held anonymously, with the judge, the jury, the testimony given through recordings and without ever coming to know the name or the face of the accused.
No publicity should be done of the trial.
No description of the accused/accuser, the guilty and the victim.

That's how you avoid Bias.
Now, someone turn this into a law and let's get this over with.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

All trials should be held anonymously, with the judge, the jury, the testimony given through recordings and without ever coming to know the name or the face of the accused.
No publicity should be done of the trial.
No description of the accused/accuser, the guilty and the victim.

That's how you avoid Bias.
Now, someone turn this into a law and let's get this over with.

Yeah, no. Secret trials are how you get secret police, secret incrimination, and secret punishment. Only the public record keeps anything the government desires from being done behind closed doors. Believe me, you are not the first person to have this idea. It is not a good idea.

The media circus is not good, but it is preferable to the alternative.

You also can't turn it into a law, you would have to amend the Constitution. On that front, I wish you the best of luck, because you will need it.

[shadenight123]

Not 'secret' from the public, but 'secret' participants.

Rather than "This case is of *Hispanic* VS *Black*" state "X against Y" with both behind a monitor screen which prevents their features from being seen. You then publicize the trial only once the verdict is passed.

No bias. No possibility to make it a paparazzi festival.
Problem solved.

[palsch]

The main legal option the protests are calling for is a civil rights investigation by the federal government.

In fact this has been part of the headlines in the two stories I saw on google news and has been mentioned in the body of every single article I've read on the subject.

The Department of Justice has an ongoing investigation into the crime and surrounding events to see if there were any violations of the civil rights act or other federal anti-discrimination laws. A good NPR summary back when the investigation was opened.

Civil rights groups cheered the news that the Justice Department would look into the case of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teen shot by a man on neighborhood watch in Sanford, Fla.

But the bar for the Justice Department to make a federal case is high. Ultimately, it has few options at its disposal when it comes to investigating the teen's death.

The Justice Department has two main options in bringing a federal civil rights case in a shooting death. One is reserved for cases where a local police officer is the one doing the shooting.

But George Zimmerman, who fired the deadly shot in the Trayvon Martin case, was on a neighborhood watch. And, from what federal investigators understand so far, Zimmerman says he acted in self-defense and doesn't appear to have been acting in an official capacity.

The other option for federal authorities is a 2009 hate crime law named for Matthew Shepard, who was targeted by attackers and left to die because he was gay, and James Byrd Jr., a black man who was dragged behind a truck by his killers.

Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor who worked in the Obama Justice Department, says "a crucial question in determining whether the Shepard-Byrd statute applies is going to be whether Zimmerman acted with discriminatory intent."

The odds of anything coming from this are slim and the law is drawn very narrowly so even if charges were brought a conviction would be unlikely, but it is legal, entirely possible and the way such hate crime laws are supposed to work. The idea is that the federal government can investigate cases where the local environment may make it hard for a victim to get justice due to racial discrepancies in how the local justice system treats them. Even if the racial discrimination in this case was only a perception based on the strained racial history in the area and larger history of injustice in the USA, the Federal government should still investigate and preferably release their findings to clear up the matter as best they can.

These things aren't covered by double jeopardy as they are separate crimes. It would be as through a banker were charged with fraud and during the investigation there was evidence of bribery. Even if they are cleared of fraud they could still be charged with the counts of bribery later.


As far as secret trials, one aspect where I do think the UKs lack of freedom of speech helps is that juries are completely secret. I served on one earlier this year and can't reveal anything that happened in the deliberation room on pain of contempt of court. Similarly any journalist who was to approach me about what happened would be found similarly in contempt, just for the asking. Basically the juror and AC (and any producers who set up that interview) would be in contempt of court for revealing the deliberations of a jury.

Revealing what happened during deliberations, especially the initial vote lines, made me feel a little queasy.

[Leafsnail]

"I chose slight right wing bias...  It seemed mildly biased towards his innocence."
Don't mean to pick on anyone in particular, but I came to this conclusion because people have been picking sides on where they stand in this case based on where they are on the left|right of American politics. Innocence is associated with right-wing, and that is something I have gathered from Americans. From this forum even. Guilty is associated with left-wing. Both sides appear absolutely ignorant. I set about to change that a bit I guess? You know, there is only value lost with ignorance so I'm just happy throwing out the truth there and letting people come to sensible conclusions. And now that I think about, for the right reasons too. What is the value of being right if you're only right on a chance? Sure it's there, but it doesn't have the same weight.

I think the actual reason people chose right-wing bias was that you mentioned every talking point that's been showing up on right-wing news sources while ignoring or arbitrarily dismissing anything that went against the "Zimmerman is innocent and Martin is a thug" narrative.

The idea that you're "just throwing truth out there" is laughable.  For example, you state that Martin "turned back and assaulted George Zimmerman."  There is no evidence to suggest this is true - at best it's a possibility the jury decided couldn't be ruled out.  As far as I can tell you are badly misreading Rachel Jeantel's testimony - she suggested that Martin may have hit first, but that he would've done it in response to physical provocation, since he wouldn't have abruptly hung up on her if he were planning to start a fight.  It wouldn't be at all unreasonable to see this as right-wing bias, due to the fact it's a talking point that every right-wing news source has latched on to.

2. When I started this thread I had hoped someone would watch the trial fully and give literally all of the information necessary to understanding every aspect of the trial. When I created the poll, I was hoping someone would call me out for making it political instead of a measure of how well I portrayed the facts. I had originally wished to just give what I had about the trial and leave, but I consider the amusement from this experiment well worth continuing my suffering.

I could see that the poll was weird, but I was pretty sure it was just for comedy because of how humorous the options were.  I don't usually call people out for jokes.

3. It was a clear scale of 1 to 5 to 9 when I made it. I wanted the full array of options so I could more accurately see how strongly people felt about the trial, if doing so somehow reduced the chance of "true neutral" being picked than I've made the poor assumption that people aren't random number generators and they actually read what was written and made an at least somewhat informed decision.

Putting in lots of options means that anyone with slight misgivings about the OP would be inclined not to vote it unbiased.

I actually didn't know what I was doing when I made the poll other than that it was an interesting experiment. I originally intended it to just be a scale of 1-5 of impartiality with no mention of political spectrum. I merely kept tabs on the poll using posts to make sure that I didn't even get to see the results until I was satisfied with the total number of votes, and I saw that although the votes were pretty consistent on average towards the end there were some oddities. I was quite surprised by the results myself. 1PM onwards is the time where most of the Americans have free time, and not only that - it's the time where the rest of the world either sleeps, eats or works. This correlates with general activity of world populaces; there is a very different internet atmosphere to 1PM, 1 Bong, 1 in the Arvo etc.

Does it?  Afternoon in the US is generally evening in the EU, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people post in the evening.

Not jokes. I just don't know quite exactly what the poll results at the extremes truly means, and I had originally created them to catch out joke results as is so often the norm on this forum [it's considered common etiquette to provide a 3rd nonsensical option, which I think is rather unusual and nice, and I also expected at least one or two people to just pick the extremes for the sake of it]. But of course, when the extreme right option held a decent sized group yet there were no votes for the middle ground in between the central votes and the extreme on the right, I didn't know what to make of it. It's a peculiar group who I don't think can easily be explained with just one explanation, I do think there are a host of people within that group who will have picked that option for different reasons.

So yes, you are trying to have it both ways to suit your hypothesis.  Why is it a joke option when analysing it hour by hour but not a joke option when analysing the data as a whole?  Because if it isn't a joke option it contradicts your "America is more biased" conclusion, while if it is then it contradicts your "most people see this trial in a political light" conclusion.

What's actually happened is that you've decided Zimmerman was not only innocent under the law but fully justified in his actions, and now you want to lecture everyone about how they are bad progressives.

[Knight of Fools]

...while ignoring or arbitrarily dismissing anything that went against the "Zimmerman is innocent and Martin is a thug" narrative.

Probably because there's no real evidence that showed the reverse were true. He's shown the evidence backing up his point of view, and yet no one has been able to refute his claims with anything other than "it's not right".

[Leafsnail]

Quite a few people have challenged the "Zimmerman is innocent" part in various places (although here I mean more "under a sensible set of laws he would not be innocent" rather than "under Florida's strange laws he is not innocent).  I guess not many have addressed the "Martin is a thug" part, so I guess I should now.

As far as I can tell, it boils down to

- He got suspended once for bunking off school
- He occasionally got into fights
- He took weed at some point
- He liked guns
- He exchanged some clearly humorous text messages about being a hoodlum

All of these things are pretty minor and apply to a significant proportion of people of Martin's age.  Note the complete lack of anything serious such as violent convictions or actual gang links.  The fact that he occasionally got into fights with other kids does not lend any credence to the idea that he suddenly decided he was going to murder a random person with his bare hands, in my opinion.

[Pnx]

At one point they also found a whole bunch of jewelry in his bag, he claimed it was given to him by a friend, they assumed it was probably stolen, though they never did figure out who it may have belonged to.

[mainiac]

All of these things are pretty minor and apply to a significant proportion of people of Martin's age.  Note the complete lack of anything serious such as violent convictions or actual gang links.  The fact that he occasionally got into fights with other kids does not lend any credence to the idea that he suddenly decided he was going to murder a random person with his bare hands, in my opinion.

Going by the standard that made Martin a thug, Zimmerman was the love child of Hitler and Bin Laden.  If getting in fights in high school makes you a menace to society then what does getting in fights with police officers make you?  Oh but wait, that's totally not relevant to the case because it might bias the jury...

[scrdest]

All of these things are pretty minor and apply to a significant proportion of people of Martin's age.  Note the complete lack of anything serious such as violent convictions or actual gang links.  The fact that he occasionally got into fights with other kids does not lend any credence to the idea that he suddenly decided he was going to murder a random person with his bare hands, in my opinion.

Going by the standard that made Martin a thug, Zimmerman was the love child of Hitler and Bin Laden.  If getting in fights in high school makes you a menace to society then what does getting in fights with police officers make you?  Oh but wait, that's totally not relevant to the case because it might bias the jury...

Martin didn't get in high school fights, but street fights. A difference. And the police officer in question was off-duty.

But ultimately, both are not particularly relevant to the case. The argument that 'Martin is a thug' serves mostly to discredit 'A man killed an innocent child' narrative. Both, in the end, boil down to spin doctoring for either party.

[Leafsnail]

At one point they also found a whole bunch of jewelry in his bag, he claimed it was given to him by a friend, they assumed it was probably stolen, though they never did figure out who it may have belonged to.

But ultimately, both are not particularly relevant to the case. The argument that 'Martin is a thug' serves mostly to discredit 'A man killed an innocent child' narrative. Both, in the end, boil down to spin doctoring for either party.

Tell me more about how "innocent until proven guilty" does not apply to Martin.

The first one is pretty clearly a variant on "Having something valuable while black" incidentally.

Incidentally:

This is one of the saddest things I've ever read.  That this obviously jokey exchange is being used to push the idea that Martin is a thug is absolutely awful.

[Knight of Fools]

Tell me more about how "innocent until proven guilty" does not apply to Martin.

The first one is pretty clearly a variant on "Having something valuable while black" incidentally.

Honestly, the fact that you keep on going back to the "he's black" thing is rather indicative on where you're coming from on this issue. If a white kid were found with a bunch of jewelry in his backpack there would be the same amount of suspicion. Jewelry is something you wear, not carry around inside a bag for giggles.

I'm not saying that he did steal it, but arguing that the only reason others consider it suspicious is because of Martin's race is detrimental to the whole argument because it's completely ignoring the real issue.

[Leafsnail]

I really don't think there would.  It's not unreasonable to think that a friend or relative asked him to move it somewhere.

And if excessive suspicion of ethnic minorities is not a "real issue" then what is?

[Knight of Fools]

You're evading the issue by going back to race again. I'm not saying that racism isn't an issue, but it's obviously not an issue in this case.


And again, yeah, I'm not saying that he did steal it, but the chances of someone asking a friend to move a bunch of non-stolen jewelry are pretty slim, especially considering that they couldn't find who the jewelry belonged to. If for some reason I asked a friend to transport my valuables I'd definitely come forward and claim it were mine because hey, it's mine.

Of course, the jewelry could have been stolen by one of Martin's friends and they asked him to move it somewhere. They didn't come forward and claim ownership because it was stolen. In that case, Martin wouldn't be guilty of anything besides being an accomplice or just being ignorant of why his friends were asking him to transport a bunch of jewelry. Possessing stolen goods is still a good way to get in trouble, ignorance or not, and Martin would have to be pretty naive to know his friends weren't using him as a mule in that case.

[scrdest]

At one point they also found a whole bunch of jewelry in his bag, he claimed it was given to him by a friend, they assumed it was probably stolen, though they never did figure out who it may have belonged to.

But ultimately, both are not particularly relevant to the case. The argument that 'Martin is a thug' serves mostly to discredit 'A man killed an innocent child' narrative. Both, in the end, boil down to spin doctoring for either party.

Tell me more about how "innocent until proven guilty" does not apply to Martin.

It does. Except it would kinda sorta be difficult to prosecute him for anything, because he is, you know, dead. But it does cast suspicion upon him, no matter the race, unless you know some obscure weird culture that demands all jewelry to be worn in a bag as a sign of humility or something.

Also, you conveniently ignored the part leading to this conversation, which has Martin freely admitting to getting into fights and smoking marijuana and obsession with guns (though it might be something uniquely 'Murrican (FUCK YEAH) that teens wanting to obtain weapons is slightly suspicious, but not unusual).