Zimmerman not guilty.

[HoreTore]

Zimmerman was an armed volounteer neighborhood guard.

That's a recipe for murder. As we have seen.

[Vuk]

Zimmerman was an armed volounteer neighborhood guard.

That's a recipe for murder. As we have seen.

Except what happened wasn't murder. What led to the death was Zimmerman disobeying his instructions (which is nowhere near murder) and a drugged up Trayvon trying to kill him. Zimmerman acted in self-defense, and is guilty of only stupidity, not murder. Trayvon was most likely an attempted murderer however.
There is nothing wrong with a volunteer neighborhood watch, and 99% of the time it is a big help and does not cause problems. Hell, trained police forces probably cause more problems than local neighborhood watches.
And BTW, following someone is not a crime punishable by being beat to death. And from recent revelations, it sounds like Trayvon thought he was gay and was disgusted by that fact, and possibly tried to kill him for racial and homophobic reasons.

[Lemur]

For what it's worth, statistically you're in a much better position to invoke self-defense if you are not black. Breakdown below, broken out by "stand your ground" and non-syg states, black-on-black versus black-on-white and white-on-black.



Source.

[Vuk]

For what it's worth, statistically you're in a much better position to invoke self-defense if you are not black. Breakdown below, broken out by "stand your ground" and non-syg states, black-on-black versus black-on-white and white-on-black.



Source.

So what? We gotta judge Zimmerman by the facts of the case, not some statistic. That would be like posting a statistic showing that black people are much more likely to rape white women than white men black women on a thread dealing with a black guy being found innocent of raping a white woman.

I feel to see how it is relevant.

[Lemur]

I feel to see how it is relevant.

Statistics about the likely outcome of a self-defense plea in a case that hinges on ... a self-defense plea. Seems pretty straightforward.

In part, I am reacting against the suggestion that the racial angle was completely invented out of whole cloth by the Evil Media. The media messed up many times, and got a great deal wrong, but I don't think the (false) racial narrative would have taken hold if there were not some reality people were reacting to.

There's a solid history of all-white juries refusing to convict people who killed black men. Is this case a result of that? Hell no.

There's irrefutable statistical evidence that a self-defense plea is much more likely to succeed if you are a white person killing a black person. Is that causal to the Zimmerman case? Hell no.

People grabbed this case and ran with it in some fundamentally wrong directions. Grant you that. But the notion that they were behaving in a vacuum, out of some imagined problem, is counter-factual.

[Fisherking]

@ Lemur

Ok, so I didn’t follow this case until the last minute. I saw all the bull on fb on one side or the other and got what the German media was reporting, which was recycled CNN more or less.

Where did the racial angle come from? At least prior to NBC’s creative editing job.

Was it Florida, gated community, neighborhood watch, the name Zimmerman or what?

[Lemur]

Meh, I think it was just a perfect storm race-wise, with elements that managed to twang just about every tension in American race relations.

The thing is, as everyone's at pains to point out, the more you learned the more the case clearly was NOT a perfect storm.

But right, the gated community, the volunteer who was initially reported as white, the unarmed black teen, the shooting, the initial refusal by the police and prosecutor to make a case (which set a lot of alarm bells ringing, given the history), etc.

In the end, it was just a mess. But at the outset, from the outside, it looked like a very bad replay of some very bad episodes of American history.

[Xiahou]

There's irrefutable statistical evidence that a self-defense plea is much more likely to succeed if you are a white person killing a black person.

You know, I was sincerely curious about this, so I started reading the link:

Since Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, invoked the stand-your-ground defense, these laws have been defended by gun rights groups for empowering civilians. They’ve also been criticized by civil rights groups for encouraging violence and being racially biased.

And then I stopped. If they can't be troubled to get the basic facts of the case right, I'm not going to trust them to present any objective evidence.

Stand Your Ground was not invoked by the defense.

[Lemur]

I stopped. If they can't be troubled to get the basic facts of the case right, I'm not going to trust them to present any objective evidence.

Stand Your Ground was not invoked by the defense.

Which is totally true as a limited and misleading statement.

One of the reasons given for a lack of a case in the initial weeks after the shooting was the Stand Your Ground law, the judge instructed the jury to consider self-defense in the explicit terms laid out in the Stand Your Ground law, and the jury considered Stand Your Ground in deliberations.

So it's a trial that hinges on self-defense, which was substantially altered by the Stand Your Ground law ... but because the defense attorney never said the words "Stand Your Ground," you're asserting that the law had nothing to do with this case. (Or rather, you're making the technically true but highly misleading statement that "Stand Your Ground was never invoked by the defense," which is a slippery bit of semantics if I ever saw one. Oh, the judge included it in the jury instructions? I was talking about the defense. Oh, the police mentioned it? I was talking about the defense. Oh, the jury considered it as part of the verdict? I was talking about the defense. Oh, the defense's entire case rested on the Stand Your Ground definition of self-defense? Well they never invoked it, whatever "invoked" means in this context.)

Gotcha.

From a juror's interview:

COOPER: Did you feel like you understood the instructions from the judge? Because they were very complex. I mean, reading them, they were tough to follow.

JUROR: Right. That was our problem. It was just so confusing what went with what and what we could apply to what. Because I mean, there was a couple of them in there that wanted to find him guilty of something. And after hours and hours and hours of deliberating over the law and reading did over and over and over again, we decided there’s just no way — no other place to go.

COOPER: Because of the two options you had, second degree murder or manslaughter, you felt neither applied?

JUROR: Right. Because of the heat of the moment and the Stand Your Ground. He had a right to defend himself. If he felt threatened that his life was going to be taken away from him or he was going to have bodily harm, he had a right.

[Xiahou]

The facts of the case showed Martin to be misguided, and Zimmerman to be a murderer. The facts of the trial, on the other hand, showed the Florida legal system to be incapable of rendering a fair verdict in this case.

Have you looked at any of the facts in this case? Convicting Zimmerman would have been anything but fair. You can believe Zimmerman acted with malice if you choose, but there is inadequate evidence to prove it anywhere other than in your mind.

[Husar]

Except what happened wasn't murder. What led to the death was Zimmerman disobeying his instructions (which is nowhere near murder) and a drugged up Trayvon trying to kill him. Zimmerman acted in self-defense, and is guilty of only stupidity, not murder. Trayvon was most likely an attempted murderer however.

Yes, but if someone asks me to rob a bank with him and I say no and give him a cookie that says "good luck" instead and he murders someone in the bank I'm guilty of murder by association in the US. Or if that's too removed from you, maybe I was just sitting in the car outside and didn't even have a gun or know that the murderer had one. I'm assumed guilty of murder because I was part of the action and helped him get there and in this light, saying that Zimmerman was just stupid seems a bit easy since his actions that were in violation of strict neighborhood watch rules directly lead to the death of a person. More so IMO, than driving an escape car.

My point of course is that the whole guilty by association thing is stupid and you should do away with it. The murderer is the one who pulled the trigger and not the one who stood by and shouted "No, don't do it!" but happened to wear a matching balaclava.

Oh and saying Trayvon was most likely an attempted murderer is pure speculation, many people get beaten up and not killed, you cannot know when he would've stopped because our hero stopped him prematurely and now private prisons will earn less. It certainly wasn't good for the economy man.

[HoreTore]

Except what happened wasn't murder. What led to the death was Zimmerman disobeying his instructions (which is nowhere near murder)

See, this is where things get wrong.

A civilian should never be allowed police authority. A civilian should never be allowed to "issue instructions". And when such instructions are backed up with a gun, you get the obvious result.

If Zimmerman hadn't been armed that night, Trayvon wouldn't have attacked him, nor would he have been able to shoot. This murder happened because your society allows random people to walk around with guns "looking tough".

If Zimmerman observed strange behaviour, the obvious solution is to go home and call the cops. That's what he should have done, and in that case there wouldn't have been any beatings or deaths that night.

[Xiahou]

Except what happened wasn't murder. What led to the death was Zimmerman disobeying his instructions

Sorry, I just saw this when HoreTore quoted you. But, there is no evidence to support this claim. Just one of the many misconceptions still out there... Read the call transcript yourself.

[Husar]

See, this is where things get wrong.

A civilian should never be allowed police authority. A civilian should never be allowed to "issue instructions". And when such instructions are backed up with a gun, you get the obvious result.

If Zimmerman hadn't been armed that night, Trayvon wouldn't have attacked him, nor would he have been able to shoot. This murder happened because your society allows random people to walk around with guns "looking tough".

If Zimmerman observed strange behaviour, the obvious solution is to go home and call the cops. That's what he should have done, and in that case there wouldn't have been any beatings or deaths that night.

Wow, what a nanny state you dream of.

In America normal people are treated as responsible adults who are able to make the right decisions without the state telling them what to do. Responsible adults are certainly more than capable of handling a gun and acting responsible in keeping their neighborhood clean. The police won't be there when something happens, they always come later to pick up the bodies, takes a responsible adult to shoot the punks and defend the grandmothers.

If you want to suck at the government's teet, treat murderers as victims and hurt the prison economy then America is not the country for you because it is populated with responsible, self-respecting and capable adult citizens who value their freedoms, liberties and personal responsibility more than anything else and wouldn't give any of that up to gain a nanny state in return!

[HoreTore]

Wow, what a nanny state you dream of.

Well....

I don't want to arm the police either, so I'm guessing I want more of a "nanny society" than a "nanny state"...

[Fragony]

Wow, what a nanny state you dream of.

In America normal people are treated as responsible adults who are able to make the right decisions without the state telling them what to do. Responsible adults are certainly more than capable of handling a gun and acting responsible in keeping their neighborhood clean. The police won't be there when something happens, they always come later to pick up the bodies, takes a responsible adult to shoot the punks and defend the grandmothers.

If you want to suck at the government's teet, treat murderers as victims and hurt the prison economy then America is not the country for you because it is populated with responsible, self-respecting and capable adult citizens who value their freedoms, liberties and personal responsibility more than anything else and wouldn't give any of that up to gain a nanny state in return!

Yes I do, where are we going to buy a farm

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