Zimmerman not guilty.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

I had a longer post under way... but it's late and I'm going to bed. I'll let someone else make my argument for me. They probably explain it better than I could anyhow..

In short, the prosecution said it wasn't about Stand Your Ground. The defense didn't claim SYG as defense. The chief of police said it was clear self-defense and not SYG. And if the law hadn't been on the books it wouldn't have changed the outcome of the trial.

[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"...

[Lemur]

I'll let someone else make my argument for me.

Again, if you take a very narrow read on events, this is literally true. But your talking point gets all flummoxed and angry when it runs up against things like Zimmerman's initial talk of Stand your Ground, and the fact that the jury explicitly considered the law when exonerating Zimmerman. Also, as per your linked article, you have to dismiss the judge's jury instructions to make your talking point work.

At the very least, you might not want to dismiss any and all people who reference Stand Your Ground in relation to this case; I think it's blindingly obvious that there's more than one legitimate read on the subject. Just because the bloggers at Reason happen to agree with you and Sean Hannity is no cause to be so dismissive of, say, the statistical article I linked earlier.

[Xiahou]

At the very least, you might not want to dismiss any and all people who reference Stand Your Ground in relation to this case; I think it's blindingly obvious that there's more than one legitimate read on the subject. Just because the bloggers at Reason happen to agree with you and Sean Hannity is no cause to be so dismissive of, say, the statistical article I linked earlier.

To be honest, I went back and read the whole article later. It was crap for reasons beyond SYG. For whatever reasons, blacks commit homicide at a much greater rate than whites. In cases where the race of the perpetrator is identified, slightly over 50% of the perpetrators are black. Yet only around 13% of our population is black. Don't you think it reasonable that as the homicide rate increases across a population, that the rate of justifiable (self-defense) homicides would not scale at the same level? Nowhere did I see that "study's" author address this or any other confounding factors. Indeed, I'd call it as much a "study" as when you or I go on Google and pull data from the FBI's website. I guess the difference is that he made a bar graph.

[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

X

[Lemur]

Indeed, I'd call it as much a "study" as when you or I go on Google and pull data from the FBI's website. I guess the difference is that he made a bar graph.

And if you had back-tracked from the article, you would have found the earlier source here.

I'm glad you've moved from dismissing the article because it does not adhere to your particular interpretation of SYG law and its relevance to the Zimmerman case on to dismissing the article because it doesn't address the things you find interesting.

One of the discussion-worthy things about the case is the use of self-defense in a low-evidence situation. (Despite many proclamations people have made about what did and did not happen, the truth of the matter is that most of what happened with Martin and Zimmerman is unproveable.) Stand Your Ground was clearly a factor on everyone's—most importantly the jury's—mind. Whether or not a duty to retreat was a factor depends entirely on how the fight between Martin and Zimmerman was initiated, and nobody can state with any certainty how that played out.

So your assertion that SYG is irrelevant depends entirely on accepting Zimemrman's version of events. Which may or may not be 100% accurate.

[The Lurker Below]

It is not easy to tell if this forums "Zimmerman guilty" people are so because they disagree with the USA protection of gun rights and self defense law, or because they think Zimmerman a racist, and therefore representative of our reprehensibly racist society. Outside of these forums however, there is no doubt that the Zimmerman guilty crowd are such because of the latter. That group REFUSES to look at the facts when completely shared, they want ONLY to see what the media fed them in the few days after the event. The media sold a story that would sell. Racism is fantastic print, gun control not so much.

If the media wanted a story about gun control and self defense rights, they'd have made a big deal about the Christopher Cervini - Roderick Scott case several years ago. Very similar circumstances, races reversed. That does not do well for the purposes of race baiters.

Long story short - if you're hanging Zimmerman for being a racist, you can kiss 6 white female jurists ass! hahahahaha bish.

[Fisherking]

We sure can do without further speculation. That is how it all started.

I think it played out the only way it could have with a trial.

If the state has sent it to a grand jury and had they found no grounds to prosecute there would have still been a lot of upset people. I am not sure if they could have gone a head with a trial if the grand jury has said found insufficient evidence.

Many are upset with the prosecution but the Governor has said he would find someone to do it, and he did.

From the facts of the case it would never have gone so far had the media not over reacted and checked their facts. And NBCs attempt to color the man as a racist proved very damaging. That and the use of the photos of Zimmerman and Martin.

[Lemur]

@Fisherking, yeah, that's about the size of it. I would only add that police and prosecutors refusing to bring a case against someone who shot an unarmed black teen had some very unfortunate historical resonance.

So ... people were reacting to something real, even if it was misapplied.

But beyond that, yeah.

[Fisherking]

A reasonable reason to have a second look, in deed.

[Xiahou]

Fisherking's post brings me back to something Lemur said earlier...

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.

The racial angle wasn't invented by the media, it was exploited by the media. In their rush for ratings, they ignored, discounted, or flat out altered the facts of the story.

They knew this was an extremely sensitive subject matter. And instead of treating it with sensitivity, they treated it with sensationalism.

[Lemur]

That's a fair take. Like I said, I was pushing back against the notion that the racial sensitivities were fabricated. Which was the implication of a few posts.

The distinction between "invented" and "exploited" is an important one.

As I said at the end of the post you quote:

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]

What the media did was take raw facts and made gross assumptions based on the report. They then spun it in the most unfavorable light without bothering to do even cursory investigation.

Some even misrepresented the facts in such a was as prove their view was the correct one and the only conclusion a sensible person could reach.

They did real damage, not only to the individual, but also the state of race relations in the nation and around the world.

Even during and after the trial they continued to misrepresent the true nature of the facts and to obscure what was said or done. More so by pundits than the actual news but no less damaging.

If they want to pursue a case more likely to demonstrate racial bias then they should look into the verdict of Trevor Dooley and his manslaughter conviction.

The case has been touted by the right as to the injustice of the Zimmerman case but Dooley was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 8 years.

The media in his case cited the triviality of the argument and the fact that minors, including the 8 year old daughter of the dead man, were present. Dooley initially used the stand your ground law as defense, to have the case dismissed. That was denied. He then used self defense in his case, how ever the media made issue with his seeming lack of remorse.

During the altercation Dooley showed his gun in his waist band but turned to leave. At which point James spun him around, wrestled him to the ground and was choking him. Dooley said he could not breath, he prodded James in the leg several times with the gun before he fired, killing him.

If these facts are true, then how did a Tampa Jury find to convict? Surely the law is clear enough that Dooley should also be a free man.

[Xiahou]

Even during and after the trial they continued to misrepresent the true nature of the facts and to obscure what was said or done. More so by pundits than the actual news but no less damaging.

I think we're seeing a bizarre phenomenon in "new reporting" now. News personalities get to say their usual stupid stuff, but then it's reported on by the supposed straight news segments thereby we have networks generating their own "news".

If they want to pursue a case more likely to demonstrate racial bias then they should look into the verdict of Trevor Dooley and his manslaughter conviction.

The case has been touted by the right as to the injustice of the Zimmerman case but Dooley was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 8 years.

The media in his case cited the triviality of the argument and the fact that minors, including the 8 year old daughter of the dead man, were present. Dooley initially used the stand your ground law as defense, to have the case dismissed. That was denied. He then used self defense in his case, how ever the media made issue with his seeming lack of remorse.

During the altercation Dooley showed his gun in his waist band but turned to leave. At which point James spun him around, wrestled him to the ground and was choking him. Dooley said he could not breath, he prodded James in the leg several times with the gun before he fired, killing him.

If these facts are true, then how did a Tampa Jury find to convict? Surely the law is clear enough that Dooley should also be a free man.

There's some big differences with the Dooley case....

The most important being that there were multiple witnesses to the confrontation- according to whom, it was determined that Dooley initiated the confrontation.

He came into the park screaming at a skateboarding kid, telling him to get off the basketball court. James, who was there with his daughter shooting hoops, told Dooley there was no signage prohibiting skateboards. Dooley responded by yelling "Fuck you!" and brandished his gun. James asked him why he was carrying a weapon and why he would swear in front of children. Then the altercation became physical. A witness stated at one point James was trying to pin Dooley on the ground, holding his arms down. During the struggle, Dooley shot and killed James.

I'm not aware of "Stand Your Ground" laws allowing you to assault someone and then kill them in "self-defense". A manslaughter conviction sounds completely appropriate here. There would have been far better grounds for a second-degree murder charge than there was in the Zimmerman case....

[Fisherking]

I saw the part where when asked who hit who, James’ daughter said my daddy…

I am sure there were more things considered to get that verdict, but were they pertinent to the case?

edit: I am not saying that Dooley was a good guy. He may have started the argument, but he was attacked when walking away, knocked to the ground and choked.

That is where the self defense comes in!

[Xiahou]

I saw the part where when asked who hit who, James’ daughter said my daddy…

I am sure there were more things considered to get that verdict, but were they pertinent to the case?

edit: I am not saying that Dooley was a good guy. He may have started the argument, but he was attacked when walking away, knocked to the ground and choked.

That is where the self defense comes in!

From my link:

The teen told jurors that he did not see James get violent, only that the veteran was on top of Dooley at one point, holding his hands down. "He did not choke him," said Arthur.

[Fragony]

lol. Massive protests all over America internet says. It must be hard to be a black in America. You want to be discriminated but aren't, what now?

[The Lurker Below]

“Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” said the president on Friday in his first on-camera response to the verdict.

Groovy. Had that been the case he sure as hell wouldn't have made it in politics. The first rule of politics must be use hyperbole.

The NBA Hall of Famer continued: "The main thing I feel bad for, [is that the trial] gives every white person and black person who are racist a platform to vent."

"I don't like when race gets out in the media because...I don't think the media has clean hands," Barkley said.

Barkley is a straight shooter (even though they were easy shots because he spent most of his time trolling the paint). Bottom line is, instead of Obama guiding the media, he allowed them to guide him on this issue. As inept as our politicians may be, their a damn sight better leadership than our media is.

[Fisherking]

I have some difficulty treating his speech with anything short of skepticism. Obama grew up in a privileged enviornment, mostly in Hawaii. As most profiling relies on dress as much as color, I just don’t buy it.

Obama accepted an offer to work as a community organizer in Chicago's largely poor and black South Side. As biographer David Mendell notes in his 2007 book Obama: From Promise to Power, the job gave Obama "his first deep immersion into the African American community he had longed to both understand and belong to."

Which way was it? It is rather hard to be both.

[Strike For The South]

I have some difficulty treating his speech with anything short of skepticism. Obama grew up in a privileged enviornment, mostly in Hawaii. As most profiling relies on dress as much as color, I just don’t buy it.

Obama accepted an offer to work as a community organizer in Chicago's largely poor and black South Side. As biographer David Mendell notes in his 2007 book Obama: From Promise to Power, the job gave Obama "his first deep immersion into the African American community he had longed to both understand and belong to."

Which way was it? It is rather hard to be both.

Ok, can we give the hoodie a rest? It was raining outside, a hoodie is perfectly acceptable outerwear.