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There was no race, silly argument to even make whether or not George could outrun Trayvon.
Trayvon had already run away while George was still in the car. "Oh s***, he's running". Trayvon was down at the other entrance when George was still in the car.
Trayvon stopped running when he thought he lost George. No reason to keep running when you think you lost someone. On top of that, no way could Trayvon have even known George got out of his car since he had already run away while he was still in the car.
Not only didn't George need to run or sprint he simply needed to use the cut through and easily catch up to Trayvon.
I tend to just roll my eyes and scroll on by when the 'jury spoke' card gets thrown out, although I'm sure OJ and Casey Anthony will appreciate it.
Imo, the trial was a farce. The jury was a joke with one juror already having her book deal before the trial was even over, another juror crying afterwards how she was bullied in the courtroom and they didn't know what manslaughter meant. The prosecution was a joke. The defense was a joke.
I'm fairly certain that most people do know that not guilty doesn't always equate to innocent. This caseis a perfect example.
I have said before, I think they were both looking out for and dodging each other. I don't believe T would have wanted to get involved, but knew someone was following him and think he was darting in and out of hiding, still on the phone, too. But this would be when Z had hung up with the dispatcher and was very likely still on the hunt. Why don't some wonder what Z was doing during those four minutes, certainly not having gone back to his truck, which would not have taken that long.
(Z was not as heavy then as he was at all other times / photos). If I can post, I will.
Martin's first choice of action was to run away from Zimmerman. We know this because Zimmerman says it on the NEN/911 call. This particular statement of Zimmerman's is credible because it's extemporaneous, spoken to someone he has no reason to lie to, and objectively recorded.
Zimmerman's first choice of action was to follow Martin, initially in a vehicle then later on foot.
Both action choices say something about the mind frames of the individuals making them.
Who was looking for involvement here and who trying to avoid it?
In2itive, I think the 100-pound weight gain was probably intentional. By the time the trial rolled around, the killer looked like a guy in need of a Hoveround to make it from the couch to the kitchen. Zimmerman's morbid obesity gave weight (pardon the pun) to the assertion that he could hardly follow a beanpole like Trayvon, much less fend him off physically. It certainly bolstered the MMA gym owner's testimony that the accused was a defenseless marshmallow. Also gone was the beard, but the hair reappeared, conveniently hiding any natural lumps and any expected scarring. Add all this to the killer's plodding movements and frequent naps at the defense table and the armed ex-bouncer Trayvon Martin met on 2/26/2012 was effectively nowhere to be found. Credit again goes to O'Mara for this remarkable transformation.
Courtrooms are theaters, always have been, always will be and a decent defense team with a reasonably cooperative defendant can play a jury like a fiddle. Maybe the best example of this is OJ Simpson's unforgettable dried bloody glove performance. I don't think this trial had an If the Glove Doesn't Fit You Must Acquit moment, but it had several little moments, plenty of racial innuendo and a shockingly indifferent prosecutor; for this white bread jury, that seems to have been enough.
Last edited by Bellflower; 04-04-2015 at 08:53 AM..
In2itive, I think the 100-pound weight gain was probably intentional. By the time the trial rolled around, the killer looked like a guy in need of a Hoveround to make it from the couch to the kitchen. Zimmerman's morbid obesity gave weight (pardon the pun) to the assertion that he could hardly follow a beanpole like Trayvon, much less fend him off physically. It certainly bolstered the MMA gym owner's testimony that the accused was a defenseless marshmallow. Also gone was the beard, but the hair reappeared, conveniently hiding any natural lumps and any expected scarring. Add all this to the killer's plodding movements and frequent naps at the defense table and the armed ex-bouncer Trayvon Martin met on 2/26/2012 was effectively nowhere to be found. Credit again goes to O'Mara for this remarkable transformation.
Courtrooms are theaters, always have been, always will be and a decent defense team with a reasonably cooperative defendant can play a jury like a fiddle. Maybe the best example of this is OJ Simpson's unforgettable dried bloody glove performance. I don't think this trial had an If the Glove Doesn't Fit You Must Acquit moment, but it had several little moments, plenty of racial innuendo and a shockingly indifferent prosecutor; for this white bread jury, that seems to have been enough.
I think you are spot on.
There wasn't a 10k a day consultant just for s**** and giggles. And it worked.
He gained more weight and turned into a complete tub of goo, but he was already a rolly-polly guy at 5'8" 200lbs on the night of the shooting. No one in their right mind would believe he could have caught Trayvon in a foot race, much less a foot race where Trayvon had an insurmountable head start.
Let's be clear, Zimmy didn't catch Trayvon. Period. Even the defense didn't claim that happened, because it's not a scenario that any reasonable person would believe.
It's a fabrication. A conspiracy theory if I'm being kind. It's a narrative that some people want propagated because they want to win, not because they want justice.
Asserting and reasserting that "no reasonable person would consider" a scenario you personally won't consider does not prove either your assertion true or your general argument true, but it does tend to support the person making such an assertion is unwilling to consider alternatives, is locked into a particular POV, and can't justify that POV with convincing evidence. Thus the argumentum ad lapidem.
If Jeantel was telling the truth about Martin having stopped to catch his breath -- and you've offered exactly nothing, zip, zero, nada to justify a conclusion that this statement of hers was a lie -- it wouldn't matter if Zimmerman weighed 160 with a 24 BMI or 300 pounds with a 45 BMI, whether he was capable of 12mph sprints or only 4 mph walking. The short distance between his vehicle and where Martin died could be covered by either individual in a short period of time without significant difficulty, and either individual would have caught up to Martin, whether "rolly-polly" or fit. It literally wouldn't matter which Zimmerman was.
The only way you could justify your POV being correct, that it's somehow "unreasonable" to believe Zimmerman could have caught up with Martin, is if you can offer a legitimate, evidence-based reason to throw out the witness statement as perjury and/or provide a different witness's statement contradicting Jeantel's, and/or offer some objective evidence (GPS data, for instance) that documents Martin moving at the time Jeantel said he wasn't...in particular Martin moving at a speed Zimmerman was incapable of.
Can you do this?
And if you can, why haven't you? Why are you farting around with logical fallacies, like Appeal to the Stone, instead?
Do you think people are better convinced to your POV when offered fallacies of reasoning instead of evidence?
Last edited by Data Venia; 04-04-2015 at 10:05 AM..
There was no race, silly argument to even make whether or not George could outrun Trayvon.
Trayvon had already run away while George was still in the car. "Oh s***, he's running". Trayvon was down at the other entrance when George was still in the car.
Trayvon stopped running when he thought he lost George. No reason to keep running when you think you lost someone. On top of that, no way could Trayvon have even known George got out of his car since he had already run away while he was still in the car.
Not only didn't George need to run or sprint he simply needed to use the cut through and easily catch up to Trayvon.
I tend to just roll my eyes and scroll on by when the 'jury spoke' card gets thrown out, although I'm sure OJ and Casey Anthony will appreciate it.
Imo, the trial was a farce. The jury was a joke with one juror already having her book deal before the trial was even over, another juror crying afterwards how she was bullied in the courtroom and they didn't know what manslaughter meant. The prosecution was a joke. The defense was a joke.
I'm fairly certain that most people do know that not guilty doesn't always equate to innocent. This caseis a perfect example.
IMVHO
This part is all so obvious. Even though you and I disagree on what likely happened next, it's hard to have that discussion when many people won't admit these first basic facts.
A full 8 seconds elapsed from the time Zimmy says "He's running" to the time his car door closes. It's hard to overstate how much of a head start that is in real time. I can probably run a city block in 8 seconds and I'm 44 y/o. There's simply no way that Zimmy caught Trayvon. Pretending he could have because he was thinner then (still 5'8", 200lbs) etc. is nonsense. Trayvon only needed to run one block to get home. He knew right where it was. He just chose not to go there, or chose not to stay there.
I agree that Trayvon stopped running because he'd lost Zimmy. As I recall (it's been a while since I read all the transcripts) Jeantel testified to that extent as well? Saying Trayvon had gotten away. i.e. He was not in fear for his safety at this point (if he ever was).
This is where things become highly suspicious, imo. If Trayvon was so scared, and he was so close to home, and he had the running head start, and it was raining out, and it was dark, and he was on his way home anyhow, and someone was waiting there for the snacks, why didn't he go home to safety, lock the doors, get some dry clothes and watch the rest of the basketball game he'd started? Remember, he left at half time to get some snacks, so presumably he intended to watch the second half. None of this makes any sense.
Back to Zimmy and the truck. Zimmy clearly thought Trayvon was long gone. Zimmy said "these aholes always get away". He was clearly frustrated that another one was getting away. Remember, this tiny complex had had over 300, 911 calls the previous year for burglaries and home invasions. Most of those never saw an arrest. Any one of us would be frustrated to see what we thought was another criminal getting away. Zimmy states Trayvon ran "down towards the other entrance to the neighborhood", so it seems clear he thinks he's headed out that entrance to get away. He refers to where he thinks Trayvon went again as "the back entrance". Again, it seems clear he believed Trayvon didn't live in the complex and had run out the East entrance. Another time on that dispatch tape Zimmy referred to Trayvon past tense saying "he ran". Then there's the part where he doesn't want to give out his address and personal info to the police because he clearly thinks it's a lost cause by that point. "Oh crap I don't to give all that out, I don't know where the kid is.".
At that point, Zimmy was obviously not running. He was talking calmly on the tape, not huffing and puffing. He sounded like a defeated man. He claimed he walked to that East entrance that he thought Trayvon had run out of. That makes sense to me. He knows the cops are on their way. He's hoping he can see what direction the kid ran off in. He doesn't think for one second Trayvon is still on the property. Never even crossed his mind. Now that Trayvon's gone and there's nothing left to report he and the operator get off the phone as Zimmy walks Eastbound, back towards his truck and where he's supposed to meet the police.
Between that Eastern gate and his truck, Trayvon appears from the South, the direction he had run off to. It was Trayvon who found Zimmy, not the other way around. There was no possible way that Trayvon, after having gotten away would have doubled back towards the scene he'd just run away from if he wasn't looking for trouble. Zimmy had no idea Trayvon was still on the property, so Trayvon had the element of surprise.
This is how/when/where the fight happened. Now, it is possible that the two decided to stand toe to toe and fight, but it doesn't make sense to me. Zimmy already had the chance to get out of the truck and attack Trayvon once but didn't do it. Instead he called the cops. Trayvon, instead of running off at the first, decided to approach the truck and peer inside. Zimmy certainly didn't sound like a guy who wanted anything to do with a fight at that time. i.e. "He's coming towards me", "He's got his hand in his waistband", "Something's wrong with him", "He's coming to check me out, he's got something in his hands, I don't know what his deal is. How long till you can get an officer over here?". None of that sounds like a scared little boy who's afraid of Zimmy. None of that sounds like Zimmy, the hard charging cowboy who's down for a fight fight in the dark and rain.
With Trayvon having gotten away clean and then reappeared minutes later all the way back North near where the initial incident was. With Zimmy believing Trayvon was long gone. With Zimmy demonstrating he was scared of Trayvon already. With Zimmy demonstrating that he thought Trayvon had a gun. Then adding in the fact that we know Trayvon was fighting and was a big MMA fan, it seems logical which one was the aggressor.
Most people who support Trayvon have come around to the fact that Trayvon was the aggressor at that point. The argument they make is that Zimmy couldn't have realistically believed his life was in danger and didn't need to shoot Trayvon over it. That is a much more valid argument imo.
In2itive, I think the 100-pound weight gain was probably intentional. By the time the trial rolled around, the killer looked like a guy in need of a Hoveround to make it from the couch to the kitchen. Zimmerman's morbid obesity gave weight (pardon the pun) to the assertion that he could hardly follow a beanpole like Trayvon, much less fend him off physically. It certainly bolstered the MMA gym owner's testimony that the accused was a defenseless marshmallow. Also gone was the beard, but the hair reappeared, conveniently hiding any natural lumps and any expected scarring. Add all this to the killer's plodding movements and frequent naps at the defense table and the armed ex-bouncer Trayvon Martin met on 2/26/2012 was effectively nowhere to be found. Credit again goes to O'Mara for this remarkable transformation.
Courtrooms are theaters, always have been, always will be and a decent defense team with a reasonably cooperative defendant can play a jury like a fiddle. Maybe the best example of this is OJ Simpson's unforgettable dried bloody glove performance. I don't think this trial had an If the Glove Doesn't Fit You Must Acquit moment, but it had several little moments, plenty of racial innuendo and a shockingly indifferent prosecutor; for this white bread jury, that seems to have been enough.
All part of the big conspiracy! Here are some other of my favorites...
- Sanford Police didn't arrest Zimmy because they're racists.
- Sanford Prosecutor didn't press charges because they're racists.
- The lie detector test Zimmy passed is inaccurate.
- The SYG classes Zimmy took years earlier were in preparation for this cold blooded murder.
- Zimmy faked his own injuries.
- The pics of his injuries were photoshopped.
- The audio tape of the person screaming for help was actually Trayvon, not Zimmy. Even Zimmy claimed it was him, the witness claimed it was him and Trayvon's own Dad said it wasn't Trayvon, it was still Trayvon.
- The witness who saw Trayvon on top of Zimmy pounding him is a liar and a racist.
- The Special Prosecutor intentionally threw the biggest case of her career.
- There were more, but you get the drift. At some point people need to look at how far they've had to reach to avoid the facts and say "Ok, one of these things is possible, two is unlikely, but 9-10 consecutive conspiracy's is not realistic."
Mason, you got all that from my post? Well, bless your heart. Defendant makeovers are as old as criminal trials, no tin foil needed.
It's not easy to tell from your posts if you followed the trial in any depth and read the associated discovery. You also seem to misunderstand the difference between conspiracies, opinions, facts, analysis and conclusions. Take race for example: Are you saying race and racism are not factors in law enforcement and in court rooms?
Last edited by Bellflower; 04-04-2015 at 12:54 PM..
Reason: Edited to remove snark.
All part of the big conspiracy! Here are some other of my favorites...
- Sanford Police didn't arrest Zimmy because they're racists.
- Sanford Prosecutor didn't press charges because they're racists.
- The lie detector test Zimmy passed is inaccurate.
- The SYG classes Zimmy took years earlier were in preparation for this cold blooded murder.
- Zimmy faked his own injuries.
- The pics of his injuries were photoshopped.
- The audio tape of the person screaming for help was actually Trayvon, not Zimmy. Even Zimmy claimed it was him, the witness claimed it was him and Trayvon's own Dad said it wasn't Trayvon, it was still Trayvon.
- The witness who saw Trayvon on top of Zimmy pounding him is a liar and a racist.
- The Special Prosecutor intentionally threw the biggest case of her career.
- There were more, but you get the drift. At some point people need to look at how far they've had to reach to avoid the facts and say "Ok, one of these things is possible, two is unlikely, but 9-10 consecutive conspiracy's is not realistic."
...and my personal favorite:
- Zimmy caught up to TM because he took short cut.
That would necessarily mean that he knew where TM was headed.
Mason, you got all that from my post? Well, bless your heart. Defendant makeovers are as old as criminal trials, no tin foil needed.
It's not easy to tell from your posts if you followed the trial in any depth and read the associated discovery. You also seem to misunderstand the difference between conspiracies, opinions, facts, analysis and conclusions. Take race for example: Are you saying race and racism are not factors in law enforcement and in court rooms?
Every one of these conspiracy's, on it's own, could be true. Unlikely, but plausible. When the same people roll out a never ending, series of conspiracy's (see my list), it no longer becomes plausible, it's becomes preposterous.
Zimmerman was either 5'8" 200lbs (hospital) or 5'8" 195lbs (his own description, but fat people lie about their weight). I think far more likely than a conspiracy to sway the jurors, is that the stress of the trial took a toll on his health. It's pretty common for people to put on weight when faced with extremely stressful situations in life. Either way, there is zero chance that he ran down someone with a full 8 second running head start on him, especially someone younger and more fit. There are many legitimate things to question, suggesting that Zimmy chased after and caught Trayvon is not one of them.
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