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Your points 2 and 5 contradict each other. This happens when you try to take shreds of evidence and knit them together into a solid case.
None of these things, taken alone, together or with the entire body of evidence presented at trial create "EVIDENCE that Zimmerman was assaulted by Martin" as you profess. That is the nexus of the problem at least partially created by poor police work at the scene.
No one (except Zimmerman) knows if Martin assaulted Zimmerman or if Zimmerman assaulted Martin; we do know that Zimmerman was the aggressor from the moment he left his vehicle.
You can quibble over the words 'attacked first' and 'assaulted' forever.
There was a physical confrontation and the evidence proves that prior to the bullet, Z was getting the worst of it.
Even if you 'know' leaving his car turned Z into the 'aggressor,' a conclusion not supported by law, the use of deadly force can still be justified
Z's story does not have to be 100% accurate for him to get a NG verdict. Unless you want to switch the burden of proof from the state to the defense.
You quoted Serino in a previous post. Though I don't have his testimony handy, I recall O'Mara asking him about Z's inconsistent accounts. Serino's response was, paraphrasing, that it is no surprise to him that recollections change, and he'd be More suspicious if Z's accounts had remained exactly the same every time he told what happened.
Even though Serino felt that Z exaggerated how often he was hit, he testified that he believed Z was telling the truth.
Yes, a small amount of inconsistency between tellings over time is consistent with someone who is truthful, but that's not what we have here. We have ALL versions told by George (which do have inconsistency between them on significant details) not matching up with physical and medical evidence, and last I checked, Serino isn't an expert on whether someone's tale matches the medical evidence. That's why the police department relies on licensed doctors and forensic medical examiners. His opinion on this would be strictly a lay person's and shouldn't have even been allowed by the judge. If I recall, it was stricken from the record, but the bell had been rung, and it couldn't be unrung.
Let's see here, this is what we know:
1. Zimmerman had an injury to his face face and back of his head.
2. Martin had a cut on his finger by his knuckle.
3. A witness testified he saw Martin on top of Zimmerman fighting.
4. Zimmerman had grass stains on the back of his shirt.
5. Martin had no injuries to his body, other than the bullet wound.
6. Zimmerman had no injuries to his hands.
7. The gunshot was fired in close proximity in an upward angle consistent with Martin being on top of Zimmerman.
This shows EVIDENCE that Zimmerman was assaulted by Martin, while there is no EVIDENCE that Zimmerman assaulted Martin (outside the gun shot).
Do we know for a fact who started the physical confrontation (who threw the first punch)? No.
Does Florida law allow a person to shoot and kill another who is physically assaulting him/her? Yes.
Is there any evidence that Zimmerman started the physical altercation? No.
So, how could Zimmerman have been found guilty?
----------
Yes, I know there are some who say, "Look, a white man shot and killed a little black boy who went to get candy because that white man hated black people", but those emotional reactionaries would be throwing people in prison left and right after reading just headlines.
No, actually it doesn't show Zimmerman was assaulted by Martin, though you want to interpret it to mean that. There isn't any injury on Zimmerman or an item in your list that could have only been received/occurred as the result of an assault by Martin. Any of them could have been received 1) in a way that didn't involve Martin inflicting them, or 2) in the course of Martin struggling against an assault being committed on him by Zimmerman.
Furthermore, you're incorrect on the gun shot being at an upward angle (it wasn't), nor was the gunshot only consistent with the positioning you suggest.
After reading several of your posts, I'm a believer when it comes to your claims of medical knowledge. However, medical reports are only one part of the evidence.
I'm not sure whether you are simply offering information, or are trying to say that GZ should have been convicted. If it's the latter, then, for all your apparent medical knowledge, you're providing an example of my point about how all the evidence needs to be pieced together to get any picture of what happened. Medical evidence alone is not enough.
For example, in another of your posts, you stated that GZ's injuries did not seem especially severe. Maybe, but before you can can draw any conclusions about whether GZ had any legitimate claim to self-defense, you need to know not only all of the evidence, but the law. For example, you may or may not be aware (I'm guessing you are, but I can't know for sure of course) that it's entirely possible to lawfully shoot an unarmed person dead in self-defense even if that person does not lay a finger on you. The extent of GZ's injuries does not tell the whole story.
If--not sure you're doing this, but if--you want to say that GZ should have been convicted, your statement in the first passage I've put in boldface above presents a real problem. If you can't be sure what happened, the prosecution is going to have a tough time meeting its burden to prove a defendant guilty.
In the second part in boldface, you're drifting into speculation. Knowledgeable as you seem to be about one particular field related to this case, speculation just does not hold up in court.
First, let me clarify that all my posts to date have been about FACTUAL guilt, as opposed to LEGAL guilt. I hope you know and appreciate the difference. Defendants who are factually guilty often walk with a not guilty verdict because of problems with case evidence collection, case presentation, evidence burden, and/or jury deliberations (for instance, jury nullification). Sometimes it's right for the jury to bring a not guilty verdict in a case where the defendant is factually guilty. So, I'm not commenting on whether I think the VERDICT was right or wrong in the Zimmerman case, just on whether Zimmerman was/wasn't lying and/or was/wasn't factually guilty, regardless of the verdict eventually rendered. At some point I might give my opinion on the verdict, but not this post.
Now, back to Zimmerman's actions themselves...
Under Florida law, a person is authorized to use lethal force against an imminent threat of death and/or of great bodily injury. We're only allowed to use less-than-lethal means to stop less than lethal threats. A lot of the validity of Zimmerman's self-defense claim rested on whether he had good, objective reason to believe his life was imminently in danger and/or whether he was suffering or about to suffer great bodily harm. Only then could he deploy lethal force and be justified under the law. All less than lethal situations are required by law to be handled with less than lethal force.
While I agree with you that a person absolutely can be legally justified in deploying lethal force before they've been injured at all, it can only be done in response to a credible threat of the type I described above, and the threat must be objectively lethal enough that a reasonable person (reasonable man test) in the same situation would conclude the threat was imminent and would result in death or great bodily harm. For instance, if someone is swinging a machete at your head (this happened to me once), you don't have to wait to get hurt to respond with lethal force.
So the question becomes, did Zimmerman truly have any good objective reason to believe he was about to die if he didn't shoot Martin? He'd say yes he did. A lot of his supporters here would say he did. But did he really?
This was a fight that had gone on for more than a minute, and contrary to Zimmerman's dramatic, overblown claims of what supposedly happened, complete with multiple alleged facial punches and head bashes against cement that in reality never happened, the alleged blocking of his airway while he still was nonetheless totally able to yell for help at the top of his lungs, yadda yadda, all he REALLY had to show for injuries was a couple of very small lacerations, a few abrasions, and a possibly broken nose. Minor injuries.
That's the extent of damage Trayvon had truly inflicted upon him in over a minute of tussling. And per George, NOTHING was stopping Trayvon from inflicting as much harm as Trayvon cared to. Yet, this is all the harm there really was. Despite George's claims, this was clearly not an attempt to kill him nor an attempt to inflict great bodily harm upon him. Even with significant time to do so, his aggressor hadn't done much true aggressing or much damage. This was, in fact, the degree of damage someone could do in a minor scuffle, a grappling match, or that you might do to someone else if you are repulsing an attack or trying to get away. (Yes, I know this last part is and example and speculative). It is definitely NOT the kind of damage inflicted by someone trying to inflict maximum damage with the purpose of harming greatly or killing.
So, the objective level of threat was low.
George knew the SYG laws. He knew what he'd have to claim. IMO, he bolstered the threat to himself to justify taking an action that was too high a response for the threat presented. He exaggerated what was allegedly done to make the threat more objectively 'real.' He moved the encounter from grass to a sidewalk and claimed head bashing was going on on cement when it wasn't. He put words almost surely NOT uttered by Martin into Martin's mouth, the "You're going to die tonight, homie" or whatever specifically it was. And he alleged Martin was going for a gun Martin shouldn't have even been able to see or know was there. All to make it sound like he had a good reason to believe there was an imminent threat of great bodily harm and death when there really wasn't.
(Again, this is my opinion, and I'll own it as such. I'm not trying to claim any of this is hard fact other than that Zimmerman clearly exaggerated his injuries and lied about what occurred in the scuffle between himself and Martin.)
First, let me clarify that all my posts to date have been about FACTUAL guilt, ....
.....I'm not trying to claim any of this is hard fact....
You can't have it both ways. i.e. opinion /= fact.
Legal guilt is the only thing that is relevant. Opinions of guilt beyond that, even that you call factual guilt, is in the eyes of the beholder and irrelevant.
I'm positive there is nothing that people here can come with that Eric Holder and his minions haven't already examined inside out and upside down. And all their best and untiring efforts to persecute GZ have withered to naught. If they couldn't find a way to hound him further, there must truly be absolutely no guilt there.
You can't have it both ways. i.e. opinion /= fact.
Legal guilt is the only thing that is relevant. Opinions of guilt beyond that, even that you call factual guilt, is in the eyes of the beholder and irrelevant.
Message/discussions boards are full of us who discuss these 'irrelevant' finished cases. Books are written about them. If a jury verdict is all that matters, you can simply say Z was found NG and stop typing about the case.
Originally Posted by kokonutty View Post
Your points 2 and 5 contradict each other. This happens when you try to take shreds of evidence and knit them together into a solid case.
None of these things, taken alone, together or with the entire body of evidence presented at trial create "EVIDENCE that Zimmerman was assaulted by Martin" as you profess. That is the nexus of the problem at least partially created by poor police work at the scene.
No one (except Zimmerman) knows if Martin assaulted Zimmerman or if Zimmerman assaulted Martin; we do know that Zimmerman was the aggressor from the moment he left his vehicle.
Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by jazzarama
You can quibble over the words 'attacked first' and 'assaulted' forever.
There was a physical confrontation and the evidence proves that prior to the bullet, Z was getting the worst of it.
Even if you 'know' leaving his car turned Z into the 'aggressor,' a conclusion not supported by law, the use of deadly force can still be justified
Real Men have been beaten in fist fights since the beginning of American History without someone pulling a gun out and firing a fatal shot Into The Victor , and I'm going a step farther and saying that GZ threw the first punch starting the fight. LOGIC would bear that out being that George ZimmerBoy Stalked , Run
After TM , Took A Short Cut and cut off TM , Wouldn't answer simple questions ( Why ARE YOU FOLLOWING
ME ) That he was the stupid ignorant childish aggressor that threw the first punch.
I'm positive there is nothing that people here can come with that Eric Holder and his minions haven't already examined inside out and upside down. And all their best and untiring efforts to persecute GZ have withered to naught. If they couldn't find a way to hound him further, there must truly be absolutely no guilt there.
I'm sure that you said the exact same thing regarding the O. J. Simpson Case Now Didn't you?????/.....LOL.... Not!!!!!
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i.e. opinion /= fact.
