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I'm starting this thread on the Great Debates board because I'm hoping that just maybe on this forum the thread can stay in the realm of serious, thoughtful discussion.
I've been dismayed by the sniping and vitriol on some threads about the case: Zimmerman is a fiend; Martin was a thug; sharp personal criticism of those who disagree with someone's view of the case, and accusations that they are racist, far-right loons, far-left loons, fanatical "supporters" of either Martin or Zimmerman; emphatic statements about what should happen when the person clearly knows little or nothing about relevant legal issues; definitive-sounding statements about what did or did not happen, when none of us was there, and all too often it seemed obvious that the people making the statements had little to no knowledge of the information that is available to those of us who weren't there, based on witness statements and evidence.
I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe, we can avoid that kind of thing on the Great Debates forum, and have a reasoned discussion about the case, and the related legal and social issues.
Some related issues that are worth discussing:
Whether a person should be charged with a crime and tried, even with little to no evidence that he has broken any law, if enough of the public feels strongly that the person has done something morally wrong. If so, is this basically just mob rule on a grand scale, or something else? Thinking beyond this case, does the trial of George Zimmerman open the door for others to be charged with crimes with a lack of evidence, in future incidents that are big stories with the public riled up against the person?
Any of the various racial issues that might have been at play in the case.
Should self-defense laws be changed so that actions similar to Zimmerman's would be unlawful? What, if any, changes should be made? What would be the possible consequences of such changes, for example on people's ability to defend themselves?
Should the law be changed so that setting into motion, through possibly irresponsible behavior, a sequence of events that ends in tragedy would be a crime (as in, the whole incident began with Zimmerman's following Martin, though this in itself is lawful)? Again, what changes and what would be the possible consequences in future incidents?
Any other issues worth seriously discussing.
Please keep it civil and thoughtful, and please have enough information so you know basically what you're talking about. (For example, please avoid ranting about how that wannabe cop Zimmerman "stalked" and "confronted" Trayvon Martin unless you can point to known information that indicates that the incident happened this way, and please show the same kind of respect for backing up your statements with facts whatever position you take.)
The social and legal problems of the time includes the current knockdown games that are spreading across the USA. Some victims have died. Hence clearly young men can and do kill even when unarmed. And in the state of Maryland that followed New York and some others the case of Matthew Pickerton that clearly defended himself legally and correctly in a home invasion and yet was charged by the local DA. I do feel that although our police are only reactive in nature and are not capable of truly preventing crime that as a society we should at least rally behind those victims that defend themselves, regardless of where the attack occurs.
Zimmerman should have, if he suspected unlawful activity, stepped back and called in the professionals. As a "neighborhood watch" that is ALL they are supposed to do .. WATCH.. and report crimes to those that are trained to handle situations.
A 17 might have been indignant about a man, not in uniforming, giving him a hard time. He might have even felt threatened which would have led to him "lunging" at Zimmerman.
Zimmerman had no business shooting that kid. Cops are trained.. and here's an example.
I knew a cop out on LI once he told me the story of the time he felt that a Wendy's looked "suspicious". There were two teenage boys inside wearing trench coats. What they had under it, he couldn't know. He suspected they were going to rob the place. He called for back up, went in and told everyone to get down. Drew his gun and told the two young men to put their hands up . The one kid complied, the other panicked and reached into his jacket. Why? He wanted to show the cop that he had ONLY a toy gun in it. The cop could have easily shot the 17 year old kid. .. but he didn't. If he did, he would have shot an unarmed kid who was just pulling a prank on a friend (a stupid one at that).
Zimmerman. would have shot that kid.
And with the stories coming out now about him, .. well.. something tells me that he is quick to pull the trigger.
It was a tragedy.. and he should have paid for it, simply because he had no business patrolling the streets as a want to be cop.
Whether a person should be charged with a crime and tried, even with little to no evidence that he has broken any law, if enough of the public feels strongly that the person has done something morally wrong. If so, is this basically just mob rule on a grand scale, or something else? Thinking beyond this case, does the trial of George Zimmerman open the door for others to be charged with crimes with a lack of evidence, in future incidents that are big stories with the public riled up against the person?
A person should not be charged just for the sake of charging someone to satisfy a particular party. There was not enough evidence to charge him. As I mentioned in many of my others posts over this, the best tactic would be to wait until Zimmerman discloses more evidence (either for or against him); this tactic has been used in the past, where they have even waited 20 years to charge a perosn,w aiting for the person to say something to someone, or to accumulate more evidence that would sway the jury due to actions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ogre
Any of the various racial issues that might have been at play in the case.
There was no racial issue in this, the emdia and the public mad this into a racial issue. I do not think Zimmerman nor Martin had any racial ideology in their minds regarding this event.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ogre
Should self-defense laws be changed so that actions similar to Zimmerman's would be unlawful? What, if any, changes should be made? What would be the possible consequences of such changes, for example on people's ability to defend themselves?
The self defense law is find, the point of debate was who actually was in self defense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ogre
Should the law be changed so that setting into motion, through possibly irresponsible behavior, a sequence of events that ends in tragedy would be a crime (as in, the whole incident began with Zimmerman's following Martin, though this in itself is lawful)? Again, what changes and what would be the possible consequences in future incidents?
No, because it would be almost impossible to describe what irresponsible behavior is, and irresponsible behavior is not illegal. Also, being irresponsible does not mean a get out of jail ticket for someone else. Plus, many times irresponsibility is determiend by the outcome of the action. If Zimmerman had caught Martin breaking into a car, and held him until the police arrived, no one would describe Zimmerman's following Martin as "irresponsible".
The social and legal problems of the time includes the current knockdown games that are spreading across the USA. Some victims have died. Hence clearly young men can and do kill even when unarmed. And in the state of Maryland that followed New York and some others the case of Matthew Pickerton that clearly defended himself legally and correctly in a home invasion and yet was charged by the local DA. I do feel that although our police are only reactive in nature and are not capable of truly preventing crime that as a society we should at least rally behind those victims that defend themselves, regardless of where the attack occurs.
Thanks to all who have offered their thoughts.
I had not heard of the Matthew Pinkerton case before reading the quoted post. I just looked it up. From a cursory look at a couple of on-line articles, I get the initial impression that Pinkerton may well have had the legal right to use the force he used in that case, but I would want to know a lot more detail before forming a definitive opinion.
I do agree very much with your opinion on the right to self-defense. I for one would not want to live in a place where the police had the authority to prevent crime proactively in the fullest sense. That would involve routinely rounding up large numbers of people just going about their business just in case they might be up to some kind of no good. No thanks.
However, given the restrictions we put on our police, it's important that we have the right to defend ourselves. There need to be reasonable limits on what we do in the name of self-defense, but nothing that would limit people's ability to protect themselves against real and imminent threat. I happen to feel that self-defense law as it exists in the U.S. strikes about the right balance. If this sometimes leads to tragedy, we need to keep in mind that the world is far from a perfect place, and no situation involving human beings will turn out well every time. Sometimes bad things just happen.
Good point also about the serious injuries some people have sustained in knock-down incidents. Teenagers are capable of inflicting severe injury, even to the point of being fatal. Trayvon Martin was not a young child who could not possibly have been a threat to a grown man. Martin was seventeen. By the age of seventeen a boy usually is beginning to have a man's body. To get a picture of what kind of physical threat each party in the incident could have represented to the other, it's most accurate to think of this as an incident involving two young men, not a man and a little boy.
I'll just say this. Posters have placed 100% blame on a 17 year that was followed by a man that never ever announced who he was.
And then ran behind Florida's backwards laws to confirm what they thought happened.
Apparently, men should fear teens way more than teens should fear men. The teen should be the logical thinker here, not the adult.
Remember all those things our parents told us about "strangers" when we were children? Yeah..
Quote:
Originally Posted by Proud2beAMom
Here, is the problem as I see it.
Zimmerman should have, if he suspected unlawful activity, stepped back and called in the professionals. As a "neighborhood watch" that is ALL they are supposed to do .. WATCH.. and report crimes to those that are trained to handle situations.
A 17 might have been indignant about a man, not in uniforming, giving him a hard time. He might have even felt threatened which would have led to him "lunging" at Zimmerman.
Zimmerman had no business shooting that kid. Cops are trained.. and here's an example.
I knew a cop out on LI once he told me the story of the time he felt that a Wendy's looked "suspicious". There were two teenage boys inside wearing trench coats. What they had under it, he couldn't know. He suspected they were going to rob the place. He called for back up, went in and told everyone to get down. Drew his gun and told the two young men to put their hands up . The one kid complied, the other panicked and reached into his jacket. Why? He wanted to show the cop that he had ONLY a toy gun in it. The cop could have easily shot the 17 year old kid. .. but he didn't. If he did, he would have shot an unarmed kid who was just pulling a prank on a friend (a stupid one at that).
Zimmerman. would have shot that kid.
And with the stories coming out now about him, .. well.. something tells me that he is quick to pull the trigger.
It was a tragedy.. and he should have paid for it, simply because he had no business patrolling the streets as a want to be cop.
I've quoted these two posts together because I think they both point to one of the issues in people's reactions to the case, that being the distinction between someone's opinion about the responsible or proper way to handle a situation on the one hand and the law on the other. There is a good reason for living by the rule of law, which is meant to protect us all from arbitrary prosecution. That reason is that public opinion is fickle.
If we let whatever opinion prevails among the public in any given case dictate whether someone is punished for some action when he might possibly have made better choices, then none of us is safe from capricious punishment, because you never know how the public will react emotionally to a given set of circumstances. And it does seem clear that Zimmerman could not on the basis of hard evidence be proven, not even come remotely close to being proven, guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of any violation of the law.
Speaking of the law, Mrmondaynight, I wonder whether you'd be willing to get specific about what you think is backward about Florida's law. If your beef is about the Stand Your Ground portion of the law, it's worth noting that SYG was actually irrelevant in this case.
The SYG portion of the law involves the words in the first part, about defense of person, that a person "does not have a duty to retreat" before lawfully using deadly force. Historically, the law in the U.S. has held that before using deadly a person has a duty to back away from an imminent threat serious enough to warrant the use of deadly force, if retreat is safe and physically possible. This law's explicit statement that one has no duty to retreat before using deadly force is the SYG portion of the law.
The law still requires that a threat be serious enough to justify the use of deadly force, but simply states that even if retreat is possible it is not required. In that Zimmerman was pinned down on the ground, he would have been physically unable to retreat. Therefore SYG is irrelevant. If there's something else you feel is backward, or wrong in some way, about this law, I'd be interested in knowing what that is, but be aware that most of this statute is the same as laws about self-defense that have been in place across the U.S. for many years.
In any case, again it's important to make a distinction between what the two people I've quoted here, I, or anyone else might feel would have been the most responsible way for Zimmerman to have approached this situation and the question of whether he broke any law by handling things as he did. There's no evidence that he broke any law whatsoever.
.. something tells me that he is quick to pull the trigger.
And fatally slow to stop, for even an instant, to actually think.
Under the Florida law as written, and as explained to the jury, Zimmerman's action was probably justified. That is a far cry from calling it "right". (And yes, I know that American law is based on whether something is legal and not whether it is right.)
I thought then, and I'm restating now, that the Martin/Zimmerman case is one of the poorest possible incidents on which to base any decision about the "Stand Your Ground" premise.
A person should not be charged just for the sake of charging someone to satisfy a particular party. There was not enough evidence to charge him. As I mentioned in many of my others posts over this, the best tactic would be to wait until Zimmerman discloses more evidence (either for or against him); this tactic has been used in the past, where they have even waited 20 years to charge a perosn,w aiting for the person to say something to someone, or to accumulate more evidence that would sway the jury due to actions.
There was no racial issue in this, the emdia and the public mad this into a racial issue. I do not think Zimmerman nor Martin had any racial ideology in their minds regarding this event.
I agree that racial differences most likely did not affect the actions of either principal participant. We can't know for sure because it's impossible to really know what is going through another person's mind, but there's no good indication that either man was motivated by race.
However, as you point out, and as Dale Cooper refers to with specific examples, race did become a factor in how this case was viewed by the public and handled by the authorities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dale Cooper
The problem started when politicians got involved, flapping their jaws without having a single bit of evidence.
"Hunted down like a rabid dog." Frederica.
"Walking while black in a gated community." Hank.
"Looked like my son." Barack.
Quote:
Originally Posted by boxus
The self defense law is find, the point of debate was who actually was in self defense.
No, because it would be almost impossible to describe what irresponsible behavior is, and irresponsible behavior is not illegal. Also, being irresponsible does not mean a get out of jail ticket for someone else. Plus, many times irresponsibility is determiend by the outcome of the action. If Zimmerman had caught Martin breaking into a car, and held him until the police arrived, no one would describe Zimmerman's following Martin as "irresponsible".
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