The Trayvon Martin shooting

[IMADreamer]

Is anyone worried that Zimmerman will do this again?

A little, he's justified now so what in his mind would stop him? More then him though I'm worried about the millions of other Zimmerman's out there that will do this. It's a matter of time, and it's probably only a matter of days.

[cardsfantx]

geez, obama....shut the [expletive] up. all your statements will do is cause a greater divide.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama-rel ... 06174.html

basically, a jury has decided so i'll respect their decision...but i think they made the wrong decision. way to go POTUS.

[IMADreamer]

I don't know why he said it either because it's just one more thing for the Fox News nut huggers to [expletive] about.

[sighyoung]

I didn't see anything incendiary in what Obama said. He said what I've heard from about fifty different people today.

[Socnorb11]

geez, obama....shut the [expletive] up. all your statements will do is cause a greater divide.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama-rel ... 06174.html

basically, a jury has decided so i'll respect their decision...but i think they made the wrong decision. way to go POTUS.

I didn't get that from his statement at all.

[cardsfantx]

I didn't see anything incendiary in what Obama said. He said what I've heard from about fifty different people today.

are any of those 50 people the freaking president of the united states? he needs to stay out of issues like this. if anything he needed to back the court and the courts decision completely. he's an elected official.

[cardsfantx]

geez, obama....shut the [expletive] up. all your statements will do is cause a greater divide.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama-rel ... 06174.html

basically, a jury has decided so i'll respect their decision...but i think they made the wrong decision. way to go POTUS.

I didn't get that from his statement at all.

the last sentence is "that is how we should honor travon martin"

why should he be honored at all? a jury decided a man was justified to kill him as he was getting his ass beat down. so both were in the wrong. you don't honor either one of them.

[IMADreamer]

I swear to God Obama could cure cancer and people would [expletive].

[sighyoung]

I didn't see anything incendiary in what Obama said. He said what I've heard from about fifty different people today.

are any of those 50 people the freaking president of the united states? he needs to stay out of issues like this. if anything he needed to back the court and the courts decision completely. he's an elected official.

And elected officials ask people to respect the rule of law after decisions like this. And he did.

[PurdueSTL]

I'm confused..didn't Zimmerman plead "not guilty" to the charge of 2nd degree murder?

And also, the fact that the prosecution asked for (and got) manslaughter as part of the jury instructions (essentially at the 11th hour) was a HUGE indication to me that the prosecutors knew they'd failed in making their case....

Also partially in response to beerstrikes question from earlier... Please note that I'm not a lawyer.

There's no such thing as "not guilty" once you admit to killing someone. He pleaded not guilty-Justifiable homicide. He is not disputing that he killed that kid.

The jury had three options: justifiable homicide, manslaughter and murder 2. To find him guilty of murder 2, you have to prove he was committing a criminal act, to prove justifiable homicide you have to show his act was justified or there is some doubt whether it was not justified. Manslaughter means the act was not justified but not criminal. I don't see how anyone can read the circumstances of the case and have any doubt that what he did wasnt justified. As for his injuries, there was expert testimony that they weren't consistent with a head being slammed into concrete. We don't even know for sure they were actually caused by Trayvon Martin.

Thanks for expounding on this..like others here, I took little more than a passing interest in the particulars, but again I come back to the prosecution's strategy...

This was a squirrelly situation from the beginning, IIRC--nobody in authority had any interest in prosecuting Zimmerman--it was only public pressure/outcry that compelled the DA to finally bring charges--long after the fact.

Your explanation (and the prosecution's 11th-hour request to expand the range of conviction options available to the jury) speak loudly to me that the prosecutors poorly prepared, and clearly bit off more than they could prove in prosecuting this as Murder-2...

The similarity of this case to OJ' s criminal trial are amazing-- with the announcement of the verdict, you have widespread righteous indignation about "the system" and the "absence of justice", when what it really boiled down to in both instances was the prosecution failing -- spectacularly -- to substantiate its case.