The Trayvon Martin shooting

[cardsfansince82]

The message here is if you are black it is ok to assume you are a criminal. And someone with no legal authority whatsoever can confront and attempt to detain you for no reason. And if you resist in any way they can legally shoot you. And apparently they can claim self defense and all of the burden is on the state to prove otherwise. And a whole lot of people think all of the above is okay. Does that about cover it?

[go birds]

I think the bigger message here is that anyone prosecuting in Florida is completely incapable of presenting a decent case.

[Spider John]

A man follows you with a gun while you walk down a public street. . You are unarmed, and your only defense is your bare hands. Even so, you fight the gunman and get the advantage, until he shoots you. And the gunman's not guilty of anything ?

[go birds]

*heads on over to current events*

[cardsfansince82]

Based on what I know of the evidence (which is probably lacking a bit), there's just no way to prove Zimmerman didn't act in self-defense in that moment. Everything up to that moment seems mostly his fault, but that's not what he's on trial for.

Did our entire legal system change and I didn't get the memo? Every person that has ever killed someone has claimed self defense. The burden is on them to prove it was truly self defense, otherwise they are guilty of manslaughter at a minimum by default. The facts of the case don't completely support his claim but for some reason we are supposed to take the word of the guy that pulled the trigger and has every reason to lie? We are breaking new ground here.

Funny thing is, this case has no effect on me and I'm still pissed off. I'm not black and also don't have any fantasies about shooting black people.

[cardsfansince82]

A man follows you with a gun while you walk down a public street. . You are unarmed, and your only defense is your bare hands. Even so, you fight the gunman and get the advantage, until he shoots you. And the gunman's not guilty of anything ?

He gets to be free and you know, live, but other than that his life is totally ruined from what I understand. So we can all rest easy.

[go birds]

well everyone, the good news is that the mob will take care of america's and GRB's "george zimmerman" problem

[jim]

I know nothing of the details of this case, however I did watch the interviews with the two sets of lawyers. I had to ask myself when I watched the prosecutors, "is everything in Florida a circus?". She was smiling and acting like she was at a receiving line of a wedding, and the other guy couldn't communicate when asked a question. Typical answer was "Well hmmmph you know we had to kind of show hmmmmph he did it. Did that answer your question?". No you moron it did not answer their question, because while English words came out of your mouth they were not put in any intelligible sequence.

[stlouie_lipp]

I know nothing of the details of this case, however I did watch the interviews with the two sets of lawyers. I had to ask myself when I watched the prosecutors, "is everything in Florida a circus?". She was smiling and acting like she was at a receiving line of a wedding, and the other guy couldn't communicate when asked a question. Typical answer was "Well hmmmph you know we had to kind of show hmmmmph he did it. Did that answer your question?". No you moron it did not answer their question, because while English words came out of your mouth they were not put in any intelligible sequence.

I know. That [expletive] lady was smiling and pointing to people in the "audience" like she just won an election.

Anyway, I think I am going to pick a fight, get my ass kicked, pull my gun, shoot and kill, and see if i can get away with it. I'll report back on how it works out.

[ghostrunner]

I think you could take the facts we know about the case - the timeline, the point A to B to C - and make a movie of that. Depending on how you fill in the details of your movie, you can come out with a case that supports either one of them. None of the eyewitness testimony sounds like it was very reliable. There seems to be some evidence that Martin pursued Zimmerman at one point, and that would easily have been perfectly defensible. The gun only comes into this after the fight already started. It's true that Zimmerman had fairly severe wounds on the back of his head (if you go back in the thread I thought this was likely an exaggeration based on the grainy video that first came out) so he could reasonably have felt his life was in danger. It's just a bad situation that got worse, and I do find Zimmerman to be mostly responsible.